Time to admit École Polytechnique massacre was an anti-feminist terrorist attack.
Originally described as a ‘tragic event,’ 34 years later it’s time to call the mass killing of women on December 6, 1989 what it really was – an anti-feminist terrorist attack.
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,’ 34 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 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.
The 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.
Over the past 52 weeks 62 women and children have been killed in Ontario alone. To date, 93 charges have been laid against 57 men and three women in these femicides – it’s important to note that women are usually charged as accessories after the fact. An additional 14 cases were deemed femicide-suicide where the perpetrator killed himself.
Over 33 Ontario communities have been impacted including Brampton, Burlington, Caledon, Chute-à-Blondeau, Deep River, Eganville, Fenelon Falls, Guelph, Hamilton, Lincoln, London, Marathon, Markham, Mississauga, New Tecumseth, Niagara, Ohsweken, Oshawa, Peterborough, Quinte West, Richmond Hill, Sabaskong First Nation, Sault Ste. Marie, Sioux Lookout, St Catharines, Sudbury, The Blue Mountains, Thunder Bay, Toronto, Vaughan, Waterford, Whitby and Windsor.
OAITH has been tracking femicides in Ontario for over thirty years and have recorded more than 1,020 victims of femicide whose lives have been taken, and 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 has led to these femicides, because it’s well documented that femicide is preventable.
“If you notice that you are reading more often about women and children being killed, it’s because you are. This past year alone, femicides have occurred more than once a week in Ontario. Thirty unique communities have been affected by femicides this year. As numbers of femicides continue to climb year after year we must come together to address the root causes of men’s violence, to ensure we can change these abhorrent conditions,” said Marlene Ham, Executive Director of OAITH in a statement.
Let’s turn the lens outward and look at the global impact of femicide as reported in the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime Report: Gender-Related Killings of Women and Girls (Femicide/Feminicide).
Globally, nearly 89,000 women and girls were killed intentionally in 2022, the highest yearly number recorded in the past 20 years. Available data suggest that after a spike in 2021, the overall number of global homicides began to fall in 2022. Unfortunately, the number of femicides is not decreasing.
Most killings of women and girls are gender motivated. In 2022, approximately 48,800 women and girls world-wide were killed by intimate partners or other family members. That means on average more than 133 women or girls were killed every day by someone in their own family.
Clearly, over three decades of neutral language and writing letters 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 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 @doreennicoll61 @meggiewalk @OaithDotCa