"Imagine No Bullying" tour hits Yorkton

Stephen Maguire grew up on the mean streets of Northern Ireland during "The Troubles."

"I grew up in Belfast pretty much in the middle of a civil war," he said.

"At our schools in Ireland, in the U.K., everybody wore school uniforms. The colour of your school uniform depends on your religion, so on both sides it was back and forth, on the catholic side, on the protestant side, you know, you would find yourself under attack just because of the colours you wore not because of anything you said, or whatever.

"It was a different form of bullying, but a very aggressive one and through that there was just a pent up tension and anger within our school then, and everybody started taking it out on each other."

It got so bad, Maguire explained, they had special buses that would pull up right outside the schools and ferry the students directly to their own neighbourhoods.

For someone who experienced such an extreme environment, it's almost unfathomable to Maguire to see the level of bullying that goes on here in, relatively, strife-free Saskatchewan.

"It's like, why are you hurting each other?" he said. "There are no outside forces trying to hurt you. At the end of the day, what I've heard, as well, in a lot of the small towns is that dance competitions get heated, hockey games get heated.

"I think the parents as well need to step back a bit and go, 'you know what, let's all just chill out here.'

"I'm sure people here will read this interview and go, 'who does he think he is?' I'm just a bloke, I'm just a guy, I'm just one person trying to do something good, that's all it is.

"It's out of control, it's crazy. There's kids right now who are changing the way they walk to school. They're changing where they sit on the bus. They're waking up in the morning faking sickness because they're terrified."

The tour

Last week, amid the announcement of new federal anti-bullying legislation Maguire, now a Saskatoon-based musician, brought his "Imagine No Bullying" concert tour to MC Knoll/St. Michael's. Back in April, through a previous partnership with the Canadian Red Cross during 2010 flooding in Saskatchewan, Maguire put on a benefit show at the Broadway Theatre in Saskatoon featuring 10 musicians.

The response was so great, he said. His phone immediately started ringing with requests to take the show on the road. The logistics prevented a full-blown production, but he approached Codie Prevost, two-time Saskatchewan Country Music Association (SCMA) 'Fan's Choice Entertainer of the Year,' to join him.

Yorkton was the second stop on the seven-school tour co-sponsored by SaskMusic, SCMA and Studio 12 Dance (Saskatoon).

"It's been incredible so far," Maguire said. "We were in Hague last week; the response has been great and hopefully the ripple effect will catch on and just let kids know there's another way, there are paths, and the teachers are there and they want to help."

The show

The show itself features Maguire and Prevost trading energetic musical sets with audience participation while they tell their own stories of being bullied as kids. The message is frank, but not overwhelming taking a back seat to the entertainment.

After a brief message from Jeanny Buan from the Red Cross, they wrap the show up with a raucous rendition of the anti-bullying song "Stay Strong" that Maguire and Prevost co-wrote.

In the afternoon, they take their stories to a more intimate setting.

"After the concert in the gym, we get a chance to visit four or five classrooms," Prevost explained. "It's just to get a chance to talk to some of the older grades about how they are the role models in the school and it's up to them to make a difference. It would just make such a difference in a younger person's life if an older kid just took the time to say hello or ask if they're okay.

"If we can make that happen once, or 10 times, our job's done."

Codie

Prevost also knows of what he speaks.

"I grew up in small-town Saskatchewan and bullying is something that's everywhere," he said. "I remember being in, probably Grade 7, and being scared to go to the bathroom during class time because that's where the bullies would hang out and take advantage."

Bullying has become, without question, one of the top concerns in Canadian society today. When Maguire approached Prevost to participate in the Imagine tour, the country star was eager to jump on board.

"It's just terrible to see this on the news every night and it going as far as people taking their own lives and that's why this has to happen; the changes have to be made."

History

Of course, bullying has always been with us. In an excellent 2007 review of the literature entitled "A Time Line of the Evolution of School Bullying in Differing Social Contexts" published in the Asia Pacific Education Review, Dr. Hyojin Koo of Woosuk University, Korea, outlines the changing definitions of bullying and emerging strategies for its prevention.

"In earlier times, according to descriptions in old documents from the 18th to 20th centuries, bullying was generally described as physical harassment usually related to a death, strong isolation, or extortion in school children," Koo wrote. "However, in contrast to the forms of bullying in earlier times, and the first descriptions of bullying as one or a few physically strong boys directly and harshly treating weaker ones, bullying in modern contexts includes more psychological and verbal threatening as well. Moreover, the meaning and forms of bullying has been expanded and developed as including mean gestures and facial expression, gossiping, and spreading rumours."

At the time Koo wrote his paper, he acknowledged the emerging incidences of cyber-bullying, but it had not yet been systematically studied.

Those of us of a certain vintage, who grew up before systematic research into the bullying began in earnest in the late 1970s and early 1980s, before the Internet and cell phones and email, can certainly relate to the changing sensitivity toward all forms of violence.

In those days, anything short of physical violence was basically viewed as a natural part of growing up. In fact, even fighting was largely tolerated, provided you took it off the school grounds.

And it was not restricted to kid-on-kid violence. In many Canadian jurisdictions, the use of "the strap" as discipline for misbehaving students continued well into the 1990s. It was not until 2004 that the Supreme Court banned corporal punishment in all Canadian classrooms.

Change

And there is the rub. Children learn what they live, emulate what they see. Bullying is not merely a childhood problem.

The Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety reports that up to 40 per cent of workers experience workplace bullying. One British study estimated the cost to employers in that country adds up to 18 billion pounds annually in absenteeism and reduced productivity.

The Red Cross is among many organizations trying to change that.

"Bullying can happen to you wherever you are, whatever your age is, and whatever your race is," Buan said. "It's such a huge problem basically because it isn't addressed. It's not just a community problem, it's not just a school problem, it's a personal problem and that's what we're trying to address right now."