December 6th is a special day in Canada.
It is one of those days we remember; where we were and what we were doing when we first heard the news bulletin.
The day is the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women in Canada,
and it marks the anniversary of the murders in 1989 of 14 young women at l'Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal.
They died because they were women.
Sherry and I attended the Dawson City memorial service led by women from the Dawson Women's Shelter.
As with services throughout the nation, the names of the fourteen women were read aloud
and roses were presented in remembrance.
Nothing seems to change.
The statistics remain unacceptable in our nation:
- sixty per cent of the 3 000 women missing or murdered in Canada since 1980 are Aboriginal
- about half the above have occurred since 2000
- Indigenous women in Canada are five times more likely than other women to die as a result of the violence
- sixty per cent of the known perpetrators are white men
- about seventy-five per cent of Aboriginal girls under eighteen have been sexually abused
- Aboriginal women make up three per cent of the population yet thirty per cent of the female prison population