A monument to the memory of the victims of the tragedy at the École Polytechnique de Montréal, Nef pour quatorze reines completely occupies the site and suggests a time to pause. Fourteen blocks are each linked to a band of black granite bearing the name of one of the victims: Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault, and Annie Turcotte. The blocks are placed along the entire length of this long, narrow space, encouraging passersby to stroll down a path of reflection and meditation.

The first and last names of the 14 women take form in the negative spaces of the letters – a symbol of absence – and through the contrast between the stone and stainless steel, evoking, respectively, commemoration and the profession of engineer. Engaged in a slow reading of the letters, the viewer gradually reconstructs the identities of the victims as a way of bringing back from the void the traces of a perceptible memory. Through the reader’s individual experience, the artwork subsumes the women’s identity and fate beneath important collective issues such as non-violence, respect, and memory.

“Our artwork is a memorial that integrates the site and the monument into a single commemorative gesture in memory of the 14 young women. The evocation of those who have died becomes the site and the site becomes a place of memory. The memorial invites pedestrians to a form of communication that is both visual and spiritual, that places at the centre of a landscape a commemorative event and a site of meditation and contemplation” 1 (1999).

1. Rose-Marie Goulet, quoted in Communiqué du Service de la culture de la Ville de Montréal, 6 May 1999 (our translation).

The artwork commemorates an infamous event in Canadian history: on 6 December 1989, 14 female engineering students were murdered by a misogynistic gunman. In 1999, to mark the tenth anniversary of the event, on the initiative of the Fondation des victimes du 6 décembre contre la violence and the Ville de Montréal, a park was created in the Côte-des-Neiges neighbourhood close to where the tragedy took place, and it now contains Rose-Marie Goulet’s Nef pour quatorze reines, an in situ commemorative installation.