The best way to honour the victims is to end gender-based violence
On December 6, 1989, a man entered a mechanical engineering classroom at Montreal’s École Polytechnique armed with a semi-automatic weapon. After separating the women from the men, he opened fire on the women. When he was finished, fourteen young women were dead, and thirteen other people wounded.
Most of us know the story: The victims were targeted because they were women; the gunman’s suicide note blamed feminists for ruining his life and claimed the murders were his way of “fighting feminism.”
But what many forget is that at the time, police refused to acknowledge and even accept what the gunman had openly declared, that this crime was committed based on gender.