WILL IT EVER END?
On the eve of the Ecole Polytechnique massacre anniversary and Basil Borutski’s sentencing, Mary Faught ponders the Women’s Monument she designed at Minto Park.
When a monument honouring women who were abused and murdered by men was created in Minto Park on Elgin Street 25 years ago, space was left to add more small stones etched with the names of new victims.
But no new stones have been added since 2000.
That’s partly because the organizing group drifted apart after being forced to remove one name under a legal threat.
But there is also no more room, says Mary Faught, who designed the space. “We didn’t realize that many more people would be killed, I guess,” Faught says. “We never envisioned that we would use (the space) all up, and we did.”
The words inscribed on the Women’s Monument ask people to “envision a world without violence where women are respected and free.”
The message — and the monument — is no less important today, Faught says.
The monument was a “cry out” of anguish after the Montreal Massacre, when 14 women were shot to death at Montreal’s l’École Polytechnique on Dec. 6, 1989, says Faught.
It remains as a reminder of violence against women, she says. “And if someone does die, it’s a place to go and grieve.”
The artist who designed the monument, cj fleury, says she considers it the most important work she has created.
The monument helps encourage public conversation about a topic that was once taboo, she says. “It’s a great huge thing, carved in stone and set in a public place.
“It’s a thing that stands there, regardless of all the women who have been pushed aside, shut up or killed.”
The monument is also an important gathering place for marches, walks, or just private ruminations, she notes. “It’s a safe place for people to go to.”
People still tuck roses, letters, trinkets and notes in between the 37 small stones that surround the main monument.
It’s similar to both a graveyard and a war memorial, says fleury. “It’s a different kind of war, you know?”
Wednesday marks the 28th anniversary of the Montreal Massacre and a vigil will be held at the monument at 6 p.m.
The names on the monument’s stones include: Sherri Lee Guy, 20 Lori Heath, 34 Cornelia Wyss, 23 Sophie Filion, 23 Karina Janveau, 24 Carrie Mancuso, 32 Vanessa Ritchie, 24 Louise Ellis, 46 Tammy Proulx, 34 Thelma Fokuhl, 66 Carmen Jeannot, 43 Marianne Paquette, 39 Melanie Desroches, 13 Angela Tong, 22 Barbara Teske, 38 Esther Carlisle, 80 Bernita Herron, 36 Lillian Pilon, 42 Sylvie Boucher, 38 Lori Goodfellow Reva Bowers, 30 Pamella Behrendt, 55 Charmaine Thompson, 23 Rachel Favreau, 20 Patricia Allen, 31 Sharon Mohamed, 14 Joan St. Jean, 53 Melinda Sheppit, 16 Micheline Cuerrier, 26 Carole Begley, 51 Barbara Lanthier, 46 Marie Fernande Levesque, 70 Victoria Debes, 58 Kelli Davis, 33 Fengzhi Huang, 36 Anne Laurin, 32
Barbara Teske, 38, was killed in 1998 by her husband, who then went to extreme lengths to destroy her body and hide the evidence. Peter Teske struck his wife in their Alfred-Plantagenet home and let her bleed to death on the basement floor. But instead of leaving her body to be found by police, “the accused concocted an elaborate scheme to destroy all evidence and avoid any criminal liability for what he had done,’’ the court later ruled. He burned his wife’s body at night in the family’s backyard, the same place where they had been married, and then scattered her ashes in ditches alongside a nearby road. He repainted parts of the house to hide the bloodstains. He then reported his wife missing, going so far as to suggest to police that she may have taken off with a male friend. He was convicted of second-degree murder.
Melanie Desroches, 13, was beaten to death by a 14-year-old boy who pleaded guilty but never told anyone why he did it. During the summer holidays of 1993, Melanie, from Oxford Station, had been driven to Kemptville, where she babysat two children. As she waited for the children to finish their swimming lesson, the boy approached her, and took her to a more secluded part of the park. She knew him from school. For no known reason, he pulled out a wrench that he sometimes carried and hit her 68 times. Then he left her. She died the next day in hospital. The boy confessed and was found guilty of seconddegree murder. A psychiatrist said he was immature and prone to uncontrolled bursts of anger and violence whenever he did not get his own way.
Marianne Paquette, 39, was strangled on Christmas Day of 1995 by her husband, John. Marianne was a clerk at Bell Pastry and Delicatessen on Elgin Street; and John, 40, was an unemployed construction worker who was on medication for depression and back pain. Evidence at his trial showed he had repeatedly tried to commit suicide in the weeks before he killed his wife. The court heard that Marianne had been planning to leave her husband because she had lost weight and felt “stressed out’’ from coping with her husband’s depression. He said he did not intend to kill her and was convicted of second-degree murder.
Carrie Mancuso, 32, was found in her apartment on Lafontaine Street in Vanier in September 1995. She had been strangled in her bed with her own cross necklace in a killing that’s still unsolved. Friends said that while it was reported that she was an addict and worked in the sex trade, they remembered her as a devoted daughter who wrote poetry. Years later, Mancuso’s mother, Carol-Ann Johnson, still hoped for answers but wasn’t holding out hope for an arrest. “The best I can hope for is to keep people talking about it,” she said.
Lori Heath, 34, was in the process of separating from Claude Gaudreault in September 1993, but he refused to leave the Sandy Hill apartment they shared with her two teenage daughters. Instead, he slashed her throat and her 13-yearold daughter was wakened by her mother’s screams. Gaudreault, 31, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was ordered to serve a minimum of 12 years before being eligible for parole.
Sherri Lee Guy, 20, was shot to death in April 1995 as she fled her former common-law husband, who arrived at her mother’s Gloucester home armed with a shotgun. She’d called Ottawa police three times that day to say she was being threatened. She’d left Joseph Ghosn, 31, taking her baby, two weeks earlier. The jury didn’t hear about Ghosn’s abuse and threats because it was ruled “prejudicial,” but he was convicted of first-degree murder.
Cornelia Wyss, 23, was raised on a dairy farm in Marionville but died in Switzerland in 1998, strangled by her Turkish husband after she left him, planning to return to Canada with their two sons. Seref Yuce was convicted in absentia of charges including murder, attempted rape and living off the avails of prostitution but was living in Romania, a free man, at the time of the last reported sighting. Her parents raised her children in Canada.
Angela Tong, 22, was stabbed to death, and her body stuffed in a hockey bag and left in a snowbank behind the former Embassy West Hotel in 1997. The Carleton University student was buried on her 23rd birthday. Steven Bugden, a 24-year-old who grew up with Tong in Bridlewood and who became obsessed with her, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. He’d lured her to a hotel to propose but, as the prosecutor said, “things didn’t go well and he lost it.”