How communities across Canada marked the Polytechnique anniversary

Communities across Canada held vigils and events on Tuesday, the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women, and the 33rd anniversary of the massacre at Montreal’s École Polytechnique, in which 14 women were murdered because they were women.

Here are reports from some of those events, from Postmedia News outlets and Local Journalism Initiative reporters.

Ottawa

There was a sense of simmering anger among the more than 200 people who attended the Ottawa Women’s Monument in Minto Park on Tuesday evening for a vigil marking the 33rd anniversary of the Montreal massacre.

They also heard the names of six women and one girl who together represent nearly one-half of 16 total homicide victims reported by the Ottawa Police Service in 2022.

Two of them were Anne-Marie Ready, 50, and her daughter, Jasmine Ready, 15, stabbed to death on June 27 by a male former neighbour, who was then shot to death in a confrontation with police. Husband/father Rafael with daughter/sister Catherine spoke briefly during Tuesday’s vigil.

Also on the list were Kieu Lam, 88, Yu Kun Xie, 78, Savanna Pikuyak, 22, Marie Gabriel, 24, and Sahur Yare, 20. In four of those five cases, the alleged killers were male. Two women were charged with first-degree murder in connection with the death of their mother, Lam.

Then there was the case of Mary Papatsie, first listed as a missing person in 2017, whose body was found on a construction site in Vanier in September, more than five years after her disappearance.

“We are looking for answers and frustrated,” niece Tracy Sarazin told the gathering. “We have little faith that her case will be prioritized because, while she was missing, it was not prioritized.”

Papatsie was among more than a dozen Indigenous women who have been killed or gone missing in the national capital since 1994, their names displayed on a blanket-sized poster held up for all in attendance to see on Tuesday. Recent disclosures about a series of alleged murders of four Indigenous women by a man in Winnipeg — Rebecca Contois, 24, Morgan Harris, 39, Marcedes Myran, 26, and an otherwise unidentified victim to be known as Buffalo Woman — enhanced the collective grief, and recognition of that troubling, continuing trend added a significant focus to the vigil.

“It’s very triggering for any family,” Bridget Tolley, a 62-year-old great-grandmother from Kitigan Zibi First Nation in west Quebec, said in an interview after addressing the crowd.

“Even me, 20 years, I should be so used to this talk, but it’s hard because there’s different families, new families. What’s good about this, the only thing that I loved, was meeting families. The families are so nice and they’re trying so hard to get information or anything, talk to police, or anything about their cases.

“And this is why they continue to fight. Nobody’s got answers.”

Tolley’s mother, Gladys Tolley, died after being struck by a Sûreté du Québec vehicle on Kitigan Zibi in 2001, but Tuesday’s vigil wasn’t just about that case, or the 14 women killed by a gunman in a Montreal engineering faculty building in 1989, or the six women and the one girl killed in Ottawa in 2022.

For Bridget Tolley, it was about all of them, plus granddaughter Cassandra and great-granddaughter Ava, who accompanied her to the Ottawa vigil.

“Today, it’s 33 years. This is crazy, just the amount of years that we’ve been talking about this. Is anybody listening to us?” Tolley said.

“I’m always thanking people for coming because we’re always telling the same stories. Our stories don’t change, and we’re saying the same things for 20 years, and the same people are coming, but the government’s not listening. There’s still no accountability for anybody.”

Tuesday’s event also featured Indigenous singers/drummers, candles for all those who wanted to hold them and innumerable posters, some with pointed messages and others bearing photos of victims and their identities. The implication: remember their names.

— Gord Holder, Ottawa Citizen

Petawawa, Ont.

PETAWAWA — Area residents gathered under cold, grey skies at the Renfrew County Women’s Monument to remember the victims of Polytechnique and women in Ontario and Renfrew County murdered because of gender-based violence.

During the vigil, the women’s names were read out, and 14 candles situated on a stone portion of the monument burned bright with photos of the 14 students who were killed in 1989.

The names of the 52 women murdered this year in Ontario were also read out and a white rose placed in their honour. Then red roses were placed in a vase at the base of the monument, one for each woman murdered in Renfrew County over the last several decades, while a short biography of each was read. That list grew by two names in 2022, Sara McKeddie and Jordana Yakabuskie.

A yellow rose was placed in the hand of one of the monument’s figures on behalf of murdered and missing Indigenous women and a pink rose was laid in honour of women living with violence.

