ciroccoj | Twenty years

I can't really get my mind around the idea that it's been twenty years since the Montreal Massacre.

(From the Ottawa Coalition to End Violence Against Women)

In 1989, a man armed with a semi-automatic rifle shot and murdered fourteen women:

Geneviève Bergeron
Hélène Colgan
Natalie Croteau
Barbara Daigneault
Anne-Marie Edward
Maud Haviernick
Barbara Maria Klueznick
Maryse Laganière
Maryse Leclair
Anne-Marie Lemay
Michelle Richard
Sonia Pelletier
Annie Saint-Arnault
Annie Turcotte

He injured ten more women at the university, deliberately separating the male and female students and claiming that he was "fighting feminism." Canadians have characterized the massacre as an anti-feminist attack that is representative of wider gender-based violence.

December 6th is now the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women.

The Women’s Events Network in Ottawa is holding a 20th Anniversary vigil and a call to action to end violence against women on December 6th at 6pm at the Women’s Monument in Minto Park. We have launched a Tell 20 Campaign urging citizens to tell 20 people they know about the anniversary and how violence against women affects their community.

Here's what you can do now...

Tell 20 people about the 20th Anniversary of December 6.
Tell 20 people about why violence against women concerns you.
Ask your doctor, dentist, gym or workplace to put 20 violence against women pamphlets at their reception desks.
Have a violence against women presentation for 20 people in your community or workplace.
Volunteer 20 hours of your time at a local women’s organization.
Donate $20 to a local organization working to end violence.
Speak to 20 men in your life about the importance of women's rights, healthy relationships and respect.
Join the Women’s Events Network and help us take action today.
Write to your local MP about the importance of the Long-gun Registry and its role in preventing violence against women.
Attend the Dec 6 vigil and the gathering at 347 Richmond Rd with 20 friends.

The women killed were almost all engineering students, many close to graduating and beginning their careers. They would've been in their late thirties or early forties now. Some would've been married, with kids, some divorced, some single, some would've been successful engineers, and others would've no doubt moved to other careers. Fourteen life stories that should've continued, and didn't, because a man with a grudge against successful women decided they had taken his future from him and other men.

It's a weird brain-shift to think about all of this after seeing Daughters of Afghanistan yesterday. December 6 is a day when I usually think about the status of women in Canada and reflect on what's changed for us and what hasn't, and what still needs to improve. And there is a lot to improve on, particularly for Native, poor and disabled women, for immigrants, lesbians, abused women, etc.

But it's such a different world than what women in most of the rest of the world live in. While we work to help bring abusers to justice, the law in much of the rest of the world fully supports men beating their wives for all sorts of reasons. While we try to make sure our daughters not only graduate from engineering schools, but are able to get good jobs and be promoted if they merit promotion, women in many countries struggle to win the right for their daughters to learn to read at all. While we try to protect our daughters from date rape, girls around the world are routinely handed over to men who have the legal right to have sex with them whenever they want, the moment they are married.

Same planet, different world :(