Today is Canada’s National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. December 6 is a sad day, for it was on December 6, 1989, that Marc Lepine murdered 14 women at L’Ecole Polytechnique. The massacre scarred Canada, and here, today, I offer a remembrance.
For more thoughts, you can read Scott’s reflections from 2009, or mine from last year.
Jonathan McLeod
Jonathan McLeod is a writer living in Ottawa, Ontario. (That means Canada.) He spends too much time following local politics and writing about zoning issues. Follow him on Twitter.
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Geneviève, Hélène, Nathalie, Barbara, Anne-Marie, Maud, Maryse, Maryse, Anne-Marie, Sonia, Michèle, Annie, Annie and Barbara
They would have been at the mid-point of their careers now. I wonder what they would have been working on, what projects they’d have completed, what dreams they had for the future.
Rest in peace.Report
It’s true; I am sure they all had a number of dreams, both professional and personal. It’s easy to believe that there would have been a number of grand successes from those women.Report
I think it is praiseworthy how Canadians who vowed never to forget never have, and instead made this terrible event a vehicle for the improvement of their society. How many Americans remember the Stockton Massacre, which also took place in 1989? Only five dead, the gunman an obvious lunatic. Thus, the deaths were not memorable to us. Hats off, especially to the Canadian bloggers here who have faithfully commemorated the senseless violence.Report
It really is noteworthy how Canada consistently remembers this. Certainly there have been other shocking killings (Taber, Maplethorpe, the Quebec Legislature) that don’t touch us like Polytechnique did.
I think I’ve written multiple times that this tragedy “scarred” Canada. Obviously, it’s just a personal observation, but it seems to me that this one was that tragedy that ‘couldn’t happen here’. So, once it did, things were irreperably changed.
There are lots of reasons for this, and I won’t get too far into it, but, in the end, I am glad that someone always remembers.Report
Being married to a therapist, I get to hear a different side of crime and pathology. We had this conversation recently:
Me (reading paper): Holy moley! Two people got murdered down the street yesterday. How does that happen?
Her: Oh, guaranteed it’s a murder-suicide.
Me: Really?
Her: Oh yeah. Ex-boyfriend, ex-husband, lover- he killed her and then killed himself. It’s one of the most common types of homicide. Happens a lot more than you realize.
Me: Huh….
(For the record, she was right.)Report
Such an occupation must provide a rather strange, sad and interesting perspective into life and current events.Report