The women’s shelter Bernadette McCann House hosted an evening vigil at Holy Name church in Pembroke.

— Anthony Dixon, Pembroke Daily Observer

Akwesasne

KAWEHNO:KE — A vigil was held on Cornwall Island late Tuesday afternoon as the Akwesasne Family Wellness Program (AFWP) welcomed community members outside of the Peace Tree mall.

“Everywhere across Canada, there’s events to honour these victims today. We don’t want to forget that. It’s a sad part of our history,” said Pat Dussault, anti-human trafficking liaison with the AFWP.

“It was targeted, planned violence against women. In Canada, we lose a woman every second day on a domestic violence related (incident) … we have to address it.”

The event on Tuesday created a broader dialogue about violence against women and how Indigenous women are disproportionally targeted.

Dussault said that some attendees spoke about federal Bill C-5, which would remove mandatory minimum sentences for different offences, like drugs and firearms. Senators and public advocacy groups have expressed that allowing community sentencing for sexual assault and kidnapping would put victims in great danger.

— Shawna O’Neill, Cornwall Standard Freeholder

Brockville, Ont.

BROCKVILLE — One by one, the names of the 14 women killed in the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre were read out Tuesday, on the anniversary of their murder, as locals marked an annual day of remembrance.

Brief, heartbreaking details accompanied each name, as local women took a rose for each victim to place by a candle.

The Anti-Violence Coalition of Leeds and Grenville marked the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women at the main entrance to Brockville’s St. Lawrence College campus. Participants reflected on the significance of the massacre in the broader struggle against gender-based violence.

The event included a screening at the college of the film Polytechnique, based on the massacre, while the current exhibit at the Marianne van Silfhout Gallery is an exploration by Calgary-based artist Heather Leier of “the complex relationships between lived experiences with violence and environmental violence present within contemporary life.”

“Now more than ever, we need to come together as a community and support those who are experiencing violence and refer them to appropriate services,” said Heather Brisebois, the residential manager at Leeds and Grenville Interval House.

— Ronald Zajac, Brockville Recorder

Kingston, Ont.

The Kingston community marked the day in Market Square with a candlelight vigil and a rose ceremony. Those who attended were encouraged to wear purple, the colour associated with the fight to end domestic violence.

“The vigil is the most important thing to me because we want to honour those women who have lost their lives, and you don’t know who in that crowd is there because they’ve lost somebody to femicide,” said Leigh Martins, training, education and volunteer co-ordinator with Kingston Interval House. “It might be a loved one or maybe they’re experiencing gender-based violence themselves and maybe (the vigil is) going to give them the courage to get some help, or ask for help.”

— Steph Crosier, Kingston Whig-Standard

Peel Region, Ont.

An anti-violence organization hosted a vigil to pay tribute to the victims and survivors of gender-based violence in Canada.

Embrave: Agency to End Violence, based in the Peel region of Greater Toronto, hosted the virtual event on Tuesday.

Rebecca Rogers, Embrave program director and co-chair of the Peel Committee of Women Against Violence Advisory, says “very little has changed” since 1989.

The vigil was also set to highlight the intersections of racism and colonization, honouring four women from the Peel region who were killed in acts of femicide this year, and the thousands of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and 2 spirit across the country.

— New Canadian Media

Owen Sound, Ont.

About 100 people came to a vigil at the Market Building in Owen Sound and were urged to sign and publicly affirm their support for a community pledge to end gender-based violence. Candles were lit and roses placed in front of photos of Polytechnique’s 14 victims.

Among those placing a rose was Shae-Lynn Smit, a counsellor at The Women’s Centre Grey Bruce, a shelter service. She has 47 clients, all dealing with intimate partner violence. Her caseload is high, about where it was during the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic. Normally she would have 30 clients, she said after the event.

“We do a lot of safety planning, making sure that they’re safe if they have to go back into a situation where violence is high. We learn about violence, the cycle of violence, things to look out for,” she said.

A lot of times, women blame themselves because “there’s a lot of manipulation that abusers tend to display. So it takes a lot of learning.”

There were prayers by Saugeen elder Shirley John, singing and drumming by a M’Wikwedong Indigenous Friendship Centre drum group and remarks from speakers including from Jessica St. Peter, an organizer of the event.

As she read aloud each commitment in the pledge and people were asked if they would support it, people responded with one voice, “Yes!”

