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On the 35th anniversary of the Polytechnique massacre, a Montreal ceremony honoured the 14 women killed in the 1989 shooting.
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“In mechanical engineering, it’s mostly men,” said Tégue Mbodj, a third-year mechanical engineering student at Polytechnique Montréal who laid down a memorial white rose at the ceremony. “But I think it’s changing. There was a time where I wouldn’t even be able to go to school not long ago,” adding she hasn’t felt prejudice in her classes.
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The victims — 13 students and one teacher — were targeted for the senseless and simple fact they were women. Another 10 women and four men were injured by the lone gunman on Polytechnique Montréal’s campus.
“Even though there are so many things that we need to fight for as women … I’m still proud of everything that has been done before, and I really feel emotional about it,” Mbodj said.
Mbodj was not the only emotional one at the ceremony Friday evening: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau helped wipe away the tears of Mayor Valérie Plante after they laid down white roses in honour of the victims, alongside Premier François Legault and dozens of politicians.
“If you see a woman who suffers from any sort of violence, you should find the courage to denounce it,” Legault said. “There is no excuse for violent people.”
Hours before the white rose ceremony, an imitation firearm was found in a school just outside Montreal.
“It is shocking. At the same time, unfortunately, according to the statistics, it’s not shocking,” said Liberal MP Rachel Bendayan of Outremont in reaction to the news. “There are incidents every day that involve firearms, and we know that when you have better laws in order to control the proliferation of guns, you actually reduce gun violence.”
The ceremony also comes one day after the Liberal government banned 324 firearm makes and models of assault-style firearms.
While work remains to be done toward gun violence and gender-based discrimination in Canada, Mbodj says the memory of the Polytechnique victims drives her.
“Some of the victims who survived even came back and studied, finished their degrees and accomplished incredible things in the world. That’s just so amazing, it has to motivate me. I have no other right than to be motivated.”
Her lifelong dream has been to go to space, but her No. 1 goal as an engineer is to make people’s lives better. “I don’t know exactly which kind of job is going to help me do that, but my very purpose as an engineer is to make people’s lives easier.”
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