Thirty-five years ago today the fourteen young women pictured above were fatally shot at École Polytechnique in Montréal because of their gender. The pain of this day never ends. I was attending university in Toronto on the day of the massacre and will never forget it. Your boundless hopes, dreams, ambitions and adventures, some men—having internalized to greater degree than others the patriarchal values and toxic masculinity that still course through our society—don't want you to have these things and would cut you down rather than watch you thrive.
As a nation we haven't really begun to deal with the misogyny behind this massacre decades later. Femicide
should have been added to Canada's Criminal Code many years ago. I hope it
will happen now. Recently the Ottawa Police force made a move in the right direction when they used the term to describe the murder of Jennifer Zabarylo at the hands of her husband.
Misogyny and violence against women should have no place in Canadian society and yet women in Canada are still assaulted or killed daily simply because they are female. Women are more likely than men to report experiencing violent crime at some point since age fifteen. Women are five times more likely than men to experience sexual assault. Women are more likely to experience elder abuse from a family member and account for 58% of senior survivors of family violence. For girls and young women in the north, the rate of violence against them is exceptionally—four times higher than in Canada’s overall population. (See these stats and more at Canadianwomen.org)
Between the years of 2018 and 2022, the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability estimates that at least 862 women and girls have been the victims of femicide in Canada, with that number increasing by 24% over that time." - Megan Walker, former head of the London Abused Women’s Centre and a longtime advocate for ending violence against women.
You can read more about each of the young women killed in École Polytechnique 35 years ago on the CBC feature, Remember the 14.
