By Cheryl Jahn

IWAU organizers remember Day of Remembrance

Nov 20, 2024 | 3:12 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – Thirty-five years ago, a young man named Mark LePine walked into an engineering class at Ecole Polytechnique wielding a gun. He separated the women in the class from the men and opened fire. Within minutes, 14 women were dead. It was the first mass school shooting in Canadian history.

And today there was a special ceremony in advance of that tragic day.

“I was not even born then,” says Tanvi, organizer of the event. “So for me, it’s a historical event that was very unfortunate, that was vicious, that was vile. And as I grew up, I learned that it was an anti-feminist attack. And now that I identify myself as a feminist, it brings up a lot of strong emotions for me with regard to what happened and just like these were a bunch of women who were just trying to get their rights to education.”

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Dawn Hemingway has been leading the charge in the feminist movement going back to the sixties.

“On the one hand, I feel so powerful that people come together. We’re trying to make changes,” says Dawn Hemingway, long-time activist for women’s rights. “But I think about the fact that there was no gender in women’s studies way back then. Now, this is before 1989. This is the sixties. No program that you could come to at a university. There was no pride center, no women’s center. None of those things existed.”

So she says, while the social support network for women has come a long way, events like the Day of Remembrance need to continue.

“For me, 1989 was what?” says Hemingway, hesitating. “It was a heartbreaker. It was an eye-opener as well, because we started to see that we were making some changes that were positive. But when you see that happening, you realize how much further there is to go to ensure that women, men, everybody can live safely in our communities.”

Even though the event in question happened 35 years ago, organizers and feminists alike at the Inspiring Women Among US dedication, say it is something that can never be forgotten.

“A lot of people ask, okay, but it is such an event of history. Why do we still talk about it today? And because violence against women has not gone away. It’s still an issue that we need to talk about. And it’s something that we cannot take for granted that the world that we live in today is slightly a better place to live in.”

The Day of Remembrance event is the last event in a long list of feminist-inspired presentations and events as part of the Inspiring Women Among Us.