A survivor’s legacy
Activist still fighting 25 years after massacre in Montreal, write Marc and Craig Kielburger
Death threats don’t stop Heidi Rathjen. “One time, there were gun shots on my answering machine, and another time I received a photo of myself with a bullet hole through it,” she says.
Rathjen is an accidental activist — a survivor who emerged as one of Canada’s most vocal and longest-acting advocates for gun control in the aftermath of the Montreal Massacre. And she calmly accepts that sparking fierce debate and “making enemies” comes with the divisive territory that is her life’s work.
She wanted to become an engineer and was once cynical about an individual’s ability to influence government policy and laws before her life took an unexpected turn 25 years ago. On Dec. 6, 1989, a gunman walked into Rathjen’s school, L’École Polytechnique de Montréal, and started shooting women.
Fourteen female students and staff were killed in a tragic mix of gun violence and misogyny that became known as the Montreal Massacre and sent shock waves across the country.
“I was in a room thinking about final exams when a student came in and said, ‘There’s someone out there with a gun. I remember thinking, ‘Bullets in our school? This is impossible.’ Then we started hearing gun shots, then cries and screams and then silence, silence.”
Rathjen was in that room for 45 minutes until police came and let students out. Later, she huddled around a TV with classmates watching what they had survived unfold. Grief morphed into fierce determination for change.
While she isn’t well-known outside Quebec, Rathjen organized a national petition on stricter gun control laws, gathering more than a half-million supporters across the country — all before social media and online advocacy was born. Rathjen was there in 1990 when the petition was presented to then Justice Minister Kim Campbell, who promised action.
It was an early victory for a young activist who has since learned to rally after setbacks, keeping the memory of the massacred women front of mind in her quest to make society safer from gun violence. Eager to resume a sense of normalcy, Rathjen graduated and started work as an engineer — only to be drawn back to the cause later in 1990 when the gun control bill championed by Campbell didn’t have enough support in the House of Commons to be enacted into law.
The news came just a few days after the first anniversary of Dec. 6. “It was a slap in the face to the victims,” says Rathjen. “My head wasn’t in my work. It was on gun control. It became my mission.”
Rathjen left engineering behind to become the executive director of the Quebec-based Coalition for Gun Control. The breakthrough she was fighting for came on Dec. 5, 2005. Bill C-68 included mandatory registration of all firearms, a ban on short-barrelled and small-calibre handguns and let the government prohibit people from using firearms that were not reasonably used for hunting.
“This was a legacy that would save lives,” says Rathjen.
She has since started working for the Quebec Coalition for Tobacco Control (a cause the activist also believes saves lives) and leads a small group of École Polytechnique survivors that works on gun control. Poly Remembers was set up five years ago when the federal government started to talk about abolishing the long-gun registry, a move the group doesn’t support.
Rathjen has seen enough governments come and go and changes to Canadian gun laws to believe she may never rest on this issue. Next week, Ottawa is set to resume debate on proposed changes to federal gun legislation (known as Bill C-42) that were announced in the summer. Rathjen will be watching, eager to be the voice of the 14 women who died 25 years ago.
“I have a duty towards future generations and I want there to be a legacy of safe gun control,” she says. “I feel good gun control is like good public health care — it’s a fundamental Canadian value that we need to uphold.”
“On December 6th it’s not enough to just remember. We also need to act.”