Upcoming Events: Montreal Massacre Remembrance Day

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the Montreal Massacre that occurred December 6th, 1989. I attended an all-girl high school in downtown Toronto, and every year we spent a week remembering the victims of this brutal femicide, as well as other murdered victims of domestic violence. For a few years after I left high school, that week of awareness started to fade into my memory, something that is dangerous to let happen, especially as so many women are already forgotten because of racism and classism. Fortunately,York and its Women's Studies program, as well as other universities and organizations continue to commerate this day to raise awareness on violence against women.

The Female Eye Film festival remembers women killed in Montreal Massacre
In partnership with York's Winters College, the Female Eye Film Festival will commemorate the Dec. 6 Montreal Massacre with seven films by national and international female directors, along with a panel discussion, to be held this Thursday, Dec. 6.

The program, In Memoriam of the Montreal Massacre, is designed to remember the 14 women killed there 18 years ago. All of the films look at issues of violence against women. A question and answer period with the directors will follow the screenings. The program will take place at the Nat Taylor Cinema, North 102 Ross Building, on the Keele campus

On Dec. 6, 1989, Marc Lepine walked into l'École Polytechnique, a Montreal engineering school, separated the men from the women and opened fire. He shot 27 women, 14 of whom died. In 1991, Canada's Parliament declared Dec. 6 a National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women in Canada.

The program runs from four to ten p.m.

In some of the old articles covering the massacre, it was noted how some students were sobbing that they weren't even feminists.

I've made this comment before, but I think it bears repeating. Marc Lepine, despite what he may have stated, did NOT really kill these women because they were feminists; he killed them BECAUSE they were women, and he felt entitled to violently take from them what he couldn't get for himself. Even if every woman he killed was a feminist, that is certainly no justification for murder.

We need to stop thinking that feminism(s)is(are) no longer relevant.