For the 30th year in a row, group of Regina women meet to mark Montreal Massacre

It was 1989 when a group of Regina women came together in shock as details emerged about a vicious massacre in Montreal. 

"When we learned about the shooting, it was as though a lightning strike had just come down and hit our entire group," Judith Hindle said. "Could this have really happened? Surely this wasn't real."

Sorrow soon replaced disbelief as they learned the details of Canada's deadliest shooting that happened on Dec. 6, 1989. Marc Lépine, 25, reportedly yelled "I hate feminists," before killing 14 people because they were women. 

That night, Hindle and her colleagues lit candles and cried for the women. Since then, they've met every year on Dec. 6 in sombre tradition. 

On the 30th anniversary this year, the women will once again light 14 candles. They will ignite one more for Monique Lépine, the mother of the shooter. 

"This woman carried the burden of the greatest tragedy of all: that her own son would murder that many people," Hindle said. "We just felt an enormous wave of sympathy and empathy."

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In 1989, she and her colleagues were young professionals working for women's rights.

They worked at the local chapter of a feminist organization called the Canadian Congress for Learning Opportunities for Women. They designed a bridging program for SIAST to help women finish their education and find a career, which she said became a model for programs across Canada. 

The tragedy weighed especially heavy upon the group as they learned the women killed were trailblazers — most in engineering, a "non-traditional occupation" for women at the time. 

"I think young women today have very little concept of how how difficult it was for some women to complete their education," Hindle said. "And how many women still didn't believe that they could become engineers and scientists."

Their organization disbanded because of funding cuts but Hindle said the group carried on its commitment to women's rights and education.

There is sadness when they gather but Hindle said they also feel a sense of strength in their small community and in what they were able to accomplish for women. 

She said the group is aware of women's issues, "because they simply don't go away." 

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She pointed to widespread and current problems such as missing and murdered Indigenous women and the violent targeting of female politicians. 

"It's just so obvious that women are still at a great disadvantage — despite our gains — women still have to struggle in ways that it seems that [many] men don't have to," she said. 

"All of us just feel a heavy heart that this occurred and that murder of women and attacks on women are still occurring." Hindle applauded emerging social movements like  #MeToo but she also lamented the recent deaths of feminist icons and female activists —  role models for her and her colleagues. 

"We're hoping that someone in the emerging generations will pick up the baton and carry on."