Montreal (CUP)—On Dec. 6 1989, Marc Lepine stormed into the Ecole Polytechnic of the Université de Montréal. Waving a gun in the air, he ordered the men in the room to leave. The women, all engineering students, were told to stay behind. “You’re all a bunch of feminists, and I hate feminists,” yelled Lepine, as he fired two shots into the ceiling.
Less than one hour later, 14 women lay dead, victims of this brutal murder-suicide attack. A note later found on the gunman blamed “feminists” for ruining his life and contained a list of more women he had planned to kill.
This horrifying event, considered to be one of the worst massacres in Canadian history, aroused a sense of grief and shock from coast to coast. It also prompted feelings of outright rage, as it became clear that Lepine’s crime was a deliberate act of violence directed at women.
But it was the indiscriminate hatred and resentment towards women represented by Lepine that scared people the most. The misogyny expressed by Lepine became a symbol of a much larger problem, and it forced men and women across Canada and around the world to reflect on the phenomenon of gender-based violence. For Camille Rudney it is crucial that this issue come to the forefront. As the internal coordinator of McGill University’s Women’s Union, Rudney says the killings should not be viewed as a random act of violence.
“It is systematic and indicative of the world in which we live, where there is patriarchy and misogyny. We want people to understand that this was not an isolated event but part of a larger continuum of violence against women,” said Rudney.
These days, the focus of that continuum appears to have shifted to countries and cultures outside of Canada. With the war in Afghanistan, the spotlight has turned to the plight of women under Taliban rule. Compared with the overt discrimination found in this regime, many would agree that Canada is a far more progressive country, one that prides itself on tolerance and gender equality.
But Rudney asserts it is crucial for Canadians not to overlook the more elusive acts of violence that occur everyday.
“I think it is more subtle and thus even more dangerous. It’s having pictures of anorexic women plastered all over the streets and having that be the image of beauty by our society,” said Rudney.
It is also, she added, the fear many women have of walking alone at night—that their movement is restricted and their safety compromised. According to Rudney, one way of raising awareness and of working towards social change is by holding a memorial service to commemorate the lives lost—not just the lives of the young women killed 12 years ago, but women everywhere who have suffered similar abuses.
In 1991, Canada established Dec. 6 as the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. Vigils are held across the country on that day each year.
