Lessons From l’École Polytechnique: What Do We Tell The Boys

Where were you when you on Dec 6, 1989, when you heard about the Montreal Massacre?

I was on campus, at University of Toronto. It was like a convulsion. Everyone was reeling. I did not yet have children, but the news rocked my deeply held sympathies and strongly felt convictions.  I was devastated.

As a Canadian:

This doesn’t happen here.

As a young woman:

I am not safe.

As a daughter:

Their mothers. Their families.

As a student:

Academics offer no shield from that which is irrational.

It was violent.

It was hateful.

None of it made sense. 

The only reaction I could do anything about was the outpouring of grief: I would attend a vigil for the lives of 14 young women. I could hold a candle up and stand in the December night in solidarity with other Canadians, other daughters, other students, I could show the families of those women that we noticed, that we cared, that our country as a whole would not allow their daughters to go unmourned or the tragedy of the event unnoticed.

Then I learned the vigil would be for women only.

Which is when the deaths of 14 young women at l'Ecole Polytechnique shattered one more of the beliefs I held dear: all feminists believe in equality.

There were young men as bewildered that day as there were women. Young men who needed not to be vilified, but given the opportunity to share in a collective attempt to bear witness, and perhaps, to understand how we could do better than this. 

The emotion that surrounded the women who wanted to keep the men out was palpable, fighting them would have been akin to taking on an angry grieving mob of townsfolk wielding burning torches. I respected their sentiment, their right to gather without being self-conscious or fearful, but I did not attend the vigil. My heart ached enough for one day.

I lit my own candle, shaken, and perplexed. How were we to prevent further violence committed against women if there could be no dialogue? Those young women had classmates, brothers, fathers, uncles. How do we raise our boys to express grief, to understand women as people not just objects of desire or worse, as obstacles to their desires if not by reaching out and creating a bridge of understanding and dialogue?

To exclude the men from the vigil (the mother I have become shouts: Boys! Those were boys who still had so much to learn about women. How did their feelings shift that day, that night?) seemed not only sexist, but self-defeating. Surely nailing “No Boys Allowed” to the fenceposts fosters the kind of fear and tongue tied rage that ultimately festered and led, in this tragic circumstance, to a senseless and shocking act of violence. 

Why then were the candles being held aloft in only the hands of women?  

In the years since that heartsore night, I have learned for certain that there are no guarantees bestowed by the passport you hold, that our gun laws have a way yet to go, that theory cannot offer protection against hatred or fear, that feminists come in every stripe. 

Looking back at the Montreal Massacre through the lens of motherhood, I wonder if the candle we hold aloft today in memorial should burn brightest for hope: that in the generations which will follow ours, boys together with girls will know how to kindle the flame that lights the path of mutual understanding.

~ This is an original CandadMomsBlog post by EarnestGirl, who can also be found writing and thinking aloud about motherhood at The West Coast Chronicles