Day 12
National Day of Remembrance and Action
to End Violence Against Women
to End Violence Against Women
Over the past week I have read numerous articles and watched footage on the massacre of 14 women at L’École Polytechnique in Montreal on December 6, 1989. I have examined my own memories and feelings, and asked others to share their memories.
Yesterday I spoke with my best friend and asked her about her memories of the Montreal massacre. Like me, she does not remember her reaction to the news on Dec. 6, 1989, but she does have a strong memory of the 10th anniversary and the profound impact it had on her. In 1999, she was studying mechanical engineering at Carleton University. She told me that as she read about the students killed at L’École Polytechnique she noticed how similar she was to them. Half of the women killed that day were mechanical engineering students. Many were preparing to graduate. She told told me:
"It was so much more personal than just reading about these women. I realized it could have been me."
In many of the interviews that I listened to today on CBC Radio One, journalists and other people on the scene that day remarked on the sense of disbelief that many people had. One journalist commented:
"The shock sort of grew bigger when I found out that he had killed only women. I did not want to believe it. I was in total denial."
In the hours, days, week, months and years that followed, the theme of disbelief and denial persisted. People insisted that it was a random act of violence by a madman, that it did not have a greater meaning or significance than this. Others, like the journalist quoted above, overcame the shock and realized that this was a targetted and premeditated attack against women. The fact that Marc Lépine did not personally know his victims is not the point; he murdered them because they were women studying in what was, at that time, a male dominated field. In the weeks prior to the shooting, he purchased a semi-automatic rifle and visited the school several times.
At approximately 5:10pm on December 6, he interrupted a mechanical engineering class at L’École Polytechnique and ordered the women and men to separate to opposite sides of the classroom. At first, the students thought he was joking and no one moved. Lépine fired a shot in the air and ordered the approximately 50 men in the class to leave. Nine women remained. He asked them if they knew why they were there. One student replied 'no'. He told them he was fighting feminism. Natalie Provost, a student in the class, responded that they were not feminists. "We are just women who study engineering." Lépine replied "You're women, you're going to be engineers. You're all a bunch of feminists. I hate feminists," and he opened fire, killing six women and wounding three others [1]. Natalie Provost survived the attack. In a recent interview with the Globe and Mail, she was asked about what she said to Marc Lépine. here is what she had to say:
"In 1989, feminism to me was a movement of women fighting to make sure women had the same rights as men. But as a woman, I never felt I needed to struggle; I believed doors were wide open for me. I used to see feminism as a conflict between men and women, but it's not that for me now. ... It's making sure women have an equal chance." [2]
That Marc Lépine's chose to identify the female engineering students at L’École Polytechnique was not at all random. Attached to the suicide note he wrote was a list of 19 prominent women that Lépine identified as 'radical feminists' that he had intended to kill, but was not able to. Journalist, Francine Pelletier, was one of those women. I listened to her on CBC radio this morning. She said very interesting things about Marc Lépine, that I thought was worth sharing here:
"It was not just women he was targetting. He was targetting progress."
She also commented how the examiners and investigators determined that Marc Lépine "was not criminally insane". People may describe him as behaving 'zombie-like', 'deranged', and 'crazy', but that he had a clear motive and that he had devoted a great deal of thought to what he was doing is undeniable. In the words of Francine Pelletier: "It was hatred of women . . . It was hatred of feminists." And, as she also stated during her interview, "denying the meaning of this is as hurtful as what happened that day." I have to agree. Denying that this was an act of hatred and violence against women and against feminism, against progress, is like saying that those women died for no reason, that their deaths were random. Marc Lépine's crime was not random.
When I asked friends for their memories of December 6, 1989, a friend in Vancouver collected an observation from her friend and a former collective member of Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter, Erin Graham. She said:
"I remember that night so clearly. When we heard it, we were on the third floor, having our weekly meeting about how to run the crisis line. We knew, from the moment we heard of it, that this man had made a political statement against feminists, and that this was about all of us. All of us. And yet, with each passing year, no matter what we did, it seemed that sand sifted over the politic, until it has disappeared from view. Except for those of us who were there, young women now, like you, see these attacks, and are told, over and over, "no, no, it's just that one guy, over there--" and the story disappears in the shifting sands of trivia we're told is news."
