A Day To Remember

The Montreal Massacre

1989–A lone man walked into an engineering class at the ecole polytechnique of the University of Montreal. He separated the women and men and told the men to leave. After the male students complied, the man declared his hatred of feminists and began to shoot the women with the semi-automatic rifle he had brought with him. While police forces stood outside, Marc Lepine ended his rampage of shooting and stabbing the women he could find at the school by killing himself.

He left behind a note that detailed his plans to kill a list of prominent Canadian feminists. It was clear that the women engineering students were a symbol of women’s equality progress. Lepine’s actions could have pushed back women’s demands for social change to increase women’s equality. However women organized in defiance of his attack.

Women rose up to demonstrate in towns and cities across the country. They connected Lepine’s acts of violence to the everyday sexism to which women are subjected and committed to feminist organizing to bring into reality women’s expectations for the present and the future.

The women who were killed for daring to study engineering:

Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Barbara Klucznik Widajewicz,Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault, Annie Turcotte

Remember 62 wives killed last year in Canada
Remember 64 prostituted women gone from Vancouver
Remember 500 Aboriginal women missing from Canada

Courtesy of Vancouver's Rape Relief & Women's Shelter