Today is Pink Shirt Day in Canada.

The Day of Pink was inspired by an incident in a high school in Cambridge, Nova Scotia. A Grade 9 student was bullied and threatened by a few students for wearing a pink shirt to school. Grade 12 students David Shepherd and Travis Price heard the story and mobilized their fellow seniors to wear pink shirts the next day to show support for the young student and to stand up to the bullies. Hundreds of students showed up in pink.

The example of solidarity in Nova Scotia has inspired similar days of recognition in countries around the world.

I first heard of Pink Shirt Day in 2013, when a colleague at Natural Resources Canada brought the idea to our COR Team. (COR was short for Changing our Organization through Respect, an initiative to promote respect for diversity, in all its colours.) In encouraging us to mark the day, my colleague said, "Day of Pink is more than just a symbol of a shared belief in celebrating diversity and a non-bullying environment. It's also a commitment to being open minded, to understanding differences and to learning to respect each other, some of the key messages of COR."

I acknowledged in a 2013 blog post about Pink Shirt Day that the act of wearing a pink shirt for one day wouldn’t—in and of itself—stop bullying. I noted that the fight against bullying and discrimination required an ongoing commitment to making our workplaces, schools and communities more respectful and inclusive.

Nevertheless, wearing pink on Pink Shirt Day is a small act that says I value respect, diversity and inclusion.