12-05-2025
- General
- Hamilton Spectator
Rubber ducks, real impact: Students champion mental health with scavenger hunt
There was a buzz among Bernie Custis students
on Wednesday morning
as they raced around the school opening doors and lockers, peering over ledges and rooting around in planters, searching for dozens of hidden rubber ducks.
By 10 a.m., most of the 200 of the colourful plastic toys hidden around the school, each bearing a message of encouragement, had already been found.
Occasional rubber-duck squeaks sounded in hallways and classrooms.
Last week was Mental Health Week, and the King Street East school — and 27 others in the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board — are working to create awareness and destigmatize psychological well-being with a rubber-duck scavenger hunt. It's meant to encourage, spark conversations and build community.
Grade 11 student Nikole Silverman, 17, shows some of the locations the rubber ducks bearing positive messages were hidden in around Bernie Custis Secondary School.
Ducks, said board manager David Hoy, are 'a playful yet powerful metaphor' that has resonated with students.
'Like ducks who appear calm on the surface while paddling hard underneath … many students relate to the hidden struggles behind a composed exterior,' he said.
The idea originated at Bernie Custis in 2023, a take on the trend of leaving ducks on Jeeps as an act of kindness. Students hid 60 ducks, which they soon realized weren't enough.
Grade 9 student Alina Hussaini, 14, holds one of the 200 rubber ducks hidden around Bernie Custis Secondary School. Alina is part of the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board's mental health advocacy group.
'It was chaos, but in a good way,' said Grade 11 student Nikole Silverman, 17, adding there was chatter in the hallways as people compared ducks and shared messages.
The idea took flight and, two years later, more than two dozen elementary and secondary schools have hidden hundreds of small, multicoloured rubber ducks as a way of promoting positive school climates.
At Bernie Custis, ducks had names like Bob, Ying, Sirius Quack and Duck Vader. Some were named after people, pets and food, like 'Cheese,' students said.
Grade 11 student Nikole Silverman, 17, shows the message on a blue duck named Saoirse at Bernie Custis Secondary School.
Pieces of paper tied to their necks bore messages like: 'It's OK not to be OK.'
Messages are written by students for students, and organizers hope it makes people feel 'that's something someone else has felt,' said Nikole, who was part of the team behind the idea.
'It just brings joy to people,' she said.
Bernie Custis Secondary School principal Timothy Powell stands with two rubber ducks hidden in his office.
A student advisory panel for mental health, which has membership from several schools, including Bernie Custis, created a tool kit with announcement scripts, posters and materials for a duck scavenger hunt, and promoted the initiative.
'Students have been the drivers of the campaign,' Hoy said.
'We really like how the students have embraced it and shared it across their networks, allowing it to grow,' he said.
Grade 11 students Nikole Silverman and Maiya Six, both 17, show off two of the 200 rubber ducks hidden around Bernie Custis Secondary School on Wednesday morning. Nikole and Maiya were part of a team that came up with the idea for a schoolwide scavenger hunt using rubber ducks bearing positive messages as a way to create connections and spark conversations about mental health.
Years ago, mental-health issues were something you either had or didn't, said principal Timothy Powell. But the conversation has shifted.
'We all have to be attentive to what's the state of our current mental health, and what do we need to address, what do we need to talk about,' he said. 'That's a powerful reframing in terms of how we think and talk about mental health.'
