On December 6, 1989, Marc Lepine walked into l’Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal. He separated the men from the women, then set about to methodically kill 14 women who were studying engineering, simply because they were women.
Since then, December 6 has been declared a National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. It is the Canadian day of mourning for women who have met with violent deaths.
For some years in some cities in Canada, groups have organized a shoe memorial on December 6 to remember murdered or missing women. A group of women in Powell River decided to set up a shoe memorial this year, which will be on display from 9:30 am to 6 pm tomorrow at the north entrance of Powell River Town Centre Mall.
For every pair of shoes, there is a name and a date of a woman and girl who was killed or is missing, for all to read and to remember. These women were someone’s mother, sister or daughter. They had lives that were taken from them. The idea of the memorial is to remember the names of the victims. They are not just numbers or statistics.
However, the statistics remain harrowing. On average, every six days a woman in Canada is killed by her intimate partner. In 2009, 67 women were murdered by a current or former spouse or boyfriend. On any given day in Canada, more than 3,000 women (along with their 2,500 children) are living in an emergency shelter to escape domestic violence.
Each year, over 40,000 arrests result from domestic violence. That’s about 12 per cent of all violent crime in Canada. Since only 22 per cent of all incidents are reported to the police, the real number is much higher.
As of 2010, there were 582 known cases of missing or murdered aboriginal women in Canada. Both Amnesty International and the United Nations have called upon the Canadian government to take action on this issue, without success.
In just one year in Canada, 427,000 women over the age of 15 reported they had been sexually assaulted.
Half of all women in Canada have experienced at least one incident of physical or sexual violence since the age of 16. As well, 61 per cent of all Canadians say they personally know at least one woman who has been sexually or physically assaulted.
Although some people may think violence against women is not very serious or is a private matter, attitudes can be changed. Public education, violence prevention programs and a strong criminal justice response can bring about an end to violence against women in Canada.