I think this relates to what Francine Pelletier's comments about the meaning of that day and other comments related to the sense of denial that I spoke of earlier. I think there's a lot of truth there, especially when it comes to the larger picture of violence against women and girls. It brings to mind the crisis of missing and murdered aboriginal women and the number of women killed every year by their husbands and male partners in Canada. It also makes me think about the proposed elimination of the long gun registry in Canada and how political will too often seems to take precedence over the safety of people.
There's so much more to say about this day, its significance and how it speaks to the larger issue of violence against women in my country, but I think that I will draw this post to a close now with some information about each of the women that were murdered 20 years ago today, followed by a clip of CBC news coverage from December 6, 1989. The following information was obtained from CBC News online.
Geneviève Bergeron, 21, was a second-year scholarship student in civil engineering. She played the clarinet and sang in a professional choir. In her spare time she played basketball and swam.
Hélène Colgan, 23, was in her final year of mechanical engineering and planned to do her master's degree. She had three job offers and was leaning towards accepting one from a company based near Toronto.
Nathalie Croteau, 23, another graduating mechanical engineer, planned to take a two-week vacation in Cancun, Mexico, with Colgan at the end of the month.
Barbara Daigneault, 22, was to graduate at the end of the year. She was a teaching assistant for her father Pierre Daigneault, a mechanical engineering professor with the city's other French-language engineering school at the University of Quebec at Montreal.
Anne-Marie Edward, 21. She loved outdoor sports like skiing, diving and riding and was always surrounded with friends.
Maud Haviernick, 29, was a second-year student in engineering materials, a branch of metallurgy, and a graduate in environmental design from the University of Quebec at Montreal.
Barbara Maria Klucznik, 31, the oldest of the victims, was a first-year nursing student. She arrived in Montreal from Poland with her husband in 1987.
Maryse Laganière, 25, of Montreal, was the only non-student killed. She worked in the budget department of the engineering school. She had recently married.
Maryse Leclair, 23, in fourth-year metallurgy, had a year to go before graduation and was one of the top students in the school. She acted in plays in junior college. She was the first victim whose name was known and she was found by her father, Montreal police Lieut. Pierre Leclair.
Anne-Marie Lemay, 27, of Montreal, was in fourth-year mechanical engineering.
Sonia Pelletier, 28, was the head of her class and the pride of St-Ulric, Que., her remote birthplace in the Gaspe peninsula. She had five sisters and two brothers. She was killed the day before she was to graduate with a degree in mechanical engineering. She had a job interview lined up for the following week.
Michèle Richard, 21, of Montreal, was in second-year engineering materials. She was presenting a paper with Haviernick when she was killed.
Annie St-Arneault, 23, a mechanical engineering student from La Tuque, Que., a Laurentian pulp and paper town in the upper St-Maurice river valley, lived in a small apartment in Montreal. Her friends considered her a fine student. She was killed as she sat listening to a presentation in her last class before graduation. She had a job interview with Alcan Aluminium scheduled for the following day. She had talked about eventually getting married to the man who had been her boyfriend since she was a teenager.
Annie Turcotte, 21, of Granby, Que., was in her first year and lived with her brother in a small apartment near the university. She was described as gentle and athletic - she was a diver and a swimmer. She went into engineering so she could one day help improve the environment.
---------
CBC Archives: The Montreal Massacre, 1989 [English]
Archives Radio-Canada: Tragédie à l'école Polytechnique [French / Français]
Yesterday I spoke with my best friend and asked her about her memories of the Montreal massacre. Like me, she does not remember her reaction to the news on Dec. 6, 1989, but she does have a strong memory of the 10th anniversary and the profound impact it had on her. In 1999, she was studying mechanical engineering at Carleton University. She told me that as she read about the students killed at L’École Polytechnique she noticed how similar she was to them. Half of the women killed that day were mechanical engineering students. Many were preparing to graduate. She told told me:
"It was so much more personal than just reading about these women. I realized it could have been me."
In many of the interviews that I listened to today on CBC Radio One, journalists and other people on the scene that day remarked on the sense of disbelief that many people had. One journalist commented:
"The shock sort of grew bigger when I found out that he had killed only women. I did not want to believe it. I was in total denial."
