Content warning: this piece discusses violence.
Every December 6th
Every December 6th, I dread it. I’m sure others see the date and do, too.
Because it was like yesterday, and it doesn’t feel that long ago.
Every year, on this day, which should have faded but still feels raw, many years later. I don’t know why it’s raw and why I’m crying still. It should have faded by now, but it hasn’t. Maybe it never will. A scar that never will heal but re-injured when scanning the date.
Every year on this day, I think about what it means to be a feminist, to be a woman. To be in a place of fear. To exist, to have the freedom to exist. To have life.
I think of it often — what it means to be a woman — but remember it this day, the strongest. What an odd, brutal way to think of womanhood this day.
It is seared in my memory — I had so many happy childhood memories, but this was not one. I don’t want this to be a defining moment to remember, but it is. It is.
I came home from school. It was cold already, and I opened the door and kicked off my boots. My mother was on the couch, watching TV. Already, I knew this was bad — instantly. The air felt gross and heavy, as it is when the TV news is on. This was not common, hearing the TV. The familiar music that was always on before dinner — there was always music on. Not tonight. She had the TV blaring instead. A live feed from a wintery Montreal. I can’t remember if she was crying or just sitting quietly. I sat down beside her.
The news came in little glimpses, staccato — we interrupt this broadcast for breaking…
It must have been 6 or so at night. It was dark in Toronto, even darker still in Montréal. It’s a biting cold there, and the news looked it. Ambulances, crying. Crime scene tape. Reporters running. People running still. Timelines, interviews, sketches of the layout of a school.
News reports were slow — before the era of Breaking News, all CNN style, where coverage was coordinated between local and headquarters. It felt chaotic, somehow. Nobody had full reports. Nobody knew anything. Because the world felt in chaos. Because it was.
A familiar reporter, her voice a comfort. A policeman and reporters talking. A story unfolding. Horror, horror.
Some parts stick with you decades later. Decades later. 34 years ago, a man walked into a school in Canada. We have become so dulled to gun violence now; you know the rest of the sentence before I can finish it.
A man walked in. Wandered from classroom to classroom. When he was finished, 14 women were murdered. They were in the Engineering School — the École Polytechnique had a great one.
14 women murdered, for wanting to be engineers.
I can imagine their excitement when they joined the school, learning about engineering and tech and the joy of building. They would be builders of worlds. Builders of themselves. Building a future for themselves.
The image I can’t get out of my mind, haunting me, haunting a generation of young women in Canada, is the words from news reports.
In one classroom, he separated the men from the women — and told them to go to separate sides of the room.
“He said, in French, ‘You are a bunch of fucking feminists.’ And he started to shoot.”
Every year, I find myself loading up CBC News to see if this merits coverage decades later. Do people care? Will they remember? Are they haunted, too? Blessedly, this year, it is the top story, as it should be.
Every year, I look back to say where we are this year. What does it mean to be a woman in a world that often seems to relish violence against us? How can we particularly equip young women to thrive in the face of misogyny?
Since that day, there have been reforms, social movements — including #MeToo and Lean In, and movements of women trying to support each other in our professional and personal lives. There have been gun reform, Place du 6-Décembre in Montréal, and discussions of the state of engineering and diversity. And in a tribute to keeping the hope of women in engineering going, scholarships have been set up to inspire newer generations of Canadian women to believe in engineering — to fight against a world that says you can’t do this.
Every year, I wonder if things are better — that we continue to navigate these stops and starts. For every prominent Fortune 500 company with a female CEO, there are far more that don’t — and far more elected representatives that aren’t women. For every part of our world that shows progress, there still remain challenges — pay equity, violence, reproductive freedom, toxic workplaces in tech, and so many more. Too many more. The misogyny online seems to be more toxic, if anything. We sometimes forget that the Internet wasn’t always a poisonous place. The state of diversity in engineering slowly progresses upward to reflect more female engineers, but it is not nearly enough. Thomas Insights notes, “Because there are fewer female engineers, there are also fewer female engineering role models to seek guidance from in schools, along with a lack of encouragement from parents, teachers, and school counselors.”
I think about young female engineers and wonder if they think of December 6th and if they are worried about what it means to strive for something more under the shadow of violence.
