To commemorate December 6th, LEAF’s executive director, Sheryl Hoshizaki spoke to a group of students at the University of Toronto. Here is an excerpt from her talk.

When you are younger it can be more difficult to pinpoint when an event will have a lasting impact – will stay with you and in fact its significance change and deepen over time.  Often, historical events are ones that are clearly embedded as the collective pause and all focus their attention in the same direction.

Tragedies seem to ring especially close when you realize it truly could have been you;  and for women at the time – for young women studying at school, walking freely among campuses, libraries and classrooms – assuming without question they were entitled to pursue an education as part of that landscape, this event was more acute because it was a crime against women.

The anger and violence of that day could easily have been directed at women anywhere right across this country. It spoke to something larger than just one man and one place. And it wasn’t just reserved for places of higher learning.

Although the setting was a school and the notional reason was anger at these young women for taking positions meant for men, it was coming from the very real and dangerous place of an anger towards a certain group of people ‘occupying’ space in a much larger sense. And as we have seen in the last months, ‘to occupy’ can represent something very powerful.

In the time after the massacre thoughts about the significance were divided; to all it was a tragedy – 14 young women shot dead in Montreal – but whether it was an isolated event or something of larger consequence was debated. I believed it then to be something larger and I know this today because my fear that people – young women especially – overlooking the significance of this day means a disbelief that this could happen again.

At the end of all examination and interpretation, I draw my attention to the women who were killed. I think of the families who buried their daughters, sisters and friends; women who lost the opportunity to attend school, to travel, to love their first job, to become mothers, to live past December 6th, 1989. It is imperative that the collective pause again, focus their attention to this day and commit not to be bystanders.