Kudos to the City of Port Coquitlam for taking a stand against bullying. On Monday, city council took the first steps toward passing an anti-bullying bylaw, with the aim being to educate, rather than fine, those engaging in bullying.

Just one day earlier, Mayor Greg Moore addressed a crowd of hundreds participating in the Snowflake Walk, an event aimed at showing those who are being bullied they're not alone.

Participants, who came from across the Lower Mainland, wore pink T-shirts with the message "I am someone," in honour of Amanda Todd, the PoCo teen who committed suicide two months ago after relentless bullying. In a video she posted on YouTube detailing her struggles, Amanda held up a sign saying "I have nobody. I need someone."

Her message became the inspiration for the phrase on the T-shirts, as well as the Be Someone campaign, which features decals posted in the windows of businesses to show they offer a refuge for people being bullied.

While it's easy to attack PoCo's proposed anti-bullying bylaw as difficult to enforce or outside the city's realm of influence, its real effect on bullying will likely be felt in the form of peer pressure - the good kind, which has made harmful actions such as smoking and drinking and driving much less prevalent in our society. Education campaigns work for public health problems, and in many ways bullying fits that definition.

So the city deserves praise for stepping up to the plate in the fight against bullying, a plague we need to stamp out.

And so do all of those people who turned up at the Snowflake Walk and took their own stand against bullying - especially the youth, who are showing their generation nobody should ever feel totally alone.