The following story is true.

Entering grade nine I was a mess. My mom and dad had recently divorced and after a year of “healing”, my mom was moving towards a better place. It was a lot for a thirteen year old boy to handle. In reality, I lost my grade eight year looking after her. I am not bitter and I don’t hold it as a grudge. When I am speaking now, I no longer include this story. It was part of my speech for a long time so that I could publicly attempt to “figure it out”. My dad has now passed. My mom has married a man who I don’t think I could have handpicked to be a better role model for me, my late brother, or our kids; he is the kind of guy who could sometimes knock the “sense” into you (I say that figuratively, as he never laid a hand on us.) At the same time, he would share a story from his eclectic past that somehow made sense of whatever we were dealing with. 

When I made the transition into high school I had hoped it would be a new and magical place. A fresh start where I would reestablish myself after my lost year of growing up. I thought I would make new friends and become part of something — I was wrong.

On the second or maybe the third week of school (I’m not sure) I was in the back hallway, upstairs by the auditorium. I was sitting on a long built-in bench. It was a quiet place. During the lunch hour it was alway pretty much vacant. I went there because it was away from the noise. I ate my bagged lunch and the couple of chocolate chip cookies that I had purchased from the cafeteria. It was a Wednesday because I remember thinking that I was half way done the week; two and a half days down, two and a half to go. That made me feel better. I wasn’t fitting in. I didn’t like high school.

The silence of this quiet place was broken by the sound of five senior football players coming up the stairway. They were loud and swearing. I looked down at the ground and shuffled myself into the corner hoping they would walk by. Actually, I prayed they would. They didn’t.

“Hey there little fag!”, shouted the shortest one.

“Niner meat” said another. 

“Maybe we shouldn’t…” one interjected. 

“F**K it, let’s do it!” Another guy yelled rallying them.

Where they got the idea from I will never know, but what happened next was really scary for fourteen year old me. They grabbed me and one of them produced a roll of duct tape. A BIG roll. They forced me into a ball (a sort of tucked or fetal position).  Then they began wrapping the tape around me until basically the only parts of me left showing were around my face. My nose and eyes left exposed, mouth taped shut. 

They rolled me into the custodians closet and left me there. Alone. I peed myself. I cried. I think I was there for 2 to 3 hours, but I honestly don’t know. Luckily for me a custodian needed something from that closet and found me. It hurt to remove the tape as my hair was stuck to it. When a teacher asked me to identify who had done this, I said that I didn’t know who they were. I told the teacher I was too scared and that it just five senior guys. I said I wanted to be done with it. I ran home. I never wanted to return to school.

I did return to school. While those guys never bugged me again, it wasn’t dealt with or spoken of.  

Five years later, I was in grade thirteen; don’t laugh, back in those days in Ontario everyone had thirteen grades. I was at home working on something for a student activity I was involved in when the phone rang. Our home phone was shared by everyone in the house, had no call display, and was attached to a wall;  there were no iPhones back then. My mom answered, then yelled it was for me. “Who is it?” I asked. She answered that she didn’t recognize the voice.

When I went to the kitchen to pick up the phone I was shocked to hear the voice. It was one of the football players from that day five years ago. He had gone off to university to play football. He called to say, “I’m sorry. I never should of done what I did to you. I am sorry. I gotta go. Just know it’s been on my mind for five years and I have regretted what I did. Sorry man. Ok, I gotta go. Sorry.”

He hung up the phone and I stood there in the kitchen with a tear in my eye. The same tear I have now as I write this, sitting on a plane flying home to my wife and family.

My mom asked if I was ok. I said ‘yes’ and walked back to my room. I was stunned. I cried a lot. It was there for five years: the anger, the fear, the embarrassment. I was bullied. 

My personal experience was the reason why I wanted to make a film about bullying; Rising Above is about surviving bullying and moving past it. The documentary is about real people with real stories; some who recognize they had been bullies and changed, and some who were victims and survived.  To date more than 35,000 youth have seen the film. I wish it was a million. We can’t scare bullies into not bullying. We can’t just tell kids it’s going to be ok, we need to show them. That’s what Rising Above is.

It’s funny to think that I spoke for more than 25 years to students about being involved in their school years and creating a community while they are there. In actuality I didn’t really like high school. In many ways, it shaped me into the person I am. My Principal was a mentor and defended me when I screwed up. But, I never truly loved it.

The place I LOVED was summer camp. There I could be anyone. Away from the hallways of my school I was a cool kid. I grew up at camp. The best choice my mom ever made for me was to  send me to camp. I haven't missed a summer since I was 6. I even started my own: Youth Leadership Camps Canada. YLCC is place where I hope kids and teens (over 1,600 each summer) feel safe. Maybe they’re not popular in school, and perhaps they are the victim of bullying behaviour, but at camp they’re ok.

In the end, those experiences, even the really bad ones, shaped me and motivated me to create a camp, a film company, and run conferences like the Global Student Leadership Summit and SPARK. We need to actively change the conversation and give our youth hope and courage. 

To those five guys, I’m ok. Your fifteen minutes of fun, in part, built YLCC. 

To the guy who called me five years later, thank you. It mattered and it helped me.