Safety in schools: 1 year since this boy was shot in his school hallway

Today marks exactly one year since a 15-year-old boy, Jeffrey Manners, was gunned down during school hours in a hallway at C.W. Jeffreys High School in Toronto, Ontario.

I posted to another blog about this horrific tragedy this time last year - and I can't say it's any easy to contemplate it now.

I lost my own teenage son, to different circumstances (workplace accident) but what he and Jeffrey had in common was they went off those fateful days to environments they assumed were safe.

Safe at school. Safe at work.

In the former case, we need only look at the Columbine, Virginia Tech and Dawson College massacres (to name but a few) to see how safe schools are.

And as for workplaces, the stats bear out the sad truth: an astonishing 47,000 young workers (from Jeffrey Manners' age to 24) are injured at work each year just in Ontario.

So, please, take a moment today to remember our young people who might not be working or studying or playing in a safe environment. Let's make a change - for the memory of Dave Ellis and Jordan Manners, to name but two.