December 06, 2005
A Moment of Silence
It is December 6.
On this date, in 1989, 14 female engineering students were murdered because they were women. Because they were, in the mind of a serial killer, feminists.
The Association for Research on Mothering has asked us to take a moment today to remember these 14 women, who today might have been at work or making preparations for the holidays or rocking their children to sleep had their lives not been cut brutally short.
Geneviève BergeronPosted by Jen at December 6, 2005 06:58 PMHélène Colgan
Nathalie Croteau
Barbara Daigneault
Anne-Marie Edward
Maud Haviernick
Barbara Klucznik Widajewicz
Maryse Laganière
Maryse Leclair
Anne-Marie Lemay
Sonia Pelletier
Michèle Richard
Annie St-Arneault
Annie Turcotte
I was in graduate school in 1989. I graduated that May with a Masters in Architecture from the University of Illinois. I never heard about these murders. How can that be possible? Where did this happened? Did they ever find the murderer?
I was following the UnaBomber case pretty closely at the time because he had mailed his packages to university grad students working on research projects. The kind of research jobs my friends had.
Posted by: yawningdog at December 13, 2005 02:03 AMPerhaps because this happened in Canada, it was not publicized a lot. Sadly, even Canadians seem to be remembering it less and less. It happened in Montreal. I too was in university at the time (in Canada) and for all of the women I knew, it was very, very upsetting. To think that you could be killed just for being a woman and going to school - it was the first time I realized that something that goes on everyday in other countries could happen at home.
Posted by: Jen at December 14, 2005 06:15 PMThe fact that this happened to women engineering students strikes me as sadly ironic, somehow. In my experience (as a women with an MS degree in electrical engineering) women engineers are far less likely to discuss feminist issues than are women in more traditionally "female" fields of study. In fact, I can't remember ever talking about feminism with any female engineers--I've had some male engineers bring it up, though.
How tragic and absurd--I guess mass murders always are.
