Le 6 décembre 1989 | December 6, 1989
Un mémoire féministe franco-ontarien | A Franco-Ontarian Feminist Memoir
The English follows
Le 6 décembre 1989
Un mémoire féministe franco-ontarien
À lire dans ONFR+ | Read in ONFR+
On était le 6 décembre 1989.
Il y a à peine quelques heures, Marc Lépine était entré à l’École Polytechnique à Montréal. Il avait séparé les femmes et les hommes.
«J’haïs les féministes!» avait-il crié.
Et il avait ouvert le feu.
Quatorze femmes allaient perdre la vie. Elles étaient Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault, Annie Turcotte et Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz.
December 6, 1989
A Franco-Ontarian Feminist Memoir
It was December 6, 1989.
A few hours earlier, Marc Lépine had entered École Polytechnique de Montréal. He separated the women from the men.
“J’haïs les féministes!” he shouted.
And he opened fire.
Fourteen women would die that day. They were Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault, Annie Turcotte and Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz.
I remember my feminist mother’s tears. Her muffled sobs in the darkness of a Sudburian winter, whispering her anger in a low voice as she recounted the words of a colleague who had told her, as a joke, “That’s what happens to women who don’t know their place.”
And Papa. We watched the news together that night, frozen in horror by the story of Pierre Leclair, a policeman who arrived on the scene to learn that Maryse, his daughter, was among those killed that day.
I was ten years old when I learned that being a woman could get you killed.
“I was horrified,” remembers Gaëtane Pharand, executive director of the Centre Victoria pour femmes in Sudbury, an advocate who works in the trenches of violence against women in northern Ontario.
“I don’t remember that day. There’s an instinct in me to protect myself. I did not know in 1989 that I was going to work in this field and that this event was going to play a very important role in my work. I would never have thought.»
It is in the shadow of the silos of the Moulin à Fleur that I meet Pharand, the prodigal child of this historic francophone district of Sudbury. With verve and pride, she tells me that the Centre Victoria had years ago chosen to settle in the Moulin à Fleur to be closer to the Franco-Ontarian heart of Sudbury.
“Thirty years ago in Ontario, even before the events at Polytechnique, there were no services to support women, period. There were still a number of women who were involved in the community, who defended and advocated. But, in terms of our own institution as Franco-Ontariennes, women had nothing”.
“When there was a bit of a government desire to increase services in French, while the French Language Services Act was developing during the 1980s, we were able to request funding, to create a service for abused women,” she adds.
This year, the Centre Victoria helped approximately 200 women with experiences of gender-based violence, some of which were dangerous situations. This, in a province that has 52 femicides and 52 weeks, according to the Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses (OAITH), a shelter network for survivors of violence.
On the eve of her retirement, Ms. Pharand is also thinking about the next generation and those who will advance the cause for the coming decades – like activist Julie S. Lalonde.
One of Canada’s most notable educators, this “fille du nord” pure et dure, born in Sudbury and raised in Sturgeon Falls, is the award-winning author of Resilience Is Futile: The Life and Death and Life of Julie S. Lalonde.
“In 1989, I started kindergarten – I was really looking forward to it because I was very jealous of my older brother who was already going to school,” says Lalonde. “At the same time, these women were killed because they were seeking an education. I often think about that – and the fact that the year after the massacre, there were even more women who registered to become engineers.”
In a conversation via Zoom from Ottawa, Lalonde recalls that the École Polytechnique massacre in Montreal – finally recognized three years ago as an anti-feminist attack – is not just history. It evokes the spectre of the van attack by incel Alek Minassian in Toronto in 2018, which killed 10 people and injured 15 others.
“Minassian told us, ‘I’m motivated because I hate women.’ But everyone, even feminists like Kathleen Wynne, refused to admit that the attack was anti-feminist.”
«On December 6, 2018, I was in pieces, because I was really like: the more things change...» explains Lalonde. “I put myself in the shoes of the feminists of 1989, who told us, ‘he wrote it in a letter that he hated feminists.’ Just like Minassian, who told us to our faces!”
And yet, despite the reversals of the feminist movement, Lalonde is hopeful: “To me, being a feminist is believing that the world can change.”
It’s a sentiment shared by Gaëtane Pharand: “The big picture shows us that women can improve their lives, make connections, develop a social network, and confirm that they are not alone.”
For Pharand and Lalonde, who continue the work of the feminists of 1989, December 6 – now the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women – is a day for our tears.
Thirty-three years after the massacre at École Polytechnique in Montreal, they still carry the 14 women killed in 1989 in their hearts. But, they add, December 6 is also a time to remember all those other women who are no longer with us.
Like Savanna Pikuyak. Anastasia Kuzyk, Nathalie Warmerdam and Carol Culleton. And Zahra Abdille, among many others.
Extinguished.
Because they were women.