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'Simple? You bet it's simple. Incredibly simple. That's the beauty of it. That's the intention – keep it simple and to the point."

"It" is a sort of miniature police crime-scene line that is taped across the front of a hockey or football helmet with a rather direct message: "SEE IT. PROTECT IT."

This "incredibly simple" idea belongs to Bernie O'Donohue, who knows far more about debilitating head injuries than he wishes. At 25, he has several documented concussions from hockey behind him – "My job was to hit; I loved to hit and be hit" – as well as one from high school soccer that he chose to ignore and, within a week, was back banging and crashing into opponents in competitive hockey.

But none of them compare to what he calls "the Big One."

The Big One came when O'Donohue was 19 years old. He had been out to dinner in Toronto with family and friends, and slipped on some water that had been spilled at the top of the stairs.

Accidents happen in real life as well as in sports.

He has no recollection of the fall, just knowledge that he broke bones and teeth and would have died had it not been for doctors at nearby Sunnybrook Hospital, who discovered there was bleeding in his brain and performed an emergency operation to relieve the pressure. He was in a coma and on life-support, and his family was prepared for the worst. But then, surprisingly, he awoke and asked what had become of the new jeans he had purchased just prior to joining everyone for dinner.

"They pretty much wrote me off," he says today.

Three days later he was out of hospital – but his life changed dramatically. The plan to study police work at college was now off the table. All available energy would have to go into years of rehabilitation.

"What happened to me was terrible, but it didn't ruin my life," he says. "It altered my life. I'm just one of the lucky ones."

Lucky indeed. His close friend Cassandra stuck with him, and today she's his wife and the mother of Declan, their energetic two-year-old. Roxy, the golden retriever service dog, never leaves his side and is there to help him control the vertigo and periodic anxieties that linger. The O'Donohues have a new home in Peterborough, Ont., where Bernie, who had studied business, is able to manage the investments from an insurance settlement and where he works the rest of the time to spread the word about the devastating effects of head injuries.

He speaks to schools on behalf of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), and to schools and sports organizations for the ThinkFirst Injury Prevention Strategy for Youth (TIPSY), an injury-prevention program that is connected to Toronto's St. Michael's Hospital and Dr. Charles Tator, the neurosurgeon who is Canada's leading advocate for prevention of head injuries in sport.

And on his own, O'Donohue has created the Between The Ears Foundation, a not-for-profit group that has launched a campaign that hopes to place those yellow caution stickers on all hockey and football helmets. Some teams in the Toronto area are already using them.

The idea comes, obviously, from the red "STOP" sign that is on the backs of minor-hockey jerseys. When that campaign began, there were skeptics, but today it is seen as a highly effective, if simple, message.

"I knew we shouldn't hit from behind," O'Donohue says of his own playing days against youngsters with the STOP sign on their backs, "even if I didn't really know what a spinal injury was."

He stands with a growing number who are calling for action rather than continuing to call for more research – as U.S. President Barack Obama did this spring at his "concussion summit" – as an excuse for doing nothing.

"I hate hearing 'research, research, research,'" says O'Donohue. "The research is in. It's frustrating. I'm not a doctor. I'm not a specialist. But I have had a serious brain injury. I know what it can do to you."

So, too, does Dr. Paul Echlin, the Burlington, Ont., concussion expert who recently co-authored a paper in the Journal of Neurosurgery calling for immediate action on this public health issue. Echlin and others want to see profound change in the very way that contact games are played, including the elimination of all intentional head contact.

"It's great," Dr. Echlin says of O'Donohue's simple sticker plan. "It's a real grass-roots thing, and I wish nothing but the best to them. But for me, it's not enough. We've got to take a real shift. And it will take all these voices to make that shift."

Calling concussions "the invisible epidemic" or "the silent epidemic" is old now, Echlin argues. The existing research (not to mention the lawsuits) verifies that hits to the head, particularly multiple hits, cause serious health issues.

It will take a decade or more, Echlin believes, but contact sports will have to change, some dramatically.

O'Donohue hopes to land a national sponsor for his simple message. For "a dollar a kid," he says, minor hockey and football players can be provided with the appropriate sticker – tested and approved by a major helmet manufacturer – and a simplified pamphlet that spells out "five things to remember when you see this logo:"

1. YOU are RESPONSIBLE for other players' safety! Avoid the head on contact!

2. Under that helmet, there is a person with a life ahead of them.

3. An injured brain will affect every aspect of your life (thinking, moving, talking, memory, information processing, balance, sleeping).

4. One concussion can have lasting side effects. Multiple concussions can cause permanent brain damage.

5. This is a game, not a war!

"I compare it to the bottom of the ocean," says O'Donohue. "We know it's there, but we don't know really what's down there. Kids don't know the science of the brain.

"The brain is your body's computer. If you drop your computer, you might be lucky enough to put the pieces back together and turn it on, but it will never look or function the same way as prior to the crash.

"If the crash is so severe that the computer doesn't work at all, you can go to the store and buy a new one. If you break your brain, there are no replacements or parts that can be replaced. You get one chance at a healthy brain. After you injure it, it's too late."

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