December 6th

Eighteen years ago today, 14 young women were shot to death at l'École Polytechnique de Montréal simply because they were women.
Canada subsequently designated Dec. 6 as the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women not only to commemorate the lives lost in this disgusting act of gender-based violence, but to remind us that violence and domestic abuse still have a devastating effect on women in society today.
According to Statistics Canada, 600,000 women in a common-law or marital relationship reported that they had been physically or sexually assaulted by a spouse in 2005.
These numbers don't include the thousands more who are silent, living secretly in a reality where violence is a daily routine.
Among the immigrant community especially, isolation, economic dependence, and language and cultural barriers prevent many of them from ever seeking help or speaking out about abuse.