In the hours, days, week, months and years that followed, the theme of disbelief and denial persisted. People insisted that it was a random act of violence by a madman, that it did not have a greater meaning or significance than this. Others, like the journalist quoted above, overcame the shock and realized that this was a targetted and premeditated attack against women. The fact that Marc Lépine did not personally know his victims is not the point; he murdered them because they were women studying in what was, at that time, a male dominated field. In the weeks prior to the shooting, he purchased a semi-automatic rifle and visited the school several times.
At approximately 5:10pm on December 6, he interrupted a mechanical engineering class at L’École Polytechnique and ordered the women and men to separate to opposite sides of the classroom. At first, the students thought he was joking and no one moved. Lépine fired a shot in the air and ordered the approximately 50 men in the class to leave. Nine women remained. He asked them if they knew why they were there. One student replied 'no'. He told them he was fighting feminism. Natalie Provost, a student in the class, responded that they were not feminists. "We are just women who study engineering." Lépine replied "You're women, you're going to be engineers. You're all a bunch of feminists. I hate feminists," and he opened fire, killing six women and wounding three others [1]. Natalie Provost survived the attack. In a recent interview with the Globe and Mail, she was asked about what she said to Marc Lépine. here is what she had to say:
"In 1989, feminism to me was a movement of women fighting to make sure women had the same rights as men. But as a woman, I never felt I needed to struggle; I believed doors were wide open for me. I used to see feminism as a conflict between men and women, but it's not that for me now. ... It's making sure women have an equal chance." [2]
That Marc Lépine's chose to identify the female engineering students at L’École Polytechnique was not at all random. Attached to the suicide note he wrote was a list of 19 prominent women that Lépine identified as 'radical feminists' that he had intended to kill, but was not able to. Journalist, Francine Pelletier, was one of those women. I listened to her on CBC radio this morning. She said very interesting things about Marc Lépine, that I thought was worth sharing here:
"It was not just women he was targetting. He was targetting progress."
She also commented how the examiners and investigators determined that Marc Lépine "was not criminally insane". People may describe him as behaving 'zombie-like', 'deranged', and 'crazy', but that he had a clear motive and that he had devoted a great deal of thought to what he was doing is undeniable. In the words of Francine Pelletier: "It was hatred of women . . . It was hatred of feminists." And, as she also stated during her interview, "denying the meaning of this is as hurtful as what happened that day." I have to agree. Denying that this was an act of hatred and violence against women and against feminism, against progress, is like saying that those women died for no reason, that their deaths were random. Marc Lépine's crime was not random.
When I asked friends for their memories of December 6, 1989, a friend in Vancouver collected an observation from her friend and a former collective member of Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter, Erin Graham. She said:
"I remember that night so clearly. When we heard it, we were on the third floor, having our weekly meeting about how to run the crisis line. We knew, from the moment we heard of it, that this man had made a political statement against feminists, and that this was about all of us. All of us. And yet, with each passing year, no matter what we did, it seemed that sand sifted over the politic, until it has disappeared from view. Except for those of us who were there, young women now, like you, see these attacks, and are told, over and over, "no, no, it's just that one guy, over there--" and the story disappears in the shifting sands of trivia we're told is news."
I think this relates to what Francine Pelletier's comments about the meaning of that day and other comments related to the sense of denial that I spoke of earlier. I think there's a lot of truth there, especially when it comes to the larger picture of violence against women and girls. It brings to mind the crisis of missing and murdered aboriginal women and the number of women killed every year by their husbands and male partners in Canada. It also makes me think about the proposed elimination of the long gun registry in Canada and how political will too often seems to take precedence over the safety of people.
There's so much more to say about this day, its significance and how it speaks to the larger issue of violence against women in my country, but I think that I will draw this post to a close now with some information about each of the women that were murdered 20 years ago today, followed by a clip of CBC news coverage from December 6, 1989. The following information was obtained from CBC News online.
Geneviève Bergeron, 21, was a second-year scholarship student in civil engineering. She played the clarinet and sang in a professional choir. In her spare time she played basketball and swam.
