Remember, Remember

Remember, remember!
The sixth of December,
The girls in Montreal were shot;
I know of no reason
Why Lepine’s open season
Should ever be forgot!
Young Gharbi with his rifles
Did the scheme contrive
To kill the feminist women,
Make them all die.
“Misogyny!” Media blows.
“Guns are all evil, don’t ya know?”
Good men fought, but they were no match
For the agenda to be dispatched!
Victims were martyred
Illness ignored
“If you won’t give your gun,
We’ll take two,
The better for all,
And the worse for you!”
A rope, a rope to hang Scapegoat,
A gun was the cause of this crime,
A hatred of women is fine,
Talk of mental illness is lies!
Holloa, girls! Holloa, girls! Blame the guns now!
Holloa, girls! Holloa, girls! Take them all now!
Hip, hip, hooor-r-r-ray!

For the last couple of years, I’ve wanted to write a blog about Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot.  I always seem to get bogged down in November and miss it though, only coming up for air about this time of year when the Ecole Polytechnique furor picks up.  So, this year, I decided to combine the two.  The above poem is my ode to Dec 6, set to the metre of Remember, Remember   😛

With the recent abolition of the long gun registry, I expected the Dec 6 hullabaloo to be a bit more chaotic than usual this year.  Surprisingly, it has been quite tame so far.  I’m not naive enough to think we’ve heard the last of it though.

The fourteen victims of Marc Lepine/Gamil Gharbi were killed on Dec 6, 1989 and their memories have been butchered all over again every Dec 6 since that date.  Rather than using their deaths as a launching point to bring awareness to mental health issues and violence against all people, a handful of Feminazi activitists chose to turn those tragic deaths into a pulpit for gun control and violence against women.  In a stroke, these misguided people drove an irreparable wedge between the sexes and alienated several million honest gun owning Canadians.  Each year, vigils and forums are held to discuss violence against women.  No doubt this is a worthy cause, but it’s irrelevant to the date.  Yes, only women were killed that day, and yes, Lepine spoke openly about his anti-women beliefs.  However, he could just as easily have fixated upon men, or children, or dogs.  It just so happens that his mental illness manifested against women. 

That’s why the memorials on this day are so out of touch with the reality of what happened in 1989.  Where are the focus groups and discussions on mental health?  Where is the funding for community health groups that could have helped Marc Lepine before he went on his ramapage?

Every year that we continue to focus on Marc Lepine’s victims rather than on the cause of his actions, is another year that the deaths of those women continue to have been in vain.  Yes, there are still gender issues that need addressing, but Dec 6 is not, and never was about feminism or misogyny.  Dec 6 is, and always has been, about mental illness.

When are we going to stop dishonouring the victims of Ecole Polytechnique and finally address the real reason that they died?