Oct 2008 was TOO EARLY to be suggesting it was time to buy imho and harper sounded like a smart ass when he made that comment, I think he was claiming he told his mother this advice.
I held on to everything I owned, kept collecting my distributions/dividends and then in March 2009 I cleared out my portfolios (mainly energy and balance of biz trusts) and went to mainly reits and some high divie payers because by March 2009 all stocks had been bashed about equally across the board. So I was trading 52 wk low stocks for different 52 week low stocks.
It worked out well for me when I combined that stradegy with setting up my TFSA in Jan 2009. By August 2009 I was well on my way and one year later I was back where I had been before the crash.