Remembrance Day for Women and Girls Killed
All across Canada today vigils and memorial ceremonies are held to remember women who have been killed for no other reason except that they are women. Primarily it is to remember the 14 girls who were killed on this day in 1989 at Polytechnic Ecole in Montreal. Marc Lepine was the man who pulled the trigger on these young, promising engineering students and then finally on himself.
For most of these young girls their day had started out with hopes and promise, they had kissed their loved ones good bye promising to “see you later”. They never knew that there would be no later. That was it.
This morning in Winnipeg Manitoba, I attended such a ceremony at the Legislative Building (by the way, I think our Legislative Building in Winnipeg is the best). The morning started off with a beautiful song in French by Dominique Reynolds singer/Songwriter. This was followed by some speeches and the reading of the names of the 14 women killed in Montreal along with a few other names of women killed in Manitoba by their male partners. As their names were called young women walked up and place a rose for each in a vase set in the middle of the staircase.
Surrounded the audience were some 15 silhouettes in the shape of women. They represented the women who had been killed plus one which represented “every woman” who was killed in family violence, who was murdered in sex trade and whose murderer had not been found who had committed suicide because she could not see a way out of her abusive situation.
This event always moves me to tear. It could have been me and so we must remember all the women some of who may be our mothers, our sisters, our daughters and those women who still remain nameless.