Montreal Massacre — remembering matters
At 11 years old, she was the kid who called out sexism in her classroom.
And racism. And colonialism. And many more “isms” that she didn’t yet have a name for but that would become an integral part of her life.
Robyn Bourgeois, assistant professor at the Brock University Centre for Women’s and Gender Studies, was the girl who asked teachers why girls and boys were required to have separate gym classes at her elementary school in a small town in the southern interior of British Columbia. “Why is this necessary?” she would ask. “I was never satisfied with answers.” She spoke up when boys snapped the back of girls’ bras. And when teachers told students that Indigenous people should be “grateful” for the residential school system.
“I remember being a little girl and thinking, ‘That’s not the stories I know,’” she said.
Her grandfather had told her a very different narrative of the pain and trauma he survived in residential school. A story so painful he eventually stopped talking about it. “I knew that was a secret story in our family history,” she said.
When teachers told stories that celebrated the fur trade and settlers, Bourgeois asked: “Where are the Indigenous people in this? I knew my history.”
Indeed, she loved to learn, loved education.
When she told her mother in Grade 4 that she wanted to be prime minister of Canada, her mother replied: “Yes, let’s figure out how to do this.”
“She always told me that I could do whatever I dreamed of,” said Bourgeois.
Her dad was also a strong supporter. It was from him that she was given her Cree heritage.
She was a girl with a voice.And yet on Dec. 6, 1989, the day 14 women at Ecole Polytechnique were killed by Marc Lapine, she felt fear.
“I remember that day. It had a chilling effect for me. As an Indigenous woman, you know that you’re not safe. And to see that because I was a woman and because I was a feminist — and I knew I was going to be a feminist — I realized I could be killed for both of those things.
“This was a guy who had a grudge against women and feminists and he went after them and they paid the price with their lives. And that to me had a chilling effect.”
This Wednesday — on a day established in 1991 by the Parliament of Canada as the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women — Bourgeois will share her thoughts on her conviction: Why this day still matters so much.
Bourgeois, the girl with the strong voice, who knew at 11 years old that she was a feminist, is also a survivor of violence. And that, might be difficult for people to understand. Despite her strong sense of self, she had a weakness. A vulnerability. “I just wanted people to love me,” she said.
There are many nuances and parts that explain what happened to her life after high school. This is the simple version.
The girl who loved school hated college. She didn’t fit in. She couldn’t find her place there. At the same time, she had been living with her father and stepmother and had a falling out with them. And the guy who had been her boyfriend in high school left for Vancouver. She felt lonely. And vulnerable. It was 1996 and she met an older man online. “A man who gave me everything I wanted,” she said.
She was 18. He was 32.
She moved to Vancouver to live with him and abandoned her dreams of an education. She worked a minimum-wage job. She would later discover that he had a criminal record. He played on her weakness.
She delivered drugs for him. And then when she was broken by brutal physical violence — “when I believed I was dirty and garbage and worthless” — she relented to his demand that she prostitute herself.
“You’re so broken you believe it.” Indeed, it’s very hard to explain in a way that does justice to her experience. She tries this: imagine being so emotionally numb, so hurt that “going along with things seems easier than fighting.
“If you lay down and take it, it’s much easier.”
The story of how she survived, how she escaped is just as long and intricate. Absolutely, it involved the unwavering love of her parents and the kindness of a police officer.
“The whole time this was happening, I always knew that this couldn’t be the end of my story,” she said.
She felt like she had been given a
second chance. She wanted to help others. She pursued an education because she believed that letters after her name would give her a stronger voice: “People will listen to me,” she said. And she wanted to be heard.
“If I could take an experience that was so horrible to me and turn it around in a way that could help other people, that’s what I would do.”
Bourgeois has many letters after her name. She has a BA in sociology. Masters in sociology. And a PhD in social justice education.
And yet, her life was not without struggle. The juxtaposition was startling, even to Bourgeois herself: a strong, empowered woman who survived life trauma and was finally pursuing the dream of an education versus a women who battled alcoholism, who punished herself, who was “reckless” in relationships because she had no love or respect for herself. A women who felt tremendously guilty because she had survived.
“Other women were not as lucky,” she said. “Women were dying. They were the missing women in Vancouver.”
In the nearly three decades after the Montreal massacre, there has not been the change Bourgeois had envisioned as that 11-year-old girl.
“I am angry. I imagined that at 40, I wouldn’t have to fight this battle anymore. We’ve had years of activism and years of blood, sweat and tears on the part of women all across this country to address this violence.”
There are more programs, policies and funding to address anti-violence messages. “And yet, the violence is still there.”
Her theory is that we are not addressing the root. That source is complicated: sexism, racism, colonialism. And more. All those “isms” that even her 11-year-old self could identify.
“It’ s the ideology that women are inferior ,” she said .“That they are somehow de serving of violence because of that inferiority. It’s still present everywhere.”
It’s in the cartoons and TV shows that our children watch. It’s in the subtleties of our conversations. It happens when we don’t support and inform parents about non-violent parenting skills.
And, yes, the post Harvey Weinstein fallout that produced a wave of sexual harassment allegations against other powerful men in the world, is progress. No doubt, she said.
And yet, there is a but.
“There are racialized women, there are poor women, there are indigenous women, there are disabled women all across this country who have these same experiences, who still don’t get that same level of support,” she said.
“And we still have this idea that women and girls are inferior.”