By Cheryl Jahn

Event remembers Montreal Massacre

Nov 29, 2023 | 3:07 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – “It was in 1989, and some shooter went after engineering students and in particular women at the École Polytechnique in Quebec,” recounts Dawn Hemingway, Professor Emerita, UNBC Social Work. “And, you know, since that time, women’s organizations and people in general have been marking this day as one both of remembrance, but also of action against violence, against women in all its forms.”

That was the nature of a gathering at the College of New Caledonia, hosted jointly with the University of Northern B.C. at the tail end of the Inspiring Women Among US event after eight days. But largely, it’s remembering the Montreal massacre.

“It’s an anti-feminist attack and it kind of spoke to me as a woman and kind of gave me an inside dark page,” says Tanvi Guhagarkar with the Northern BC Women’s Centre at UNBC. “Gender-based violence is a global issue and that needs to be tackled on a global level. And here I am a few years later actually speaking on the day of, you know, like one of the commemorative ceremonies of the event.”

Fourteen women, all engineering students at École Polytechnique, were shot that fateful day nearly 35 years ago. So are we making headway in addressing violence against women? “I remember back to the Sixties when I was in university and thought, ‘Okay, in those days we had no gender or women’s studies programs. We had no women’s centers. We had very few things that really reflected on some of those questions.’ And we do have those things now so that, you know, some of those things are positive.

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And Hemingway believes education is the biggest tool to fight violence against women. “I think we’ve come a long way in terms of that education. And I think part of it is because women and everyone who gets together to have a voice around these questions. So I really do think we’ve moved ahead. I just know we still have farther to go. And I guess for me, I think about the world collectively.”

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