December 6th, 1917 was the day thousands of people died, and thousands more were injured in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The Halifax Explosion was the largest explosion the world had ever seen before the nuclear age. Today is the hundredth anniversary of that horrific event. But bad as it was, it was an accident.
The same can not be said for the tragic event of December 6th, 1989.
A disturbed young man deliberately murdered 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 at the École Polytechnique.
Because they were women.
I chose to use the roses because they were part of a candlelight vigil in on December 6th, 2016 in Chilliwack, BC. People across Canada continue to share in this sorrow.
In response to our collective mourning of the Montreal Massacre, in 1991, the Canadian Government designated the 6th of December as the “National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence against Women in Canada.”
Decades later, Canadians continue to mourn, but the sad fact is that violence against women in Canada shows no sign of abating. Perhaps we need more than a day.
Image Credit
“Roses [Dec 6 vigil 5 Corners-1]” cc by University of the Fraser Valley have been released under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License