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Montreal marks 26th anniversary of Ecole Polytechnique massacre

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – As a community in San Bernardino, California reels from last week’s mass shooting, our country remembers another massacre.

It was 26 years ago today that more than a dozen women were gunned down at a university in Montreal.

So where are we now in fighting violence against women?

There is more awareness about the extent to which violence against women exists, but we haven’t seen enough change in behaviour, according to Angela Marie MacDougall with Battered Women’s Support Services in Vancouver.

“Violence against women — and I’m talking about domestic violence and sexual violence primarily perpetrated by male partners — continues at an epidemic level in Canada,” she says.

She says the roots of the problem, are deep.

“It comes down to some structural and attitudinal injustices, and inequalities within Canadian society, and that is real.”

MacDougall says there hasn’t been a sustained effort by all levels of government to deal with the issue, and she’s hoping that will change in the coming year.

She says there are opportunities for the federal government to support work done by women’s groups, and for each of us to take action in our communities.

On December 6th, 1989, 25 year old Marc Lepine shot and killed 14 women at Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique.

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