Regina YWCA honours victims on 30th anniversary of Montreal shooting

Regina’s YWCA marked a grim day in Canadian history on Friday — the fatal shooting of 14 women at Montreal’s École Polytechnique in 1989.

On Dec. 6 that year, a gunman entered a lecture hall at the school, separated the women and men, and killed 14 women and injured 14 other people.

To commemorate the victims and build public knowledge about violence against women, members of the YWCA spent Friday morning handing out free roses to passersby at the Cornwall Centre.

“This year we wanted to bring it downtown and maybe reach a different audience, and spread the word to the community in another way,” said Tara Molson, the YWCA’s senior director of community programming.

Thirty years on, Molson said Regina and Saskatchewan have a lot to improve on for combating violence against women.

“Our rates of intimate partner violence and sexual assault are the highest in the provinces in Canada,” she said.

In Regina specifically, “our rates of reported intimate partner violence and sexual assaults are actually going up. So we’re not getting any better; in fact we’re getting worse.”

Data contained in the Regina Police Service’s annual crime stats shows sexual assault reports mostly increasing.

Starting in 2014 and ending on Oct. 31 this year, the following number of sex assaults were reported to police annually: 150, 156, 71, 230, 213 and 203.

Data provided by the police service shows that calls for service deemed to be domestic in nature have increased from 2017, and are on pace to exceed 2018’s total.

“Each year we turn away more than 2,000 women and children from our shelters … The domestic violence shelters in the city consistently have a wait list,” Molson said.

She hopes education programs at the YWCA help young men deal with their emotional and anger issues.

“(The goal is) getting away from some of those stereotypes and the pressures that are put on young men to be tough, and to be a man,” she said.

“We focus on educational programs in our schools. We have a program for young men, called Our Space. And it focuses on healthy masculinity, emotional literacy, bystander training and issues of consent, and healthy relationships.”