Remembering December 6th

Most years, December 6^th sort of creeps up on me. There have even been some years when it has not been until the morning of the 6^th that I have thought about the tragedy that occurred in Montreal in 1989. However, one of the advantages of spending time within an academic institution is that usually there is some sort of reminder, some sort of event hosted by a class or a department that brings those horrific events to the forefront.

However so often it feels as if the institution (Trent, University of Victoria or Fleming College) while they  may “allow” students to do something - perhaps a some small ceremony or raising money for a women’s shelter by selling white ribbons, provide little or no leadership to support, encourage or even initiate some sort of moment of remembrance. For example I can remember a ceremony in Victoria – conducted by students from the engineering department that was done with care, emotion and solemnity. I attended as did one of my class mates but there was no one else there from the Sociology Department. No professors, no students. In fact there were very few people there at all. One has to wonder why. This year Fleming is having a two hour display, in the lobby on December 5^th. It seems barely adequate.

It may be that 25 years is far too long for our collective minds to retain meaningful memories. That may be even truer when one considers the number of deaths that have occurred in North America within the last 20 years from apparently random or at least unexplainable horrors perpetrated by lone gunmen. Perhaps it is just too much for us to keep track of all of the violence that has occurred and so we just chose to forget it.  Perhaps at some point it is all just beyond our capacity to care.

That could be true except we, as a nation (or at least our leaders) still preform acts of remembrance of a battle fought a hundred years ago in France. So clearly we have that capacity to remember events from the distant pass if we chose to. Equally as clearly we, as a collective have chosen not to remember the events at École Polytechnique massacre, in which an armed student murdered fourteen women and injured ten others. What is particularly sad is that unlike the amount of money spent of remembering the wars of past generations, our governments and institutions have no desire to keep this memory alive.

Rituals, symbols and ceremonies are important. They allow a country to keep critical values alive. That is in part why people wear poppies in November. If we believe as a country that the murder of women because they are women is wrong – and we surely must believe that – then maintaining ceremonies to re-enforce that value is critical. We do a disservice not only to those 14 women, but to all women if we chose to forget the meaning of December 6^th.