It's an intersection Jon Petrychyn crossed on his way to school, every day, for six years.

Yet, when a friend sent him a picture of that intersection last week, Petrychyn didn't recognize it at first.

A group of high school students were jumping in the picture and in front of their feet was a freshly painted rainbow-coloured crosswalk.

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"I look at the photo and I'm like, 'that's cute, that's nice,'" Petrychyn recalled.

When his friend pointed out where the picture was taken, in Petrychyn's hometown of Wolseley, Sask., 100 km east of Regina, he started crying in his office.

'I never expected to see that in my small town'

"I was overcome with this feeling of just pride and just and being seen in that town because it was tough growing up as a gay kid in that town," he told CBC.

These days, he lives in Toronto where he is obtaining his PhD in communications and culture at Ryerson University. Eleven years ago, he was a closeted gay kid afraid to come out in the small town of Wolseley, population 850.

A self-described effeminate drama kid back then, he was subject to homophobic bullying, and, as is common in rural Saskatchewan, students regularly misused terms about gay people, turning them into crude insults.

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Petrychyn didn't come out to his family until he was 20 years old. So the rainbow crosswalk marked a big change.

"When I was growing up, I never would have expected to see that and still today, I never expected to see that in my small town," he said.

Petrychyn knows better than most that things are changing for queer people on the prairies — he has spent the past five years of his doctoral studies on queer film festivals on the Canadian prairies looking at the history of queer activism.

Still, the emotional component caught up with Petrychyn in a hurry when he saw that picture of the rainbow crosswalk.

"I was really surprised at just how at just how moved I was by this little gesture," he said.

Meet the painters

On Tuesday, CBC connected him with Wolseley High School's Life Transitions 20 class, their teacher and the school principal.

In a Skype conversation, Petrychyn smiled back at five students as they explained the school's Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) group was part of the motivation for the rainbow crosswalk, which they did as their end-of-year community project in the class.

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