December 6, 1989

I was 18 years old. I remember coming home and hearing the news on CBC radio playing in the kitchen. If it happened today, it would have unfolded live on CNN, but this was before cell phones and before the 24 hour news cycle.

I remember my mom looking very worried and maybe hugging me just a little bit tighter that night. Montreal seemed very close on that dark winter's evening. One year later I would be away at university myself, away from home for the first time. These women were my peers, they could have been my friends. They could have been me.

I come from a line of educated women. Women who valued education and the right to have one. My grandmother was a nurse who kept working even after the war ended because she enjoyed what she did and was good at it. My mother was among the brightest people I have ever met - she could quote at length from the great works of literature, had an amazing memory for history and never lost a game of Scrabble. Both would have risked anything to protect their children. The idea of these women, separated for their gender, likely shared these qualities, still to this day is haunting.

Every year throughout university I went to memorials, sometimes missing class to do so. Even now, 22 years later, I still pause on this day to remember those 14 young women. Because history remembered is less likely to be repeated.