They started by pledging to “never commit, condone or remain silent about gender-based violence in my home, communities and beyond.”

They pledged to educated themselves about gender-based violence, familiarize themselves about programs that can help victims of violence and to support and believe victims of violence, who are also referred to as survivors.

There were numerous other pledges, including for each to examine their own words, speak up and challenge the use of sexist language and degrading jokes and “invest in my own ongoing growth, self-reflect and advocacy.”

The Owen Sound event remembered all of them individually and a screen displayed slides of photos and brief descriptions of each. The event and the screen also honoured the 52 women and girls on this year’s annual femicide list.

Spanning Nov. 26, 2021 to Nov. 25, 2022, it lists the names of women killed by men in Ontario, based on media reports, and assembled by the Ontario Association of Interval & Transition Houses, the group which includes women’s shelters.

— Scott Dunn, Owen Sound Sun Times

Port Elgin, Ont.

Missing and murdered women and the ongoing fight against gender-based violence were the focus of about 75 people who gathered at Coutler Parkette in Port Elgin Tuesday for a vigil against violence. It was the 32nd annual event hosted by the Southport Canadian Federation of University Women (CFUW) to mark the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women.

The vigil mourned and remembered all missing and murdered women, especially the 14 female engineering students who were massacred 33 years ago at École Polytechnique.

In her welcome, CFUW Southport executive Odette Bartnicki, highlighted some of many impressive accomplishments of women over the past three decades, including putting a woman in space, electing a first Black female MP, first female prime minister and naming the first women to the Supreme Court.

“Yes, we’ve come a long way baby but sadly, too many women have not been able to witness these achievements, including the 14 young women who were killed at École Polytechnique in 1989 simply because they were women…” Bartnicki said.

“The truth is we have not come far enough to eradicate femicide,” she said, noting that the three local shelters serving local women in crisis are often at capacity.

Former Saugeen First Nation #29 teen Maisy Odjick and a teenage friend were among the many women mourned at the vigil. Maisy was 16 when last seen leaving a school dance in 2008.

After the ceremony, Saugeen Shores Police Chief Zettel provided Uniform Crime Reporting Survey data that showed the 26 per cent increase in reported domestic violence incidents from January 2021 to March this year represented 100 cases.

The previous year there were 79 domestic abuse cases, 27 sexual violence incidents and one human trafficking incident.

Saugeen Shores Mayor Luke Charbonneau was one of 14 people asked to hold up photos of the massacred women at the vigil as brief biographies of their too-short lives were read.

In a Dec. 6 statement from the Town Charbonneau said he wanted to reaffirm the commitment to fight the hatred that led to the tragedy, and the misogyny that still exists today.

“Women, girls and 2SLGBTQI+ individuals continue to face terrible levels of violence and discrimination around the world, across our nation, and even in our own community,” the mayor said, adding he’d ordered the Town’s flags lowered to half-staff to mark the sombre occasion.

The vigil ended with the Chantry Singers leading the crowd in a moving rendition of “Let There be Peace on Earth.”

The crowd was urged to make donations to support the three local shelters that offer women temporary housing, confidential support/counselling and public education and prevention — shelters that officials said are often at capacity, meaning women, and sometimes children, are turned away.

— Frances Learment, Shoreline Beacon

Nipissing, Ont.

About two dozen people marched from the main campus of Nipissing University to culminate the vigil outside of the student centre.

“It is really lovely to see the community come out and support this event,” said Natalie Austin, the Sexual Violence Prevention Educator for Amelia Rising Sexual Violence Support Centre. “People are starting to support events like this more and more.”

There were several men participating in the vigil, which is fine in the eyes of Austin.

“Men are needed, there is this myth that men are not welcome in the movement. Men are absolutely welcome, and we rely on their comradeship.”

Daniella Northrup was proud to participate in the vigil. Northrup says part of the reason she walked was due to the inspiration of her father, Aaron Northrup, a North Bay Police Officer who passed away earlier this year.

“He was on the violence against women coordinating committee (for the North Bay Police Service). That is what drove me to do this work.”

— Greg Estabrooks, North Bay Nugget

Sudbury, Ont.

Dec. 6 is a day to “recommit to taking action on violence against women and girls, until our streets, our campuses and our homes are safe,” said Marlene Gorman, director of the YWCA, at a vigil held Tuesday in the Flour Mill in Sudbury. “Because Canada is not yet a safe country for women.”

