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This year is the 20th Anniversary of the Montreal Massacre. And as I'm typing this I have tears rolling down my cheeks as I always do when I think about that horrible day. I vividly remember hearing about the massacre on the evening news and being shocked and sickened and terrified that someone would kill a woman simply because she was a woman. I literally had to sit down. When I was in university I took Women's Studies courses and attended Take Back the Night marches and December 6th vigils. I got angry. I took a course on the Sociology of Family Violence and cried every week after class. I thought that I was going to make a difference and change the world and the new world would be a place where women and men were truly equal and that men would stop hurting women simply because they were women. Ah, youth.

I left university, went to work, enjoyed my life and kinda put my Feminism on the back burner. Yes, I still would call myself a Feminist but I stopped going to the marches and the vigils and the conversations I would have with my friends and family were less about gender inequality and more about pop culture and stuff like that.

In the past couple of years a few things have happened that have me thinking about Feminism again. Actually, to be more accurate, to wonder why no one was talking about Feminism anymore. I have two wonderful friends, Alana and Wilma, who are talking about Feminism and I really appreciate that. Alana is a co-principal at a Feminist private school in Toronto and helps transform bright young girls into bright young women. Wilma teaches at a local high school and 2 years ago ended up on the front page of the Guelph Mercury for asking the teachers (both male and female) to wear This is What a Feminist Looks Like t-shirts in honour of December 6th. It was an incredible success. She is also the first person in her school board to teach a gender studies course. I have such deep respect and admiration and love for these women and was starting to think that maybe Feminism was on the rebound.

The December 6th Memorial at the CAW Family Education Centre in Port Elgin. (photo courtesy of Cheryl Misener)

However, I had a real wake up call when a very smart and educated and intelligent young woman I know and love told me that she doesn't consider herself a Feminist. She went to university and is socially conscious and concerned about the rights and treatment of women but she rejected the term Feminist. I was shocked. However, I was even more shocked that this young woman was unaware of the Montreal Massacre. How could this be? In talking with other people about this the common answer was that it was likely lost in all the other school shootings, such as Dawson College and Columbine. But the shootings at those schools, while incredibly tragic, are totally different. The shootings in those cases were not gender based. People in those other cases were in the wrong place at the wrong time. At L'Ecole Ploytechnique, the victims were chosen and killed because when they were born, they came out with a vagina instead of a penis.

It is important that we remember where we came from and that will help lead us forward.

The final thing that has me thinking about Feminism is that I became the proud and loving aunt to a little girl this year. And it saddens me to think that the world I envisioned in my youth, where women would be truly equal to men, has not come to pass. Yes, thanks to Sex and the City women are more empowered in the bedroom and a whole generation of girls have grown up believing in Girl Power, but my niece will be growing up in a world where women are still murdered by their male partners (1-2 a week in Canada), where as many as 3,000 young women a year will be murdered as an "honour killing" for bringing shame upon their family, perhaps by having sex before marriage or not going through with an arranged marriage. She was born into a world where women still do not receive equal pay for equal work, where only 6% of the people working on Bay Street and only 22% of Canadian politicians are women. This is sad and shameful. Yes, things are better than they were, but they could be so much better. And with universities cutting back or simply cutting Women's Studies programs, how is going to get any better?

I don't really know the answer to that but I think that it is important that we remember where we came from and that will help lead us forward. And a good place to start would be to make people aware of or remember the Montreal Massacre and the 14 women who died because they went to school that day.

The December 6th Memorial at the CAW Family Education Centre in Port Elgin. (photo courtesy of Cheryl Misener)

As such, I am asking that you join me in taking a moment and saying the the names of the 14 women on December 6th. If you are on Facebook, please post the names of the women as your status. Please feel free to share this and spread the word. If even one person learns more about that sad day and realizes that they never want something like that to happen again, we are making progress to a brighter future for my niece and all the other beautiful children in the world, both boys and girls. Because we all benefit when we are equal.

Thank you, on behalf of my niece, and myself.

Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault, Annie Turcotte, Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz.