Vigils, events to mark 35th anniversary of Polytechnique anti-feminist mass killing

Polytechnique Montréal will pay tribute Friday to the 14 young women who were murdered at the engineering school 35 years ago.

Vigils and other events are scheduled in Montreal and across the country to mark the anniversary of the Dec. 6, 1989, anti-feminist mass killing.

Representatives of the school and student associations will lay flowers in the morning at Polytechnique’s commemorative plaque, where the public is also invited to pay their respects during the day.

The flags in front of Polytechnique’s main building will be flown at half-mast until dusk.

White ribbons will abound to commemorate the tragedy on what is also the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women.

At 5:10 p.m., at the exact time the first shots were fired, 14 beams of light will illuminate the sky above Mount Royal, lit one at a time as the names of the 14 victims are read out.

The women killed in 1989 were Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault, Annie Turcotte and Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz.

— This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 6, 2024.