It’s been thirty years. 

Read Francine Pelletier’s essay for CBC.  Or Loreen Pindera’s (CW: contains links to CBC footage from the night of the attack).  Read  Pascale Navarro or Catherine Handfield in La Presse, or Mary-Margaret Jones’  from five years ago in the Ottawa Citizen.  They don’t say everything that could be or needs to be said, but they say it better than I could.

There has been change, sure.  Within the academy, we give scholarships to women in STEM, and to some degree we do better at promoting women into senior positions (though there is still a ways to go).  Formally, at least, rules are changing.  But elsewhere?  The Yonge Street van attack, the missing and murdered Indigenous women, the increasingly visible misogynist attacks on women in public life (most notably in Canada against Catherine McKenna, but you know, just ask any female academic who’s on Twitter about their experiences)…the list goes on.  And maybe check out this recent photo of Canada’s premiers.    

This evil still walks. 

RIP

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