Please to Remember the Sixth of December

Today, December 6, is the date of an important event in Canadian history.

I speak, of course, of the Halifax Explosion.

It was, in 1917, the biggest man-made explosion the world had ever seen. Almost two thousand thousand men, women, and children died.

But it is not remembered. Instead, this year as other years, December 6 is set apart for remembrance of the “Montreal Massacre,” in which a young Arab-Canadian man, Marc Lepine, walked into the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal and shot fourteen female students, then himself. Canada’s Minister of Justice, Irwin Cutler, has held a news conference to remind us of the occasion. A newsletter discussing its significance has appeared in my mailbox. In Toronto, they are selling white ribbons in the subway. In Vancouver, they have gathered at the Women’s Monument in Thornton Park for the ritual of remembrance. On both the League of Canadian Poets’ and the Canadian Poetry Association’s email lists, commemorative poems appeared, featuring stanzas like:

with sword in hand/gun in fist/he would put us in our place/back at the turn of the century/barefoot and pregnant

Why is the death of these fourteen remembered, and not the deaths of almost two thousand?

One reason, no doubt, is that the Ecole Polytechnique shootings are more recent. But no—the Halifax Explosion never earned the same kind of recognition, even when the memory was fresh. Or compare Air India, of almost the same vintage. Can you name the day?

No, the difference is that these victims were women, and almost exclusively women (Lepine did shoot some men, but they did not die). It has become a symbol in Canada of man's supposed murderous intentions towards woman.

At his press conference, Cutler seized the moment to denounce the "disturbing reality of violence against women." The newsletter warns “there are a lot of Marc Lepines around still.”

This, in fact, is precisely the reverse of the truth. We patently remember the “Montreal Massacre” largely because the deaths of fourteen women count more to us than the random deaths of a thousand. Similarly, the Vietnam Memorial in Washington includes one monument listing the names of all 50,000-odd Americans who died in Vietnam—and a second monument commemorating exclusively the eight female nurses who died. One woman counts as 7,000 men.

Second, Marc Lepine’s crime is remembered because it is news. And news generally means “man bites dog.” It is memorable precisely because it is so unusual. We are accustomed to men being separated out of larger groups to be shot. That is war everywhere. Can you think of another instance in which women were singled out to be shot? This is the shocking exception.

One woman counts as perhaps a million men.

That is the real lesson of the Montreal Massacre.

It is not that women are endangered by violence, or that women are commonly thought of as less than men.

Rather, the Montreal Massacre is the exception that proves the rule. Our extravagant reaction to it shows this.