The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Jonathon Naylor Editor Mourners lit candles and bowed their heads in silence last week to commemorate one of Canada's darkest days. A late afternoon vigil on Main St. marked the 23rd anniversary of the Montreal Massacre in which 14 women were gunned down at an engineering school. 'When a woman or girl is murdered, our world is altered forever for the worse, bringing us grief, possibilities ended and profound ruptures,' organizer Colleen Arnold, speaking through a microphone, told some 50 mourners. 'Today, individually and as a society, we must remember. We cannot forget our losses or the circumstances of our losses, or we are condemned to repeat history over and over.' Standing in The Bargain! Shop parking lot last Thursday, Dec. 6, Arnold, executive director of the Women's Resource Centre, said public involvement is needed to end violence against women and girls. 'We can see the need not just to remember the dead, but to fight for equality for the living as well,' she said. 'These women can no longer speak for themselves. It is those of us who go on living who must speak for them and change the world we live in.' But preventing violence against females, Arnold said, stands as 'perhaps one of the greatest challenges we can adopt.' 'Yet the impact of successfully meeting this challenge would improve our society immeasurably and the effects would endure for decades,' she said, her breathe visible in the frigid winter air. Arnold called for each victim of the Montreal Massacre to be remembered by name. At that point, 14 mourners walked up to the microphone one by one to read the name of the victim whose photo they carried. Members of crowd, including Mayor George Fontaine and local Mounties, then observed a moment of silence, flames from their candles illuminating their grave expressions. Arnold ended her remarks with a call to action. 'Thank you to everyone who has come out today to support ending violence against women and girls,' she said. 'Let us here in Flin Flon work together and 'make it happen.''
