December 6, 1989, Remembered

I was a first-year university student, away from home for the first time at the University of Victoria, the day Marc Lepine massacred fourteen women and injured many others before turning his gun on himself at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal on December 6, 1989.

Before he shot them, he separated the men from the women, specifically targeting the latter. I can only imagine the fear they felt standing there in front of him. Even from far across the country, it was a terrifying, awful day to be a woman at university, and the day of the massacre is seared in my memory forever, along with the hollow feeling in my gut that always comes with it.

The Ecole Polytechnique massacre anniversary has become a day of remembrance in Canada, not only for those women, but for all women who experience violence simply because they are women.

But today, I’d like to remember these specific women, the youngest of them twenty, the eldest just 31, who got up that morning to go to school or to work and never made it home:

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

Posted by on Dec 6, 2010 in Uncategorized | 2 comments

2 Comments

  1. A Novel Woman
    Dec 6, 2010

    I was at home – pregnant with my third baby which I knew was a girl – with my son and daughter who were three and one at the time. I watched, horrified, as they showed this on the news. It was a feeling of disbelief at the enormity of the tragedy, and of the reasons behind it. I felt so sad to be bringing children into such a world.

    That baby, my baby, is now twenty, the same age as the youngest victim.

    I can’t imagine it.

    I can’t imagine it.

  2. kc dyer
    Dec 6, 2010

    Me, too. Newly pregnant, and sobbing my eyes out for hours over the parents of these lost girls.

    A horrifying day.

    Kathy, thank you for this moving tribute.

    ~kc

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