Friday December 6, 2019 ~ VICTORIA
Mary P Brooke ~ West Shore Voice News
Premier John Horgan, Finance Minister Carole James, and Parliamentary Secretary for Gender Equity, Mitzi Dean will be among those attending a candlelight memorial event at the BC Legislature on this 30th anniversary of the misogynist ‘Montreal Massacre’ of women at Ecole Polytechnique.
On this Friday December 6, it also the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women.
In honour of the 30th Anniversary of the Montreal massacre at École Polytechnique and the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women, Carole James, Deputy Premier, and Mitzi Dean, Parliamentary Secretary for Gender Equity, will join invited guests and members of the public for a candlelight memorial.
The public event tonight at 5 pm on the steps of the BC Legislature is expected to draw a crowd.
Earlier this week Mitzi Dean (who is also the MLA for Equimalt-Metchosin) chaired an intergovernmental meeting of ministers responsible for gender equity, held at the Delta Ocean Pointe Hotel in Victoria. Dean spoke side by side with Women’s Status Minister Maryam Monsef about how a national action plan against gender violence will be rolled out by the federal government. That announcement was timed with the December 6 Montreal Massacre day of remembrance.
Monsef and Dean made a point during a media conference Wednesday in Victoria that the Montreal Massacre is now being referred to for what it truly was — an act of violent misogyny — an act of hatred toward women. Signage at the site in Montreal has been changed from simply referring to the shooting of 14 women in the college simply for being women as ‘a tragedy’ to calling it an anti-feminist attack.
Wearing a white ribbon on December 6 is part of recognizing the need to recognize misogyny and to stop violence against women from continuing in our society. Violence against women is not just physical, it is also psychological and social in ways that impede women from financial and social success.