Honouring December 6 National Day of Remembrance & Action

By Dimitrije Martinovic
Dimitrije is staff with FOCUS MEDIA ARTS CENTRE

On Monday December 6, 2021, The Neighbourhood Group, Metrac, Council Fire, Daniels, Fred Victor, the Neighbourhood Pods and many more organizations came together on-line to hold an event in honour of the Nation Day of Remembrance & Action to Stop Violence Against Women.  The event called Amplifying Voices & Experiences was held in memory of the December 6, 1989, Ecole Polytechnique murder of fourteen women and the ten other women and four men who were injured in the anti-feminist attack.

The incident at the Ecole Polytechnique has accrued a particular resonance with Canadians, one that acts as a kind of watershed moment – defining and galvanizing a generation's consciousness regarding male violence against women, and the need to have stricter gun control regulations. In Regent Park where gun violence has claimed that lives of many young men, in particular young men from racialized backgrounds, the spectre of gun violence highlights a myriad of social concerns that underscore the fundamental inequalities experienced by BIPOC communities.

And so, it is only fitting that this day that occupies such a pivotal moment in Canadian history should be commemorated in Regent Park by representatives of that community who both know the experience of being marginalized, and who have worked to counter stereotypes based on gender and skin colour and have lost members to gun violence.

The Day of Remembrance and Action to Stop Violence Against Women event was hosted via Zoom by Wendy De Sousa the React Youth Program Coordinator with Metrac. Wenday was joined by Kevin Myran and Dakota First Nations Youth Life Coordinator with Toronto Council Fire, who performed some traditional drumming. Also performing was Sage (Jingle Dancer) who offered a prayer and in the form of a healing dance to help all those women who maybe struggling with violent men.

Brenda Macintyre, a London Ontario-based singer and motivational speaker, was the event's keynote speaker who spoke of her own journey of resilience and reawakening, which occurred when Brenda discovered that her adoptive parents had not disclosed to her that she was Native, and then, in 2016 Brenda's son was murdered. In 2020 she created and launched the Picking up the Pieces 13 Moon Resilience and Reawakening program using healing music to help women get through trauma, grief, and exhaustion.

Other guests included spoken word poet Jaydan, Hoop Dancer Athena Tomes, and the four main panelist Yohanna Beraki, Sarah Simpson, Walied Khogali Ali, and Nochole Leveck. The panelists spoke from their personal experience as people of colour who have encountered cultural barriers, and who struggled to overcome these. Among the topics covered by the panelist were how BIPOC communities have experienced greater instances of criminalization, the exclusion from housing and social services, access to health and mental services, and how the all of these issues have been further exacerbated by COVID-19.

The panel discussion was followed by performers spoken word artist T, and Afro-Caribbean dance group C-FLAVA. And to complete the inspirational and transformational nature of the event, Community Healer and Educator Chris Leonard led the virtual audience through a relaxation exercise to restore and repair the nervous system.

Wendy De Souza rounded of the event with a call to action to “join the ongoing fight to end gender- based violence and heal our communities in this generation.”