COLD MARCH FOR WOMEN
Crowd dwindles since 2017
Elizabeth Hanisch says she resolved a year ago to attend the Women’s March in Montreal this year.
She made the decision while participating in the same global event in Düsseldorf, Germany.
“So for me, it was clear that I was going to go to the one this year as well,” Hanisch, a German-Canadian who studies communications at Concordia University, said as she gathered with friends and about 200 other protesters in the freezing cold in Place Émilie-Gamelin on Saturday.
Like her friends, she had drawn peace signs on her cheeks. She also carried a homemade sign reading: “Anything you can do, I can do bleeding.”
The Montreal event was one of dozens of marches that were held across Canada as part of Women’s March Canada. Those events, in turn, accompanied marches in the United States and around the world.
The original Women’s March in Washington in 2017 was held the day after U.S. President Donald Trump’s inauguration, drawing hundreds of thousands of people. The exact size of the turnout remains subject to a politically charged debate, but it’s generally regarded as the largest Washington protest since the Vietnam era.
The turnout in Montreal for the third anniversary of the initial, massive protest was decidedly small given the Arctic deep freeze gripping Quebec, which saw the local mid-day temperature hover around minus-22C, and a wind chill of minus-35.
“Last week, we were kind of debating because we saw the weather forecast,” Hanisch said, laughing about it with her friends. “But oh well. We brought tea to keep us warm.”
Her friend Hannah Jamet-Lange, a French-German student who is also studying communications at Concordia this year, said it was important to attend the march to show strength in numbers. Carrying a pink sign reading, “A woman’s place is in the resistance,” she said she was participating to raise awareness of violence against women.
Violence against women was, in fact, the theme declared by the Montreal organizers for the local Women’s March. Last year, the theme was support for the #MeToo movement.
Jamet-Lange brought flyers to announce Concordia Student Union’s launch this Tuesday of a student-created blog called #TakingBackOurVoices that aims to raise awareness of sexual violence.
The Montreal demonstration began with a rally inside Place Émilie-Gamelin, followed by a march around the square.
Several marchers remarked on the importance of attending a protest that allows different causes to intersect under the umbrella of women’s equality and empowerment.
“We participate in marches like this to show a certain visibility, to be in the public space and to show that a lot of struggles meet,” said Veronika, a student at Université du Québec à Montréal, who did not want to give her last name. She and two friends carried a banner for the Comité féministe de sociologie — Premier cycle à l’UQÀM.
Violet Maxfield, a Concordia student who hails from Boston, said she knows a lot of people who attended the first big march in Washington in 2017 but didn’t attend herself.
“I’ve never been to a women’s march before,” she said. “I have in my heart, but never in person. So I wanted to come.”