‘Women like me’: 35 years later, students at Polytechnique reflect on massacre that killed 14 women
Posted December 1, 2024 9:36 am.
Last Updated December 1, 2024 9:56 am.
Every year around Dec. 6, biomedical engineering student Sophie Beaudry is overcome with emotion when she walks through the halls of École Polytechnique in Montreal.
It’s almost been 35 years to the day since a massacre left 14 women dead after a gunman carried out an anti-feminist attack.
“I cry when I walk in the school and it’s always a hard time,” said Beaudry, the student life coordinator at the Polytechnique Students’ Association (AEP).
“I picture myself at their place because I think it was especially harder back in those days to be a woman in engineering,” she added.
The 14 women killed were Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault, and Annie Turcotte.
“Those girls were really strong to choose this profession,” Beaudry said. “I’m kind of a woman who talks a lot, who takes a lot of space, so I think this really could have been me,” she added.
As Beaudry prepares for her final exams, she thinks of the 14 women who were doing the same at this time in 1989.
“Those students were my age, they were women like me,” she said.
Beaudry says it’s important to move forward by honouring the victims’ legacies.
She says she hopes to see more female representation at Polytechnique, where more than 30 per cent of students are women.
“It’s our duty as women in engineering to pursue our studies and be the greatest at our job in honour of today’s women who didn’t have the chance to do it.”
Beaudry, alongside Loïc Goyette, a mechanical engineering student and the president of the AEP, are among those who have been advocating for gun control.
They have been supporting the group PolySeSouvient — made up of survivors of the massacre — who have been asking the federal government to completely ban assault-style weapons.
“Thiry-five years later, there’s still hundreds of assault weapons models that are legal,” Goyette said. “The government has the power to act in this issue to make sure it doesn’t happen again in other universities or at Polytechnique.”
He says it’s especially important to never forget what happened in his school 35 years ago.
“Every year, the anniversary of what happened at Polytechnique is also a way to reflect on what are the other forms of violence toward women and what each other can do to make sure those violence ends,” he said.
“All of us can be part of the solution to end violence towards women. When we see something, we can denounce it, talk to the person to support this person.”
“(Femicides) still happen,” Beaudry stated. “There were more than 20 femicides this year. It did happen 35 years ago but a lot more keeps happening, and we need to keep talking about women’s condition in society in general.”
Beaudry says she doesn’t take this for granted: being able to study in school safely.
“Thirty-five years earlier, it could have been me who died in this same situation,” she said. “So it’s really hard to think about that and I’m really, really lucky to have different conditions to pursue my studies right now.”
–With files from Sarah-Maria Khoueiry, CityNews