The sombre event, held at the Percy Park field house, began with a prayer in Ojibwe from Elizabeth Trudeau and ended with a minute of silence to honour the 14 victims of the Montreal Massacre, as well as the countless other women and girls who have gone missing or lost their lives in years since.

“I welcome the chorus of voices calling for an end to the violence that affects an estimated one in three women in their lifetime,” said Gorman. “I applaud leaders who are helping to enact and enforce laws and change mindsets. And I pay tribute to all those heroes around the world, and in our community, who help victims to heal and become agents of change.”

— Jim Moodie, Sudbury Star

Kenora, Ont.

KENORA — The Kenora Sexual Assault Centre organized a vigil Tuesday afternoon at Market Square.

Jaye Wesley, the executive director of the centre, said there’s always the need just to keep everything out in the forefront and to fight for equality for women.

“What we do is we go down and we put down a ceremonial blanket and we lay roses down and each rose has the name of the individuals that were killed in the massacre,” she said before the event. “We will have an elder there who will open the ceremony and we will just give a small speech, just in remembrance to everyone that was massacred at the school.”

— Eric Shih, Thunder Bay Source

Winnipeg

Manitoba Premier Heather Stefanson spoke at a Tuesday morning ceremony at the Manitoba Legislature about the “misogynistic views” that led to the massacre 33 years ago and said those views continue to cause harm to women and girls in Canada and here in Manitoba today.

“This attack was not random, but an explicit, intentional act of gender-based violence that the perpetrator undertook in the name of fighting feminism,” Stefanson said.

“It is those misogynistic views that continue to harm our communities today, simply put, the victims of the massacre were killed because they were women and far too many women and girls continue to experience violence for the same reasons.”

The ceremony took place as the city of Winnipeg continues to grapple with the ongoing issue of violence against Indigenous women and girls, as last week it was learned that four Indigenous women were killed by an alleged serial killer. A man is in custody and is facing four counts of first-degree murder.

“While some progress has been made, the events of last week make it clear that more needs to be done so women and girls and particularly Indigenous women and girls can live in safety and security,” Stefanson said.

“After the reflection of today, let’s commit to taking further action to create communities that are free of gender-based violence.”

During Tuesday’s ceremony, Families Minister Rochelle Squires spoke about how gender-based violence continues to affect Indigenous women and girls at high rates across the country.

“Indigenous women face the highest rates of gender-based violence,” Squires said. “They are three times more likely to report sexual assault, more than eight times more likely to be murdered, and experience significantly higher rates of intimate partner violence.

“Today is not just about remembering the senseless violence that happened 33 years ago, it is also about acknowledging the violence that women and girls continue to face here in Manitoba, and across our nation.”

— Dave Baxter, Winnipeg Sun

Regina

Calgary

Edmonton

A circle of 14 empty chairs appeared at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology’s Feltham Centre in Edmonton to honour the 14 women who died in the massacre. Tanya Fir, the Alberta government’s parliamentary secretary for the status of women, spoke at a noon vigil near the installation, where she recalled struggling to comprehend the senseless act of violence, being a junior high school student at the time.

“As I look over at those 14 empty chairs, I feel grief and anger, but also resolve,” Fir said. “Grief for the lives lost and all the family members and friends whose lives were forever changed on that day, anger that such an act of discrimination and hatred ever occurred, but resolve to do something about it.”

About 50 people attended the service, although more, namely students, watched the event unfold overhead from behind the second-floor railing.

A few people wandered through the installation before and after the speakers delivered their remarks to peruse framed biographies of the victims and accompanying photos resting on the chairs.

The vigil ended with a moment of silence and a reading of the victims’ names.

— Hamdi Issawi, Edmonton Journal, with files from The Canadian Press

Lethbridge, Alta.

The University of Lethbridge hosted a webinar with Courtney Smith, gender-based and sexual violence prevention  coordinator at the University, to discuss the university’s process of updating the Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Policy, training, and furthering education to prevent gender-based violence in institutions.

“Gender-based violence is not an individual issue, but a systemic issue which takes an entire community to evoke change on our campus. Although sexual violence and gender-based violence can affect anyone, there are specific members of communities that experience these types of violence at disproportionate rates,” said Smith. “The definition that we now use  in our recent policy revisions states that it means, the use and abuse of control over another person and is perpetuated against someone based on their gender expression, gender identity, or perceived gender.”

— Ryan Clarke, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Lethbridge Herald