Vigil a reminder violence against women remains a Sudbury problem
'Disheartening ... to tell the women we don’t have a bed,' says YWCA Sudbury’s executive director
The Ecole Polytechnique shooting that occurred in Montreal on Dec. 6, 1989, is known as the deadliest femicide in Canada.
To mark the sombre anniversary, YWCA Sudbury, the Sudbury Women’s Centre and the Greater Sudbury Coalition to End Violence Against Women held a vigil at Tom Davies Square on Wednesday, which is the same day 34 years ago when Marc Lepine walked into a mechanical engineering classroom at the Montreal university, asked the men to leave before opening fire, targeting all women in the room and killing six of them. Claiming he was fighting feminism, he moved throughout the hallways and to another classroom, killing another eight women before taking his own life.
Dec. 6 has become the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women, which honours the 14 women who died that day, but also serves as a call to action to better support women and gender-diverse people in a world where the incidence of femicide continues to grow.
Sudbury and Northern Ontario are no exceptions to this alarming trend. Less than one month ago, Carol Fournier, 40 was murdered by her former partner Rick Jones in Sudbury. Jones was facing previous charges related to intimate partner violence when he killed Fournier and then took his own life.
Greater Sudbury Police continues to collect evidence in this case but confirmed that Jones was responsible for the murder.
In the same month in Sault Ste Marie, Bobbie Hallaert murdered his ex-girlfriend Angie Sweeney, 41 and his three children before killing himself.
A femicide list compiled by the Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses, a provincial coalition of women shelters, housing and community-based women’s organization, includes the names of murdered women (and children) along with other data about the nature of the crimes. In the last year, the association reported 62 femicide cases, which marks an increase from previous years, say advocates. The name of about one murdered Northern Ontario woman is included on the list each month.