VICTORIA–At his mother's prodding, the little boy looks in the mirror and speaks to the face gazing back at him.

"I'm just as good as anyone else. Don't have to be better. Don't have to be worse. But I'm just as good as anybody else – and I won't ever let anybody tell me I'm not."

It was no idle exercise for Canadian runner Gary Reed. His family was dirt-poor, lived in a trailer park, and relied on food banks to eat. Reed is of mixed race – white mother and black father – which made him something of an oddity in rural B.C. He was raised by his mom after the marriage broke up when he was a baby.

The playground can be a cruel place, but Mary Reed couldn't stand the thought of her son Gary and daughter Nicole thinking they weren't good enough.

"They felt like they were less and it's just from kids bullying or talking like that," recalls Mary Reed. "I used to take the mirror and make them look in the mirror and go, `I'm just as good as anybody else' until they gained that confidence.

"They say sticks and stones can break my bones and words can never hurt me, but that's a lie. Words can be very hurtful." 

The hurt Gary Reed is feeling on this beautiful, crisp spring morning is purely physical.