Montreal Massacre will be commemorated at Vancouver Public Library central branch

by Charlie Smith on December 4th, 2015 at 9:48 AM

1 of 1 2 of 1

Vancouver Rape Relief & Women's Shelter will hold a series of events this weekend to commemorate one of the ugliest events in Canadian history.

From 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday (December 5) at the Vancouver Public Library central branch, there will be lectures, displays, and roundtable conversations to mark the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women.

The annual event is held to educate the public about ongoing gender-based violence and to honour the victims of a mass shooting in Montreal on December 6, 1989.

On that day, Marc Lépine burst into École Polytechnique with a rifle, separating male and female engineering students. Claiming to be fighting feminism, he killed 14 women and injured another 10 women and four men.

One of the participants in tomorrow's event will be Battered Women's Support Services executive director Angela Marie MacDougall.

"We have seen some changes," MacDougall said in a news release. "However, the reality remains that every six days a woman in Canada is killed by her intimate partner. So far in 2015, 16 women have been murdered in British Columbia, 37 in the province of Ontario, and 138 in Canada overall at the hands of male violence."

BWSS's manager of indigenous women's programs, Brandy Kane, pointed out in the same news release that more than 1,200 indigenous women and girls have gone missing or found murdered in Canada since the Montreal Massacre.

Below, you can see the schedule of speakers at the Vancouver Public Library.

10:00a.m.

Bill C-36, One year later: Lessons from Manitoba

Diane Redsky, Shoal Lake Nation, Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata Centre, Winnipeg

Keira Smith-Tague, VRRWS

11:00 a.m.

Creating Alternative Platforms for Feminist Analysis

Hilla Kerner, VRRWS

Deep Green Resistance

Journalist Meghan Murphy, Feminist Current

12:00 p.m.

When He Says She Consented: Countering the Defence of Rapists