Halifax universities mark anniversary of École Polytechnique massacre

Post-secondary students and others in the Halifax region Wednesday took time to remember the victims of the 1989 Montreal Massacre and decry violence targeting women.

At Saint Mary’s University, the school’s art gallery was the site of a lunch-hour event marking Canada’s National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women.

Attendees were honouring the memory of 12 female engineering students, one female nursing student and one female university employee murdered 28 years ago on Dec. 6.

They were slain by an enraged misogynist during a mass shooting inside l’Ecole Polytechnique, at the University of Montreal. Thirteen people were wounded.

The gunman died by suicide after the attack, the deadliest school shooting in Canada’s history.

Dozens of Saint Mary’s students, faculty members and staff took part in a solemn ceremony in the gallery, on the first floor of the Loyola Building. They listened to speakers and reflected during a moment of silence on the loss of life almost three decades ago.

Fourteen white roses were placed individually in a vase; a poem titled “When The Roses Cry” was recited to the audience.

“We know there is no place for violence of any form on our campus,” university president Robert Summerby-Murray told those at the remembrance ceremony. “We know, too, that (we have) a continued responsibility to honour 14 women, and the many other women whose names are known, and indeed, unknown to us.”

According to the Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women, about four out of five victims of police-reported domestic violence in this province are women. The council says the vast majority of spousal/intimate partner homicide victims are women.

The event on campus at SMU was just one local memorial service held to remember the victims killed in Montreal because of their gender.

Others included a late-morning assembly at Province House in Halifax, a lunch-hour ceremony at Mount Saint Vincent University, an afternoon gathering at Dalhousie University’s Sexton campus and an outdoor vigil in the city’s north end planned for Wednesday night.

In 1991, Parliament declared Dec. 6 to be the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. The Trudeau government has said the tabling of a host of gun-control promises, made during the 2015 federal election campaign, should happen by the end of this year.

But considering the new year is quickly approaching, it remains to be seen whether Ottawa can honour those pledges by Jan. 1. Meanwhile, recently-released poll results showed most respondents favour a ban on guns in Canada’s urban centres.

The survey, done by Ekos Research Associates for The Canadian Press, said 69 per cent of those polled supported “a strict ban on guns in urban areas.” Plans from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals don’t involve any type of a total ban, the news service said this week.

Conducted by phone from Nov. 10 to 30, the automated survey canvassed 2,287 Canadians. CP said results are considered accurate within 2.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

In Montreal, the university “has chosen to favour a simple commemoration” for the anniversary of the tragedy, the engineering school’s website says.

It says early on the morning of Dec. 6, “a bouquet of 14 white roses (was to be) placed at the (site’s) memorial plaque, and campus flags . . . lowered to half-mast, from dawn until dusk.”

Michael Lightstone is a freelance reporter living in Dartmouth