I wrote this piece years ago about the impact the December 6 massacre had on my life. It was published in The Ottawa Citizen on December 4, 1993, just four years after the massacre. Although there are a few things I’d change or add, for the most part it still resonates, so I thought I’d share it today on the anniversary of the 1989 massacre of 14 women at École Polytechnique.
One night a few years ago I lay frightened in bed. Someone in the parking lot was throwing something repeatedly at my window. While my rational side felt it was just a friendly prank, my mother-bear instinct told me to restrain my curious three-year-old from going to look. What if more than a mischievous smile came through the window, but a brick—or worse?
I’d seen a news feature on violence against women that night. Two weeks earlier, I’d wept over the death of my dog, a Doberman that had provided me with comfort and security for nine years.
During that time, I had almost forgotten the menacing possibilities of unexplained creaks and groans in the floor boards of an aging home. For the first time in years, I remembered what it was like to feel unsafe in my own bed. My little girl curled up to me and said, “Mommy, I wish Blue didn’t die. I wish Daddy was home.”
My children’s father is by no means perfect, but like an increasing number of his peers, he has decided that respect for others and ongoing self-examination should be a cornerstone of his life. Here is a man who is light years beyond “helping out.” He does his share. When I wanted a home birth, he trusted my instinct. When he heard a disc jockey make light of “Take Back the Night” activities, he registered his complaint with the station management.
That night, I agreed with my daughter. I wished her Daddy was home.
The wish, and the fear, lasted only moments. The lock rattled. The front door opened. Footsteps mounted the darkened stairs. A mans’ form paused outside my half-open bedroom door before pushing it open.
“Hi honey, I’m home,” my husband whispered. “Didn’t you hear me throwing things at the window?”
It was the night of Dec. 6, the second anniversary of Marc Lepine’s massacre of 14 women, and the first national day of memorial to female victims of male violence.
“I got lots of comments on my white ribbon today,” he said. “The women were pleased to see it. A couple of the guys wished they’d thought of it. I was surprised how many of the kids knew what it meant. Did anyone comment on yours?”
Heart still racing, I replied no, no one had taken notice.
We live in a word in which property ownership is wealth and wealth is power; in which 80 per cent of the work, paid or unpaid, is done by women, while 99 per cent of the property is owned by men; in which men have the ability to exert both fiscal and physical power over women; in which Marc Lepine is far from alone in instilling fear in women because of his choice to abuse that power.
In this work, it is incumbent upon me to understand life through the eyes of men like my father, who, though never abusive, believed and acted as if he was superior to my mother; men like the ones who abused me as a child, an adolescent, and a woman; even men, like my husband, who strive to behave differently, but don’t always know how.
There is no parallel requisite for them to see the world through my eyes.
My husband’s actions that night are illustrative. He requires neither physical, emotional, nor fiscal superiority over me in order to feel masculine. While he wishes that the economic value of children-rearing was recognized, he respects its intrinsic value as much as if I received remuneration. He does not silently tolerate sexist remarks.
On that December evening, this man committed an act of awareness: He wore a white ribbon. Then he came home and committed an act of unawareness.
Acting aware is a good first step. But for my husband to be aware of what it is to be a woman in 20th-century North America, he must find a way to experience the fear that I live with every day. The panic to which I’ve grown accustomed through years of practice. The heart-quickening anxiety I feel when a guy in a muscle car slows down to take a better look, when heavy footsteps quicken behind me on an empty street, when a stranger—or even a neighbour—knocks on my door in the middle of an evening when I’m home alone, not even a dog to keep me company.
As I lay frightened in bed that night a few years ago, I reviewed my choices: Stay put or go look. If I looked, I knew I’d probably see a friendly smile; or I might be confronted by a man reminded by that evening’s newscasts of his anger at women. If I stayed put, I could be teaching fear to my daughter; or I could be assured that I was protecting the two of us from anger that strikes enough ordinary Canadian women to fill a room in the time it takes to watch a Schwarzenegger video.
If I looked, I might later hear a police officer, doctor or judge berating me for taking unnecessary chances, for assuming that my own home could protect me and my young children from harm. If I stayed put, I could hear the voice in my own head chastising me for consenting to live my life in fear.
Being aware of every move, every minute is the reality of the world through women’s eyes. It is a reality I try daily to share with my husband, one he must find a way to learn and share with other men if it is to change in his little girl’s lifetime. It’s the reason that men like him, who start by wearing white ribbons on Dec. 6, must not stop there.
It’s why Dec. 6 will never again be just another day.
Related stories:
Allison Hanes: Reflections on a misogynist massacre at Polytechnique
What’s changed 35 years after the Montreal massacre?
‘Name what things are’: Recognizing ‘femicide’ 35 years after the Montreal massacre
Montreal to shine with 15th beam in tribute to all murdered women on Polytechnique anniversary
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