I’ve been reflecting a lot about the events of 6 December 1989 in Montreal. Many of the victims of the Ecole Polytechnique shooting were born around the same time as me, but their lives were abruptly cut short by a man with a grudge against feminists (or his distorted idea of what a feminist is) and a history of domestic violence (frequently the case with the perpetrators of mass shootings). The 14 women were engineering students, or worked in the school of engineering. I am a woman and a feminist and I work in IT, part of the STEM field. That could’ve been me. So this feels personal in the same way that the Pulse nightclub shooting felt personal because I am bisexual and genderqueer, and the victims were LGBTQIA.

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