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Polytechnique Montréal is expanding its scholarship program honouring the 14 women who were killed at the engineering school 36 years ago.
The Order of the White Rose scholarship was established in 2014 and had previously been awarded to one female engineering student in Canada per year. This year, new donors have stepped up to fund 14 scholarships valued at $50,000 each for female students to pursue an engineering master’s or doctoral degree in Canada or elsewhere.
The scholarships, set up to pay tribute not only to the victims but also to their families and the others injured on Dec. 6, 1989, were awarded during a ceremony at the school on Monday.
“We achieved it this year, and we’ll need more donors to join us because we’ve secured 14 grants, but four are only funded for this year,” Maud Cohen, president of Polytechnique Montréal, said in an interview.
“We hope to be able to continue this mission and award scholarships over time … when you see the impact it has, it’s truly extraordinary.”
On that December day 36 years ago, a man motivated by a hatred of feminists shot and killed 14 women and injured 13 other people at the engineering school affiliated with Université de Montréal. White roses and ribbons have become the symbol commemorating the victims.
For the first time since the award honouring the victims of the École Polytechnique massacre was created in 2014, multiple scholarships have been handed out — as many as there were women killed in the anti-feminist attack in 1989.
Scholarship recipients for the 11th edition of the program include students enrolled at universities in Quebec, Alberta, Ontario and British Columbia.
“What these scholarships do is allow them to accomplish what they want to do, to go further in the execution of their dreams, to flourish in an environment that, at the time in 1989, was perhaps not as welcoming,” Cohen said.
One of recipients, Angéline Lafleur, completed a bachelor of electrical engineering and physics at the University of Ottawa and is pursuing a PhD at the University of Waterloo in electrical and computer engineering, specializing in quantum technologies.
Lafleur, 23, doesn’t remember when she first heard about the 1989 shooting, known as the Montreal Massacre. The child of two engineers, she grew up in a supportive environment where there were no qualms about a young woman being interested in engineering. When her parents told her about the tragedy, she said it made her realize the negative attitudes that some people had at the time toward women in the sciences.
“It was very difficult to hear. Just the number of women — all different ages — their different dreams and how all that was robbed from them,” Lafleur said. “So it’s been on my heart as I pursued engineering and I always remember this event and I’m just grateful of how far we’ve come.”
Lafleur said Monday she is “still riding on the high” of meeting the 13 other recipients, hearing their stories and interacting with previous winners, donors and Polytechnique staff. Amid reflection and commemoration, Lafleur said she found a positive energy celebrating the progress that has come since the shooting.
“We live on the dreams of the 14 women who couldn’t,” Lafleur said. “It’s just been amazing to see the work of people in Montreal and across Canada to not forget and to learn from that tragedy.”
Cohen said the number of women in engineering continues to improve. In 1989, women made up roughly 11 per cent of the Polytechnique student body. Now, the percentage of women in the bachelor program is almost 32 per cent. For all of Quebec, the percentage of women in engineering programs has grown from about seven or eight per cent to 16 per cent over the same period, she added.
Cohen said Polytechnique does a lot of recruitment at a very young age, visiting schools to discuss science and engineering and providing funds for students to attend science-focused day camps.
