The Grey Bruce Labour Council has joined allies in sixteen days of activism to eliminate gender based violence.
The campaign started November 25, and paused in the middle to remember the 14 women murdered 33 years ago on December 6 at l’École Polytechnique de Montréal.
President of the Grey Bruce Labour Council Kevin Smith said the murders that took place on that day in 1989 were a direct result of gender based violence.
"The perpetrator of these murders will never be named in anything that the Grey Bruce Labour Council publishes, but the murderer separated women out for the classes before murdering them. To end gender based violence it must be named, and the heinous and resounding act of cowardice demonstrated by the murderer will always be called out for what it is by the Grey Bruce Labour Council, “ said Smith.
He said labour was one of the first organizations to establish a Women’s Committee in the 1970s.
"This leadership has never paused, and we see in Labour the voices of all workers heard loud and clear. Consistent with this, the Grey Bruce Labour Council has always been a home for all workers and workers in the Grey and Bruce region have been profoundly enriched through this diversity,” noted Labour Council Secretary Amy Stephen,
“There are no easy answers to this profoundly disturbing reality, but there are well known and well understood steps that can and must be taken. Governments can no longer permit pervasive poverty to exist, and these same governments must without hesitation also undertake to hard work of enacting legislation that limits access to the tools of violence. Unpopular with extremists’ fringes, but an absolute necessity if we are to stem and stop the societal violence that endanger so many and in many cases our most vulnerable,” noted Chris Stephen, vice-president Grey County for the Grey Bruce Labour Council.
Stephen added that more than 30 years after the horrific event, gender violence and violence against people in general continues.
“It is a duty that must never be taken for granted and it is the naming of the fourteen women gunned down on this day in 1989, ” said Sergeant-at Arms Anna Morrison.
The victims of the Montreal Massacre were: Geneviève Bergeron Hélène Colgan Nathalie Croteau Barbara Daigneault Anne-Marie Edward Maud Haviernick Maryse Laganière Maryse Leclair Anne-Marie Lemay Sonia Pelletier Michèle Richard Annie St-Arneault Annie Turcotte Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz
