Victims’ families finally meet
Parents of three teens who killed themselves have raised awareness
The families of three teenagers who killed themselves after being bullied sat down for some quiet face-to-face time Wednesday night.
Coun. Allan Hubley has spent the past two years speaking in public about how his 15-year-old son Jamie took his own life after being bullied for being openly gay.
The parents of Amanda Todd, in B.C., and Rehtaeh Parsons, in Nova Scotia, have been doing similar work since their children died. All three families have used their public profile to speak out, giving advice to others who may be going through similar experiences.
But for the first time, after the federal government announced proposed changes to Canadian law that would make cyberbullying easier to investigate and prosecute, all three families finally sat down to talk in person.
All of them have played an integral part in raising public awareness of this issue, but they had never met before Wednesday.
“We’re just going to find somewhere quiet, maybe get a box of (tissues) and talk,” Hubley said. “This is really important because all three of our families share this. We just want to discuss what each of the families are going through.”
Anti-bullying week has been a busy one for Hubley. With nearly a dozen talks and interviews scheduled, the emotional toll will be a big one, he said. On Monday alone, he was on a radio program in the morning, then visited two schools and a workplace to talk to adults about bullying before appearing on television later that night.
Unwinding from this can be a challenge. Typically, Hubley will find a quiet place to read afterward. Quite often there are tears. His son would have turned 18 on Saturday. But there is no birthday celebration, no first beer at a pub in Hull.
“When you do these talks, you go through all the emotions of what that all means,” Hubley said. “He’s not here and that’s not an easy thing to get through.”
It’s always difficult to talk about his son, but he and the Todd and Parsons families know how much of an impact it has.
“Any time we speak about our loved ones, it helps people going through those issues now to have the courage to get help and fix the problems,” Hubley said. “It’s hard for us to do it, it’s hard to find the strength, but it’s so important because we’re told over and over by other families how much it means to hear our stories.”