The 14 names of the women in the l'Ecole Polytechnique Massacre. (CHAT News File Photo)

By Chris Brown

Dec. 6 5:30 p.m. at Medicine Hat College

‘It hasn’t changed in 33 years’: women’s shelter to mark anniversary of l’Ecole Polytechnique Massacre

Dec 5, 2022 | 11:42 AM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – Natasha Carvalho was in Montreal on Dec. 6, 1989 during the l’Ecole Polytechnique Massacre. Fourteen women were murdered and many others were injured by the gunman who separated out and targeted the women, saying he was fighting feminism.

The day is never far from Carvalho’s mind.

“Fourteen women was awful and devastating and we were just so rattled about it,” says the executive director of the Medicine Hat Women’s Shelter Society. “And then 33 years later we’re still talking about women coming to shelters because of violence from their partner or we’re still talking about them having to escape bad situations.”

The women’s shelter hosts its annual vigil on Tuesday at Medicine Hat College to mark the massacre and the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. The vigil starts at 5:30 p.m. in Centennial Hall.

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Carvalho says the vigil is about continuing to have the conversations because the problem of violence against women continues.

According to the shelter, the most recent figures from the United Nations estimate that in 2021, more than five women or girls were killed every hour worldwide by a partner or family. In Canada, 144 women have been killed during the first 10 months of 2022, mostly by men and in cases related to family violence and/or gender-based violence.

“It hasn’t changed in 33 years, we’re still seeing people and women being killed,” Carvalho says. “Now you have the murdered and missing Indigenous women as well and so there’s just so much that is going on and we just really want to keep that conversation going.”

Carvalho says the vigil will include speakers from the women’s shelter, Miywasin Friendship Centre and the college, quiet moments of reflection, the candle lighting and discussions of what can be done moving forward.

“Why is it that women are still being murdered because of gender-based violence, why does still happen in this day and age and what can people do,” she says.

“We have to start talking about these things we need to have calls to action and say to people have conversations, stand up against violence, say when things are wrong you know, be prepared to step up and to help somebody and so that’s really what we’re wanting to do.”

Statistics from the women’s shelter

• The United Nations estimates that 1 in 3 women have been subjected to intimate partner violence, non-partner sexual violence, or both at least once in their life.
• Women made up 79% of intimate partner homicide victims in 2016, with a rate almost four times that of the rate among men in Canada (2017 Statistics Canada Statistical profile on family violence in Canada).
• It’s estimated that once every two days, a woman in Canada is violently murdered – typically by a partner, ex-partner or family member.
• The Montreal Massacre was the deadliest mass shooting in Canadian history until the April 2020 mass shooting of 22 people in Portapique, Nova Scotia. This gunman had an extensive history of violence against his family, including his partner whom he had violently assaulted before beginning the mass shooting.