Tuesday, December 6, 2011

The Montreal Massacre, December 6,1989

About 4 pm, December 6, 1989 a lone man carrying a semi-automatic rifle and a knife, walked into the Ecole polytechnique [an engineering school, part of the University of Montreal] and into the classrooms. He separated the men from the women, telling the men to leave and shooting the remaining women before moving on to the next class room, and the next. At the end of the rampage 14 women were dead, 14 were injured. Collectively we were in shock and as the years passed a group of committed people helped to form Canada's gun registry, now under attack by a misguided conservative government. This anniversary day always brings up a lot of mixed emotions, rage that the gun laws seen to be going the way of the dodo although police chiefs across Canada praise it, sadness that women in the world still hold little value, cynicism that much will change, hope that it will. But really what's important to me today is that we remember their names and the vows we made to them to keep on with the struggle. To help create a society, a country, a world that will not tolerate the discrimination and abuse of women.

In Memory of 

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

Stone Circle on my studio floor

6 comments:

  1. your stone circle is beautiful...

    xox - eb.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you for taking a stand for women. The message is global Your 'memorial' is a fitting reminder of these women who lost theit lives needlessly.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you Liz. Your stone circle is beautiful and moving as it honours those women and the many more whose lives are considered to be worth so little. They all count.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thank-you Elizabeth, it's a powerful reminder and I love stones.

    Thanks Jo and Fiona, hopefully things will change.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Goose bumps. It could have been anyone of us. Thank you for keeping the names and the memory real.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hi Leslie, I have always felt that part of the story was the saddest and the scariest, that rage and hate for women.

    ReplyDelete

I appreciate your thoughts and comments; thanks for taking the time.