Say Their Names: Remembering the Montreal Massacre (14 women murdered, 6 dec 1989)
Say Their Names: Remembering the Montreal Massacre
We said their names each year in my Toronto schools on December 6. It was ritualistic, saying out loud the names of the 14 women murdered on Dec. 6, 1989, rolling the French r’s and picturing their faces the afternoon they were killed at École Polytechnique in Montreal. We did it to remind ourselves that gun violence does happen in Canada, that violence against women does happen in our peacekeeping nation, and that on that freezing cold, horrifying day in 1989, 14 women lost their lives because one man felt threatened by their success.
These are their names:
Geneviève Bergeron, Helene 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.
Twenty-five years ago, Marc Lepine, a young man who sought to attend École Polytechnique, but was twice rejected, arrived at the school with a gun in his hand and a mission to assassinate. He entered an engineering classroom, separated the men from the women, then shot the women after telling them: “You’re women, you’re going to be engineers. You’re all a bunch of feminists. I hate feminists.”
The incident would forever be known as the Montreal Massacre, and December 6 declared a National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. Students across Canada would henceforth spend that day each year saying the women’s names and remembering. And violence against women would forever be a part, if even just a small part, of the discourse in Canadian society.
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http://msmagazine.com/blog/2014/12/05/say-their-names-remembering-the-montreal-massacre
