29
In mid-March, 1997, 96% of the delegates at a convention of the B.C. Teachers Federation
(BCTF) approved a resolution to create a program to eliminate homophobia and heterosexism in
the BC public school system. Among the supporters rallying outside the convention were
students recounting stories of bullying and harassment, one sixteen year old saying he had been
driven out of his school by taunts. They were confronted on the other side of the issue by
demonstrators brandishing signs that read “No Homo Promo” and “Stop Homosexual
Recruitment in Schools.”
30
There was a follow-up resolution in 1998, and with BCTF an
elaborate resource on sexual diversity was produced by GALE and ready for distribution to every
public school in the province in September 2000.
There was little corresponding action at the level of the provincial government. The New
Democrats in power to that point had accumulated a substantial record of legislatively
recognizing sexual diversity in a number of policy areas, most notably in the recognition of
same-sex relationships. But it had become skittish in educational policy. A resource centre
created from its 1997 Safe Schools initiative, for example, contained no materials on
homophobia and heterosexism.
A large 1999 adolescent health survey across the province showing what had been found
elsewhere, namely that there was pervasive anti-gay harassment in schools, and widespread
alienation among sexual minority youth.
31
In 2000 the provincial Auditor General reported that
little progress had been made by the public school system in fostering a safe learning
environment, and recommended that the risks facing students because of anti-gay climates be
addressed promptly and effectively.”
32
As in Toronto, an individual tragedy helped spotlight these issues.
The Hamed Nastoh Story, 2000
In mid-March 2000, Hamed Nastoh filled his knapsack with rocks and jumped off the Patullo Bridge over
the Fraser River in Surrey. He left a suicide note that talked of being relentlessly picked on. He was called
a variety of names, some just for being too good a student, but there was one part of the bullying that was
especially difficult:
I couldn’t take it anymore. School is the main reason. It was horrible! Everday I was teased and
teased. Everyone calling me Gay! Fag! Queer!, and I would always act like it didn’t bug me and
ignored them, but I was crying inside. It hurt me so bad! . . . . Please tell the people at school why
I did this. I don’t want somebody else to have to do what I did.
Hamed’s mother began campaigning for greater school attention to bullying, though a full year after
Nastoh’s suicide the Surrey School Board was not allowing her to talk about homophobic bullying in
district schools.
Even at this remarkably late date, in a province where more profile had been given to sexual
diversity in schools than anywhere else in Canada, no local school board had taken up sexual
orientation issues substantially. According to one human rights official, there was still resistance
to the inclusion of sexual orientation in harassment policies, based on fears that this would lead
to teaching a particular lifestyle, and luring young people towards it.
33
Convention