In this week’s edition, we celebrate Pink Shirt Day – the annual event where we shine a spotlight on bullying and the efforts that are being made to put an end to it.
Pink Shirt Day is this coming Wednesday, Feb. 22, so we have a special six-page section this week with a story on the exciting return of the Battle of the Badges hockey game between Delta Police and Delta Fire, along with several other stories contributed by the Delta School District and numerous high school students who are doing some amazing things within their school communities.
In case you don’t know the history of Pink Shirt Day, it was started in Canada in 2007 when two students took a stand against the homophobic bullying of a student at their school who was threatened by other students for wearing pink.
The two students bought dozens of pink shirts the next day to school and distributed them to their classmates, showing support for the bullied youth. Since then, Pink Shirt Day has been recognized by communities across Canada and around the globe.
And as important as Pink Shirt Day is on Feb. 22, in many ways, I think it should be Pink Shirt Day every day.
Every single day in this community and many others, there are acts of bullying and racism. We see these acts on social media, in our daily interactions on the street and in how we communicate with each other.
In ways, I can’t get into great detail here, our newsroom receives bullying threats through email and on our social media pages daily. Comments are made online about our stories, letters to the editor and opinion pieces. Now I love a good debate and everyone is entitled to their opinions, but not bullying attacks, racist or homophobic commentary.
Pink Shirt Day on Feb. 22 may be a day set aside to reflect on our behaviour, but we should be reflecting on that behaviour every day because as a society, we all have a lot of work to do. We can all do better.
