It was a cold night — as most are in Ottawa in December.
I was walking home from my job in the Byward Market listening to my Walkman.
At the time, I was working for what was basically a “greenwashing” PR firm that coached resource companies on how to sound more environmentally friendly. (And that’s not the only skeleton I have in my closet.)
Anyway, I was listening to CBC’s 6 o’clock newscast, when Michael Enright (host of As it Happens at the time) suddenly broke in to tell about a mass shooting at a school in Montreal targeting young women.
What?! Did I really hear that?
It was Dec. 6, 1989 and a horrific scene was playing out at Montreal’s École Polytechnique. A young man had entered the school armed to the teeth intent on gunning down young woman in the school’s engineering department because, as he wrote in a letter, he hated feminists.
I don’t remember if the reporters had all the details at that point, but I do remember the emotion in Enright’s voice. Mr. Seasoned Radio Guy, who’d seen it all before, was clearly shocked – as was I.
The news left me feeling slightly sick and with a sense of disbelief – not to mention vulnerability as I continued on that dark walk alone. I too was in my 20s, just out of university.
To this day, Dec. 6th doesn’t come and go without me at one point remembering that moment when I first heard what happened; I remember the street, I remember the snow, I remember my heartbreak.
Another image that has stuck with me is one I might have seen on TV that evening or maybe in the newspaper the next day. It was of a man standing on a chair taking down Christmas decorations while the slain body of a young woman was slumped back in a chair.
It seemed weird he was fussing with decorations at such a time. Yet, it also seemed fitting -- there would be no Christmas, at least not now, not here.
This year, the Canadian Federation of University Women’s Club Richmond Chapter, along with CHIMO and a number of other local groups are holding a vigil in front of the Brighouse library followed by a march around city hall to mark Dec. 6.
It’s also part of the group’s action aligned with the UN’s 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-based Violence.
At the Richmond News, we had planned to do a story on the event, so our reporter went to get a picture. What she came back with took me aback. It’s the picture you see on our front page that shows two of the women organizing the vigil, each holding lists of women’s names.
The black plaque, with the names of the 14 women shot in Montreal I have seen before. What had me stop short was the other one, a hand-written poster listing the names of all the women who have been murdered in Richmond in the past 25 years.
It’s a disturbingly long list.
We know gendered-based violence can happen anywhere, among any age, ethnic or economic group. So why am I surprised to see these names of women in my own community, women I might have known, or at least passed by?
Of course, that’s the point.
The vigil will include a march, five minutes of silence followed by “a might roar.”
It’s been a long time since I’ve thought about Helen Reddy’s song I Am Woman, with its lyrics, "I am woman, hear me roar in number too big to ignore."
She released the song, which soon became a feminist anthem, in 1971. And while we’ve come a long way in those 50 years, there is still much to roar about — both in grief and in celebration.
