It is twelve years since that terrible day when a lone gunman slaughtered fourteen young women at Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique.

Fourteen women killed only because they were women wanting to do what used to be a man’s job. In memory of what has come to be called the Montreal Massacre, we promised we would honour those women. So on December 6, we remember them and all women killed only because they were women.

Every year, thousands of Canadians — women and men — participate in vigils and meetings to remember and to pledge anew to end the terrible scourge of male violence against women. It is remarkable that Canada has an official day of commemoration to end male violence against women, but what has been done since that dark day more than a decade ago to really honour their memories?

There are still about 100 women a year killed by their partners and ex-partners. As the terrible case of Gillian Hadley shows, authorities still do not take the threats of men against women seriously enough. Her estranged husband who had violated court orders to stay away from his spouse three times, shot Hadley to death in Pickering, Ontario, two years ago. An inquest is currently examining what went wrong. It is a tragically familiar story.

Despite his violations of court orders and the fact that Ralph Hadley fit the profile of a high-risk offender in every way, the courts let him out on bail for an assault charge because his parents vouched for him. Then he killed her and committed suicide.

Gillian Hadley did everything she was supposed to. She got restraining orders, charged him and sought to leave the matrimonial home. Still, she died. She was on a waiting list for housing. Despite her desperate need, there was no place at the inn.

Eileen Morrow of the Ontario Association of Interval Houses says it is thelack of support for survivors of violence that is the biggest problem. “It’s getting harder and harder for people providing services,” she said in an interview. “More and more women are taking action to leave abusive men, but there is nowhere for them to go because of cuts to social housing and social assistance.”

The Ontario government has increased shelter beds and expanded the Assaulted Women’s Help Line, but second-stage housing that was cut several years ago has never been reinstated and longer-term social housing has ten-year waiting lists.

Another inquest in Winnipeg is examining the horror story of Doreen Leclair and Corrine McKeown. They were stabbed to death in February 2000 by McKeown’s estranged boyfriend, who had a court order to stay away. The sisters, who are aboriginal, made five calls to police during an eight-hour period. Police only answered the first and last call, when it was too late.

In British Columbia, Bonnie Mooney sued the RCMP in Prince George for failing to respond after she complained about being harassed by her former common-law husband. He later killed her best friend and wounded her daughter in a shooting rampage from which she escaped. She lost the suit, but the court recognized that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigation had been inadequate.

So, despite an enormous increase in public awareness and condemnation of male violence against women, police and courts are still not taking women’s complaints seriously enough.

Perhaps the worst development in these twelve years has been the progressive weakening of women’s rights advocacy groups. The National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC), which was responsible for lobbying the government to declare December 6 a day of commemoration, is in the deepest financial crisis of its history. Its very existence is threatened. Provincial women’s rights groups have almost disappeared.

It was the advocacy of groups like NAC — along with anti-violence groups that broke the silence of violence against women — that insisted governments take the problem seriously. They created safe places for women and their children to flee abusive men. Even more importantly, since violence against women is deeply rooted in sexist notions of male dominance, feminist advocacy is essential to eliminating it.

Governments, courts and police have not problem listening to experts on political terrorism. If they were willing listen to experts in the terror that violent men inflict against women, maybe we would be making more progress in eliminating the terrible violence that was so dramatically exposed on December 6, 1989, in Montreal.

Judy Rebick

Judy Rebick

Judy Rebick is one of Canada’s best-known feminists. She was the founding publisher of rabble.ca , wrote our advice column auntie.com and was co-host of one of our first podcasts called Reel Women....