Canada’s female athletes are towers of power — but how does that power translate to society at large?
Some wounds don’t heal.
Even today, 35 years after the massacre at the École Polytechnique, I can still see the wet snow falling over that massive building, hear the idling engines on the waiting ambulances, feel my toes numb with cold until, after hours of waiting, we heard the shattering news:
“There are 14 dead — and there are all women.”
Nine words that were the verbal equivalent of taking a slapshot to the face. Nine words that can’t be forgotten.
It all came back as I watched the Montreal Victoire take the ice for their game against the New York Sirens at Place Bell in Laval Wednesday. The game would not go well for the Victoire in a 4-1 loss, with Sarah Fillier scoring twice for the winners in front of a crowd of 5,415 that sounded like twice that many.
The point is not who won and who lost so much as the fact that the game took place at all. The startling success of the Professional Women’s Hockey League last season and in the early days of this campaign is a signpost of sorts, an indication that we have made progress toward the empowerment of women over the past 35 years.
The Victoire don’t have an especially young roster — seven players are 30 years old or older. Yet the oldest, 33-year-old superstar Marie-Philip Poulin, was not yet born at the time of the massacre. It would not be until nine years later that I would cover the first women’s hockey tournament at the Olympic Games.
Eight years later in Torino, I was told that an unidentified member of the Canadian women’s hockey team was buying a slice of pizza at an outdoor stand during the 2006 Olympics when a thief lifted her wallet from her purse and ran away. The cashier saw him and screamed and the player took off in hot pursuit. A hundred feet away, the Canadian woman took him down with a flying tackle and recovered her wallet.
The victory was tainted when former Spanish soccer president Luis Rubiales grabbed forward Jenni Hermoso and kissed her without her consent. The kiss was revolting but this time, the miscreant did not get away with it. FIFA moved from a temporary ban to banning Rubiales from all soccer-related activities while Spanish prosecutors are seeking a two-and-a-half-year prison term for the man who once ruled soccer in Spain.
From McIntosh to weightlifter Maude Charron to Camryn Rogers in the hammer throw, Canada’s female athletes are towers of power — but how does that power translate to society at large? We see women refereeing men’s sports, coaching behind the bench, starring in almost every sport.
Last April, the PWHL game between Montreal and Toronto drew a crowd of 21,505 to the Bell Centre, the largest attendance for a women’s hockey game ever recorded. Also last spring, Caitlin Clark, a female basketball player from Iowa, was leading the way as the ratings for the women’s March Madness tournament topped the men by a wide margin.
The affect on young girls who attend the Victoire games is written on their joyous faces, but will the world they enter as young women be any less dangerous than it was in 1989? Sadly, progress in curbing domestic violence has been fitful at best.
Across the country, domestic violence is considered “epidemic.” Whatever examples of equality and female empowerment we find in the sports world, women remain disproportionately likely to be murdered by their partners or family members.
Political changes on this continent, meanwhile, have brought more misogyny, more sanctioned hatred on social media, more threats to any woman in the public eye, athletes included.
We cannot bring back the 14 women murdered at the Poly that horrible afternoon. We can, however, enact and protest sensible gun laws, work together to curb domestic violence and strive for gender equality in every field — sports included.