December 6, 1989

A couple of hundred heads, mostly women, all turned in unison in response to the clatter at the back of the lecture hall.  Mine stood out in two ways - grey-streaked and pivoting more quickly than others, fuelled by adrenaline.  

Jane Doe was speaking to a group of University of Victoria law students in the early 2000s. She’d successfully challenged the Toronto police just a few years earlier for failing to protect women - herself included - from a serial rapist targeting women in the Church/Wellesley part of Toronto in the mid-80s.  The court found the police investigation was informed by myths and stereotypes about sexual assault and women and concluded it breached Jane Doe’s Section 7 Charter right to security of the person and her equality rights. The judge awarded her a whopping $220,000 in damages. Even victorious, Jane Doe remained anonymous 20 years ago, however, and to my knowledge also today. Challenging authority, especially on a gender issue, is something you may not want to make public.* 

Doe held our attention as she told her story about risking it all to take on such a formidable opponent.  The room was dead silent — rapt attention — until it was interrupted by the ruckus at the back. It turned out to be nothing, just some guys who opened the wrong door, and in so doing, shared with us the loud and boundless guffaws of young men out for an evening of fun.  

Even after I knew the source of the noise though, I sat shaking, my reaction so visceral.  Why?  

Some days are etched forever in memories - for some it’s D Day; others, JFK’s assassination; and during my lifetime, Sep 11, the Challenger crash, or the day John Lennon died are the days that we all remember.  But for so many of us, December 6, 1989 is the one we will always recall vividly.  That’s where my mind went in that lecture hall. Here we were, a group of feminists, and feminism is not without risks.  Being a woman is not without risks.  

Dec 6 was the day my generation of young women lost our innocence about the success of the second wave of feminism. Coming of age in the 80s, it seemed as though women’s lib had kicked so many doors open for us.  What we were blind to was the fact that by moving through doors, we potentially endangered ourselves. On Dec 6, 14 female engineering students at École Polytechnic in Montreal were in the direct line of gunfire.** 

In December 1989, I was in my third month of a masters program in political science at York University.  I had been inspired to go to York to study with Dr. Janine Brodie, a feminist who had written a book about increasing the number of women in politics. That’s what a lot of second wave feminism was about - increasing numbers. We knew it was only a start, but we needed some victories, some representation. We didn’t know yet about the “I” in EDI*** - the need for inclusion. We just wanted to be present; we didn’t even imagine we could actually have a voice. It was in Janine’s class I learned of the Montreal Massacre, as it quickly became known. It reminded us that even being present brings with it risk. Those 14 women couldn’t possibly envisage that pursuing a male-dominated profession like engineering could result in being murdered. 

December 6 prompted a group of progressive men to create the White Ribbon Campaign.****  In the early 90s, wearing a white ribbon or a December 6 button or better yet, both, was a marker of people who wanted to shine a light on the very present problem of violence against women. I attended Dec 6 vigils for many years to remember not just the 14 who were gunned down 33 years ago but the remarkable number of women who die at the hands of domestic partners every year.  

Sitting in that law school lecture hall in 2004, miles from Montreal or Janine’s class, took me right back to that moment. Those feelings never leave you - the imagined terror those women, my contemporaries, would have felt; the sadness but more importantly, the unfairness of losing a chance at a future, a career in engineering where women were just starting to make inroads.  Although subsequent waves of feminism and the increased focus in the 2000s on identity politics have moved us away from making women’s involvement strictly a numbers game, Engineering Canada reports women are still significantly unrepresented in engineering school and in the profession.  (In law, an historically male-dominated profession, I can take some comfort knowing we’ve hit equal numbers in legal education, even if we haven’t conquered the biases many women face in the practice of law.)   One cannot help but think Dec 6, 1989, is at least in part responsible for the dearth of women with the iron pinkie ring. 

In the years since that killer launched his attack, regrettably we’ve become enured to mass shootings. They seem to happen daily within the borders of our southerly neighbour. Sometimes they target equity-seeking groups; sometimes they are seemingly random. Seems we are getting pretty used to news stories about violence against women too, in a year when our Iranian sisters have taken to the streets in vast numbers protesting the death of Mahsa Amini for allegedly improperly wearing her hijab and, just as I write this, we learn of a new suspected serial killer targeting Indigenous women in the Winnipeg area.  

Probably because of my age and my station in life when it happened, none of this affects me like Dec 6.  Make sure you take a moment to reflect on Tuesday.  I know I will.  Here’s a link to the memorial I used to attend. Maybe you’ll see me there this year?  

• to learn more about the Jane Doe case, click here.

** to learn more about the Montreal Massacre, click here.

*** EDI = Equity, Diversity and Inclusion or more recently EDII, Equity, Diversity, Indigenization and Inclusion.  These are the current pre-occupations of progressive organizations, reflecting the need for more than just the numbers game. 

*** Among them was late, great federal NDP leader, Jack Layton. To learn more about the White Ribbon Campaign, click here.

If you like what you’re reading, there is no greater compliment than to become a subscriber. Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates. Usually one each week - I promise I won’t spam you every day! (I wish I were that productive!)