If I could, I would start a school for them — not an engineering school, but a School of Herstories. A school for girls to prepare them for a world that is afraid of them far too much — to create those role models who tell those stories. To help girls and young women tell their own stories, too.
It might sound like a modern version of a Feminist Girl Scouts. But it would be to prepare young girls for what it’s like to be a woman — something I don’t think we do enough of. I remember reading The Book of the City of Ladies in Humanism class in university, deeply disappointed that this was a fictional city made up of the stories of women. I keep wondering how we can perserve our stories, share them widely, and keep herstories alive — to keep the stories of perseverance ever present for women and girls to tap into?
I remember the line from Simone De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex — ‘woman is not born, she is made’. So, how do we create stories with and for women to make them feel prepared as they are made?
What would my school be? What would the heart of it say? It could be the herstories of women we vaguely know about (all hail Hypatia, the librarian of the Library of Alexandria). But it could also be the stories of female engineers, of modern female pioneers, the stories we sometimes hear but often don’t. We know about Grace Hopper, but there are so many lessons from women in every sphere of life, every sector, every level, we haven’t heard of that we need to.
It could be women teaching other younger women what to be aware of — that so many will be afraid of you, who will hate you. That has to be a thread in the tapestry of this knowledge. We don’t prepare girls to become women — we may teach them the hard skills but not the harder unspoken curriculum that would benefit them. I know when I was in high school, I had started reading about feminism, especially after December 6th, to understand what makes misogyny a thing — why anyone has such hatred of women so powerful they would murder them. I couldn’t understand it, but I started reading more about it. And the more about feminism that made sense to me, the more it felt like stumbling on the most enriching book in the library, a herstory I craved. Stories of women — and male allies — fighting for voting, pay, childcare, education, access to systems, and so much more. A story won’t stop the world from being cruel, but it will make you feel far less alone — and to remind you that there are so many others like you.
I would have a curriculum of so many things. Of how to dream big and plan. Self-defense. Confident public speaking. Personal financial health. The importance of taking care of your health no matter what your age. To not be afraid to be an engineer. The importance of boundaries in healthy relationships — and to never settle. Understanding how to tell a story and how cognitive biases work. How to form an opinion and back it up with data. To be prepared when mansplaining happens — because it will. To track all your professional successes for your performance review. To know how to give back — and that as you may rise in success, your success will be hollow if you don’t reach out a hand behind you to bring another woman beside you.
It would be the skills and stories by and for a modern girl. There are so many other topics we could explore. The goal would be to prepare girls and young women not just to learn skills but to learn to find the stories of other women — even if they don’t make it into the history books or the meeting agenda. To see feminism as I did — something I grew to learn about, identify with, and be proud of, a body of writing, activism, joy, and community. It is never perfect, and not without criticism. But the stories of feminism(s) are the stories that are as needed now as they were 34 years ago, as they have been for millennia. We will not create a world that will be without misogyny. We can create instead alternative futures, better ways to prepare younger women for the reality of what being a woman can too often be like, whether you’re an engineering student or an established leader. And we can find and support our male and non-binary allies — the ones who march beside us, support us, listen to us, strive for us. Feminism is the fight for equality for all of us. The stories to support us all.
The stories of community can help us learn what resilience looks like. It will tell generations of young women that you will meet resistance, but having a community of other women and our stories will support you. Education and creating new curriculums of stories and resilience are how we can create and honor those who have come before.
On December 6th, one year, I hope we continue to remember them and find new ways to pay tribute to them. The 14 women, the joy they felt in school. Lives cut down too quickly.
I want to remember them because it’s essential we do. And I want generations of women to hear and remember their stories, too. To pay tribute, to remember their stories that can keep us striving for better futures despite those who fear us, to keep striving, supporting, believing in us.
I want December 6th to be in honor of them. I want to keep building a better world to honor them. To keep building, for them. To not lose the hope that a world that embraces women can happen. I don’t ever want to forget them. I don’t ever want us to forget them. I want December 6th to be as raw as it was in 1989, because it reminds me that we have so much to build, to work for.
I want December 6th to never fade. I want them to never fade.