Hélène Colgan, 23, was in her final year of mechanical engineering and planned to do her master's degree. She had three job offers and was leaning towards accepting one from a company based near Toronto.
Nathalie Croteau, 23, another graduating mechanical engineer, planned to take a two-week vacation in Cancun, Mexico, with Colgan at the end of the month.
Barbara Daigneault, 22, was to graduate at the end of the year. She was a teaching assistant for her father Pierre Daigneault, a mechanical engineering professor with the city's other French-language engineering school at the University of Quebec at Montreal.
Anne-Marie Edward, 21. She loved outdoor sports like skiing, diving and riding and was always surrounded with friends.
Maud Haviernick, 29, was a second-year student in engineering materials, a branch of metallurgy, and a graduate in environmental design from the University of Quebec at Montreal.
Barbara Maria Klucznik, 31, the oldest of the victims, was a first-year nursing student. She arrived in Montreal from Poland with her husband in 1987.
Maryse Laganière, 25, of Montreal, was the only non-student killed. She worked in the budget department of the engineering school. She had recently married.
Maryse Leclair, 23, in fourth-year metallurgy, had a year to go before graduation and was one of the top students in the school. She acted in plays in junior college. She was the first victim whose name was known and she was found by her father, Montreal police Lieut. Pierre Leclair.
Anne-Marie Lemay, 27, of Montreal, was in fourth-year mechanical engineering.
Sonia Pelletier, 28, was the head of her class and the pride of St-Ulric, Que., her remote birthplace in the Gaspe peninsula. She had five sisters and two brothers. She was killed the day before she was to graduate with a degree in mechanical engineering. She had a job interview lined up for the following week.
Michèle Richard, 21, of Montreal, was in second-year engineering materials. She was presenting a paper with Haviernick when she was killed.
Annie St-Arneault, 23, a mechanical engineering student from La Tuque, Que., a Laurentian pulp and paper town in the upper St-Maurice river valley, lived in a small apartment in Montreal. Her friends considered her a fine student. She was killed as she sat listening to a presentation in her last class before graduation. She had a job interview with Alcan Aluminium scheduled for the following day. She had talked about eventually getting married to the man who had been her boyfriend since she was a teenager.
Annie Turcotte, 21, of Granby, Que., was in her first year and lived with her brother in a small apartment near the university. She was described as gentle and athletic - she was a diver and a swimmer. She went into engineering so she could one day help improve the environment.
---------
CBC Archives: The Montreal Massacre, 1989 [English]
Archives Radio-Canada: Tragédie à l'école Polytechnique [French / Français]
Sources
[1] Wikipedia. École Polytechnique massacre.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_Polytechnique_massacre
[2] The Globe and Mail. A survivor speaks.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/a-survivor-speaks/article1390009/
Additional Information and News CoverageCanadian Press. Victims of Montreal school massacre remembered 15 years later. Dec. 4, 2004
CBC News. Montreal Massacre victims. Dec. 5, 2009
CTV News. Mother of Ecole Polytechnique killer shares her story. Dec. 6, 2009
CTV Ottawa. Montreal massacre remembered at Ottawa vigil. Dec. 6, 2009
La Presse. Polytechnique, 20 ans après: «Quatorze fins du monde», Daphné Cameron. Publié le 06 décembre 2009.
New York Times. Gun Control Issue Reveals a Changing Canada, Ian Austen. Dec. 6, 2009New York Times. Canada Unnerved by Slayings of 14, David E. Pitt. Dec. 6, 1989 [Note: Some parts of the article are not accurate and other parts are a bit 'unnerving'.]
Radio-Canada. Il y a 20 ans, le drame de la Polytechnique. 3 décembre 2009
Toronto Star. Ceremonies mark the 20th anniversary of Montreal massacre. Dec. 6, 2009
Toronto Star. Urgent need to defend gun control, Wendy Cukier. Dec. 6, 2009
Vancouver Observer. Why December 6th Still Matters, Jarrah Hodge. Dec. 2 2009
Vancouver Sun. Massacre recalled on 20th anniversary, Shannon Proudfoot. Dec. 4, 2009
Vancouver Sun. Events nationwide mark the 20th anniversary of Montreal massacre, Marian Scott. Dec. 6, 2009
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