December 6th, 1989
A disturbed young man (whose name I deliberately do not use) deliberately murdered 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, Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz at the École Polytechnique.
Because they were women.
I chose to use the roses because they were part of a candlelight vigil in on December 6th, 2016 in Chilliwack, BC. People across Canada continue to share in this sorrow.
In response to our collective mourning of the Montreal Massacre, in 1991, the Canadian Government designated the 6th of December as the “National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence against Women in Canada.”
Decades later, Canadians continue to mourn, but the sad fact is that violence against women in Canada shows no sign of abating. Perhaps we need more than a day.
Image Credit
“Roses [Dec 6 vigil 5 Corners-1]” cc by University of the Fraser Valley have been released under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License