On the 35th anniversary it's massively past time to name the École Polytechnique massacre an anti-feminist terrorist attack
Originally described as a ‘tragic event,’ 35 years later it’s time to call it what it really was – an anti-feminist terrorist attack and outright femicides.
* This article is a mashup of last year’s article, Time to admit École Polytechnique massacre was an anti-feminist terrorist attack, with updates and 2023/2024 statistics where available.
Anne St-Arneault, 23; Geneviève Bergeron, 21; Hélène Colgan, 23; Nathalie Croteau, 23; Barbara Daigneault, 22; Anne-Marie Edward, 21; Maud Haviernick, 29; Barbara Klueznick, 31; Maryse Laganière, 25; Maryse Leclair, 23; Anne-Marie Lemay, 22; Sonia Pelletier, 23; Michèle Richard, 21; and Annie Turcotte, 21.
Most readers will recognize the names of the 13 engineering students and one administrative assistant murdered by a gunman at École Polytechnique in Montreal on December 6, 1989.
Originally described as a ‘tragic event,’ 35 years later it’s time to call it what it really was – an anti-feminist terrorist attack.
The gunman left a suicide letter outlining his political motives along with a list of 18 women and a group of anti-sexist men that he had wanted to kill, but did not. He also made it clear that he wanted to terrorize all feminists.
So, exactly what has changed for Canadian feminists, women and girls in the intervening years?
The gunman used a semi-automatic Ruger Mini-14 rifle and a hunting knife to carry out the femicides. Ruger Mini-14 rifles are still not prohibited in Canada and since Harper abolished and destroyed the long gun registry in 2012 those guns no longer have to be registered with the exception of owners living in Quebec.
According to the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability report, #CallItFemicide: Understanding sex/gender-related killings of women and girls in Canada, 2018 – 2022, 184 women and girls were femicided in 2022.
Yes, I am intent on making femicided an integral part of the femicide lexicon so get over it and please don’t let it prevent you from moving forward and reading the rest of this important article.
Those 184 femicides represent an increase of 27 per cent over 2019 when 148 women and girls were murdered by men.
#CallItFemicide found that the method of killing was not publicly disclosed for a full 37 per cent of femicide victims. Where that information was known, stabbing (35 per cent) was the most common cause of death for intimate partner femicide victims followed by shooting (27 per cent), beating (21 per cent) and strangulation (9 per cent). The remaining eight per cent of intimate partner femicide victims were killed using other methods including being hit be a car and struck with an axe.
The killing of women and girls simply because they are female deserves to be named for what it is, gender-motivated violence. Until femicide is recognized as a distinct crime nothing will change.
Without femicide being included in the Criminal Code of Canada these murders cannot be properly identified and named. Without distinct designation, femicide language and literacy will never be developed and that is desperately needed to adequately train the public, police, lawyers, judges, doctors and other professionals to recognize the signs of intimate partner abuse and lethality. And, there are always signs.
The lack of language and literacy will also make it impossible to understand the links between gender-based violence and mass casualty attacks as outlined in Professor Jude McCullock and Professor JaneMaree Maher’s expert report for the Nova Scotia Mass Casualty Commission detailing how private violence and misogyny pose a public risk.
A lack of femicide language and literacy means a continuation of the dearth of qualitative and quantitative information from which to draw when designing effective means of targeted prevention, intervention as well as family and community care in the aftermath of femicides.
Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses (OAITH) released their Annual Femicide List on November 25th – the United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and Girls.
OAITH defines femicide as a gender-based killing of a woman, child, trans woman, 2-Spirited Person, or gender non-conforming individual where a man has been charged in relation to the death in Ontario.
Over the past 52 weeks, 62 women and children have been killed in Ontario ranging in age from 86 years to two months.
Over 95 Ontario municipalities have declared intimate partner violence (IPV) an epidemic in the province, yet, Doug Ford refuses to acknowledge the epidemic or take meaningful legislative action.
Meanwhile, Ontario NDP MPPs Peggy Sattler, Lisa Gretzky, Jill Andrew, and Kristyn Wong-Tam have proposed meaningful legisltaion in the form of Bill 173, Intimate Partner Violence Epidemic Act (2024).
While Ford promised IPV survivors and their advocates who showed up at Queen’s Park in April 2024 that he would pass Bill 173 there has been no meaningful action to date.
Ford, stop stalling and pass Bill 173 and then follow that legislation up with robust funding for women’s shelters; transition housing; deeply affordable housing as well as strong, effective rent controls; $10-a-day childcare; a living wage and a universal standard of living — aka basic income — so women living with, leaving and healing from IPV can take care of themselves and their children.
OAITH has been tracking femicides in Ontario for over thirty years recording over 1,080 victims of femicide whose lives have been taken by men and more specifically in most cases, by men who knew them.
These numbers are a shocking reminder of the ongoing oppression, hatred, inequity, human rights violations and system failures that led to these femicides — because it’s well documented that femicide is preventable.
Let’s turn the lens outward for a moment to look at the global impact of femicide as reported by the United Nations (UN) in, Femicides in 2023: Global Estimates of Intimate Partner/Family Member Femicides.
The report, issued by UN Women and UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), provides evidence that femicide remains pervasive world-wide. Globally, 85,000 women and girls were intentionally murdered in 2023. Sixty per cent of these homicides — 51,000 women and girls — were committed by an intimate partner or other family member.
That means, every day 140 women and girls are killed because of their gender. Those femicides are carried out by a partner or close relative. That is one woman or girl every 10 minutes.
Clearly, more than three decades of neutral language and letter writing before elections has done diddly-squat to improve the safety of women and girls – let alone feminists — in Ontario, Canada and around the globe.
Media composing neutral or general articles using sanitized language has compounded and enabled gendered violence and femicide. I will not be a party to that, so I am asking readers to honestly and objectively consider what actions they are willing to undertake to end anti-feminist terrorism in Ontario, Canada and globally.
December 6th is the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women in Canada. If you cannot think of even one meaningful, impactful action that you can undertake during the coming year that goes beyond attending the requisite vigil or writing various levels of political officials during election years, then I encourage you listen to rabble.ca editor Nick Seebruch’s profound 2023 conversation with Andrea Gunraj, vice president of public engagement at the Canadian Women’s Foundation around, ‘How to action this year against gender-based violence.’ It will be 20 minutes well spent.
When you share Gunraj’s incredibly doable and impactful actions with friends and on social media be sure to include any or all of these hashtags: #NoExcuseFord #WomanAbusePreventionMonth #WrappedinCourage #EndGBV #EndIPV #CallItFemicide #purplescarf #TortureIsNotWork #EndDemand #deepfakes #16Days @nicollneedschange.bsky.social @doreennicoll61 @meggiewalk @OaithDotCa
Thanks to everyone who read today’s article. With your continued support, a little Nicoll can make a lot of change.
Great column Doreen. Thanks.
Doreen, you mentioned the Nova Scotia Mass Casualty Commissioners' report, so I respond. The Commissioners in my opinion enacted a de facto form of discrimination by their decision not to include non-State torture violence perpetrated against women and girls or include the reality shared with them about consequential femicides. So not one word - not one word means that Nova Scotian women who survive or die as a consequence of non-State torture did not rate inclusion. Not one word means a total failure to respect and uphold their human worth and dignity. I do not know what else to call their decision but misogynistic oppression given that Linda MacDonald and I gave evidence repeatedly and were never asked one question. We wrote to the three Commissioners to grieve their decision but never received a reply, so perpetrators of non-State torture and consequential femicides continue to be granted immunity.