HORROR REMEMBERED
People attending a vigil Friday in Montreal look up at 14 beams of light representing the 14 women killed in an anti-feminist attack by a single gunman 30 years ago at Ecole Polytechnique. Similar memorials took place across Canada.
Almost every hand in a crowd of almost 100 raised in the air when asked if they knew someone or they themselves had experienced gender-based violence.
During a memorial marking the 30th anniversary of the Montreal massacre in which 14 women lost their lives to a misogynistic act of violence, advocates shared their fear that despite the strides made to curb gender-based violence there is still much to do.
“Violence against women is one of the most pervasive violations of human rights in the world. It is one of the least prosecuted crimes and one of the greatest threats to lasting peace and development,” said Geeta Sankappanavar at the University of Calgary Schulich School of Engineering memorial.
Sankappanavar explained how gender inequality contributes to the murder of one Canadian woman every 2½ days.
She also said one out of 10 Canadian youths aged 15 to 17 report experiencing abuse in an intimate pattern relationship in the last five years and one in every four Canadians report experiencing physical violence or sexual abuse, including rape. There are also 186 women and children who take action by seeking shelter at a registered Canadian facility every day.
“Every day,” Sankappanavar repeated.
“Our ability to change that narrative, to bring it from the darkness into the light, is something that we must address as Albertans, as Canadians, as humans.”
The Montreal massacre shooting took place on Dec. 6, 1989, when Marc Lepine entered a mechanical engineering class at Montreal’s École Polytechnique and killed 14 women, one staff member and 13 students. Lepine said he was “fighting feminism.”
Tim Rahilly, president of Mount Royal University, was in Montreal the day the massacre took place.
“It changed the way we look at gender-based violence and I also think we had some innocence and thought schools were always safe places, and while they are generally very safe that was the first school shooting in Canada and we subsequently had more,” he said. “I think it just sent shock waves and made us realize we need to work diligently to make sure these things don’t happen again.”
Mount Royal hosts a memorial every year to honour the women killed in Montreal.
At the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, students and staff took part in a white ribbon campaign leading up to a memorial on Friday.
Sarah Borsato, outreach co-ordinator at the SAIT students’ association and organizer of the event, said it’s important that students — many of whom were born after the massacre — know about the dark event.
“It was a deeply solemn event and, actually, I feel quite shocked about how few people knew about it,” said Borsato.
“There are still barriers to women in science and technology and so I think it’s important that we don’t forget this happened.”