It has been 19 years since Marc Lepine went on a shooting rampage in the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, killing 14 women, most of them engineering students.
Western Engineering faculty, staff and students host an annual memorial service to remember the deaths of these 14 students and Lynda Shaw, a 21-year-old Western Engineering student who was murdered in 1990 while returning to Western after a holiday weekend with her family near Brampton, Ontario.
This year’s ceremony is scheduled for Friday, Dec. 5 at 11 a.m. in Room 3109, Spencer Engineering Building. The event includes comments from Western’s Women in Engineering Group, a candle lighting ceremony, and an address by guest speaker Anne Baxter, Director of Marketing and Communications at the YMCA of Western Ontario.
White Ribbon Campaign
Women in Engineering (WIE) and the Undergraduate Engineering Society are collaborating with Western’s University Student Council to run additional events in the UCC Atrium on December 5 and will be participating in the White Ribbon Campaign (WRC). The WRC is the largest effort in the world of men working to end violence against women. In more than 55 countries, campaigns are led by both men and women, even though the focus is on educating men and boys. In some countries it is a general public education effort focused on ending violence against women. Wearing a white ribbon is a personal pledge to never commit, condone or remain silent about violence against women and girls. Wearing a white ribbon is a way of saying, “Our future has no violence against women.” WRC in Canada runs its campaign from November 25 (the International Day for the Eradication of Violence Against Women) until December 6, Canada’s National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women.
Ritual of Re-Membering
The Circle Women’s Centre at Brescia University College hosts its annual Ritual of Re-Membering on Saturday, December 6 at 12 p.m. in Brescia Auditorium. The Ritual of Re-Membering seeks the creation of sacred time and sacred space to honour the loss of their young lives and the lives of all women that have been lost to gender-based violence. The ritual moves through our grief and sadness into hope and power for transformation and change.