It’s a grey cloudy day,
early December,
the anniversary,
of the Poly technique massacre,
twenty-two years,
since fourteen women,
future engineers,
were gunned down,
at the University of Montreal’s School of Engineering.
A sad date,
such waste,
such hate,
I don’t like to dwell,
on ugliness,
but,
this date must be remembered,
they must not have died in vain.
We must do better.
We must teach boys,
to talk,
that,
anger is ‘normal’,
that,
violence is not,
we must,
acknowledge that violence,
is contagious,
that’s not a good thing.
Equality of the sexes,
does not mean,
that girls,
should resolve conflict,
violently,
be it through,
verbal or physical violence.
Violent behaviour,
in girls,
is,
on the rise,
bullying is epidemic,
and,
so is teen suicide.
We must look at ourselves,
as adults,
as men,
and,
as women,
and,
ask ourselves,
how we are failing our youth,
as parents,
as role models,
as educators,
and as a society.
We owe it to them,
to ourselves,
to our collective futures,
and to the memory,
of fourteen women,
who were murdered,
because,
of sexism,
of hatred,
on a early December evening in 1989.
Later girls,
BB
I remember that day, watching the news; being absolutely, incredibly shocked that something like that could happen here, in Canada — realizing that I had been lulled into thinking that somehow we — women — were safer here, in Canada. Equally shocking was all of the rhetoric afterward, how different interests claimed to explain it away, to make the incomprehensible understandable in some way.
I hope for a world where there is no violence toward anyone, in any way.
I never thought I would see such a thing in my country, in my city- I promised myself that day, that I would never forget,
and mark the day somehow, and both this year and last I wrote about it on the blog, it helps.
Thank you for posting about this, such an important day to remember….
I promised myself I would never forget.
BB: You have kept your promise… and thank you. Reading what you wrote was moving beyond words, beyond time and beyond place. And a reminder of our place in that part of the circle of life.
🙂