Polytechnique victims remembered in Campbell River
More than 20 Campbell River women came together Thursday at Spirit Square to remember the 14 women who were gunned down 23 years ago at Montreal’s l’Ecole Polytechnique.
Georgette Whitehead, Executive Director of the Vancouver Island North Women’s Resource Society, said: “They died because they were women.”
In 1991 Parliament declared Dec. 6 a “National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women” to commemorate the 1989 slaughter by madman Mark Lepine.
“Lepine ranted during his rampage that ‘feminists have ruined my life’,” Whitehead said. “As well as commemorating the 14 young women whose lives ended in an act of gender-based violence that shocked the world, Dec. 6 represents an opportunity for Canadians to reflect on the phenomena of violence against women in our society.
“It is an opportunity to consider the women and girls for whom violence is a daily reality.”
Whitehead and the women attending the brief ceremony read mini-profiles if the 14 victims. She used the occasion to also remember the women missing and murdered on the “Highway of Tears” between Prince George and Prince Rupert and the many women who went missing from Vancouver’s downtown eastside.
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