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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Distance and time have been known to dull the pain and sadness after an unspeakable tragedy but Tuesday night's vigil for the victims of the 1989 Ecole Polytechnique massacre was an emotional affair.

Sandra Lockhart of the Public Service Alliance of Canada's Aboriginal Committee spoke passionately about the hardships faced by aboriginal women at the Dec. 6 vigil to commemorate the 14 women who were gunned down in the 1989 Ecole Polytechnique massacre. - Galit Rodan/NNSL photo

About 100 people attended the 6 p.m. ceremony at the Salvation Army Citadel, including Justice Minister Glen Abernethy, Frame Lake MLA Wendy Bisaro and Premier Bob McLeod who is also minister responsible for women. The solemn event commemorated the 14 women who were gunned down at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique 22 years ago by Marc Lepine, a 25-year-old man who targeted female engineering students, professing his hate for feminists. It was also an opportunity to address the ongoing pervasiveness of violence against women.

"Dec. 6 is a day of thinking and talking and asking the question, 'Why is there so much violence against women?" said organizer Lorraine Phaneuf, executive director of the Status of Women Council of the NWT, in her opening remarks.

Many of the event's speakers blinked back tears and others let them flow openly. "I find it very difficult right now to not want to cry," said Sandra Lockhart of the Public Service Alliance of Canada's aboriginal committee," as she took the podium.

Lockhart spoke specifically about the hardships faced by aboriginal women; many of whom, she said, are struggling to keep their families together in the face of poverty, homelessness and abuse. Lockhart, whose passion and sadness was apparent as she spoke, said she was grateful she still had the capacity to feel emotions, unlike other women she knew who had become numb after enduring years of suffering.

"The most sacred thing we can share with each other is pain," she said.

In Yellowknife and many other cities across Canada, this year's Montreal massacre vigils took on a decidedly political tone. Both Phaneuf and Julie Docherty, the regional executive vice-president of PSAC North, spoke somewhat cautiously against the federal government's efforts to abolish the long-gun registry and its records.

The controversial registry was introduced by the Liberal government under former prime minister Jean Chretien after much lobbying, including by Heidi Rathjen, a survivor of the massacre, and Suzanne Laplante-Edward, the mother of victim Anne-Marie Edward. Conservatives introduced Bill C-19, aimed at dismantling the registry, on what would have been Anne-Marie Edward's 43rd birthday.

"On a national scale, one in three women in Canada murdered by their partners are killed by firearms," said Phaneuf. "The amendments contained in Bill C-19 will put lives at risk. There will also be no way for police officers to know who owns these powerful guns, who sold them or how many are owned. When long guns are recovered in crime, police will not be able to trace them back to their owners, losing an important investigative tool."

Phaneuf told the audience rates of violence in the NWT are five times higher than the national average, but tempered her remarks, saying "through the amendments of existing systems a balance can be reached that protects us all."

Guest speaker Elaine Carr was 11 years old when the massacre happened. She heard about it for the first time during her first year as an engineering student in university. Her eyes filled with tears and her voice quivered as she told the audience she had never noticed before that the majority of the murdered women were mechanical engineers like herself.

Carr said she considered herself lucky to have grown up at a time when women had so many career options. It had never occurred to her that engineering was a "non-traditional occupation" for a woman. Carr said she initially had trouble connecting to the events of Dec. 6, 1989. "It seemed like something from the distant past. It couldn't possibly happen in the same world where I grew up because it makes no sense," she said.

She wondered if the Polytechnique victims might have felt the same way. Eventually the tragedy of the event really clicked for Carr. She is passionate about encouraging girls to pursue their passions and build up their confidence. She is also passionate about eliminating violence from her own life, saying we are all accountable for ourselves and our own emotions and actions.

"Violence tends to be cyclical and the easiest thing to do is fall into that cycle of violence," she said, and admitted she has worked hard over the years to control what used to be quite a temper. "I always struggle to try to remove the violence from my own heart, moment by moment, day by day," she said.

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