You cannot write about strong women and not include Mary Billy. She was my mentor and friend. Mary was born in 1936 and passed in 2015. She was so angry about missing and murdered women, and then the Montreal Massacre happened, she became obsessed. In 1989 Marc Lepine walked into a classroom at Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal and shot fourteen women. Another ten women and four men were injured and then he killed himself. A pure act of misogyny and hatred towards women. Lepine was angry he did not get into engineering school and so many women did. He felt it just wasn’t fair. He blamed the smart women for his failure.
It was the beginning of Mary’s search for answers. She had recently started Herspective , a quarterly magazine for feminist writers. She tried to find the names of the women who were killed but the papers were not publishing their names. She was angry that all they were referred to were the women killed. Nothing about their lives, their names, their futures. It started a ten year journey for Mary. She sat at her kitchen table clipping newspaper articles about women killed by men. She had been working in a women’s safe house program and witnessed women running from bad situations on a daily basis.
The women killed were: Genevieve Bergeron. Helene Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Barbara Marie Klueznic, Maryse Leclair, Ann-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelltier, Micele Richard, Annie St Arneault, Annie Turcotte. They were all between the ages of 21 and 28. December 6, 1989
By the time I met Mary she was reaching ‘burn out’. She had found the names of 1,850 women killed by men. She had sent them to a friend who was going to work on The Femicide List as she could not take the stress of it anymore. She had started a list on data base and she was able to send that to me. I believe it was 2009 when she got the boxes of clippings back and sent them to me. It was overwhelming. I had already added quite a few names to the List but sat down and began sorting through the stories. I ended up with over 3,000 names, their stories and the outcome of arrests. Like Mary I became a grassroots activist. I interviewed families who had daughters or mothers killed. I talked to many other grassroots workers like Mary and I. People keeping lists. telling the stories, organizing walks.
I published the book rampage; the pathology of an epidemic three years later. Dedicated to Mary, as it never would have existed without her ten years of research. We became friends. She came to my plays. I wrote one about her, of course. We sent poetry back and forth. We did a video story about her. She often sent me cards or little gifts. I wrote a few articles about her and there is a chapter in my book about her as well. When I sat down today to write about her I realized I never knew her maiden name, the name of a husband or father to her four daughters. She had several grandchildren and I know she had a close relationship with her family. She lived in Squamish. I knew she had been a taxi driver. She was born in Abbotsford.Her father was Irish and her mother Scottish. I do not believe Billy was her maiden name.
In 2010 she told me she could only offer moral support. She was done. She blamed her poor health on the years of digging into missing and murdered women and children in Canada. We kept in touch for many years. Not close enough I guess as I did not hear about her death until about two years later. I have a couple of her poetry books Over the Falls and She is carved in Stone. She also wrote Under My Blue Hat. There was an earlier one in 1986. My favourite poem she wrote is below.
The Difference
The difference between, making love and rape, is the difference between reading a book
and ripping the pages out . . .
Mary always gave me great advice. Only about twenty women win the Helen Prize and she was one of them in 1998. She was awarded for her activism and feminism. Her magazine, Herspectives gave voice to so many women over the years. Mary’s roots in social justice began in the sixties when she gave an abused Abbotsford woman a place to stay. It started her on her lifelong journey. She told me the way we can honour abused women is to never shut up about it. She believed keeping a list and remembering their names would go a long way to making change.
For a few years our non-profit Art Matters Society sponsored a Memory March in the downtown eastside of Vancouver. The 3,000 names we had collected and researched were printed on signs, we carried as we walked. Every year we stood in a circle and began reading the names. We lit candles and we banged a bell before and after a minute of silence after the march. Mary was present at a couple of the events. I asked her how to change the way we talk about women. She replied, “Language shapes our reality .So let each of us be conscious of what words we use to describe women.”
She would be mortified today and where we have gone wrong. There seemed such hope and promise back when we were working on ending the violence. We have not. There are as many women being killed now every year as there were fifteen/twenty years ago. During Covid the numbers went up and 2025 marks a lower number of murders. But the numbers are creeping up. The language has become even worse than it was. Women’s abortion rights are being eroded in the United States. When a comedian can go on SNL and make (a joke?) about how women in their shorts working out at the gym look like whores. . . we have not come a long way. It feels like our rights are vanishing.
Years ago, I asked her what made her angry. Her reply was,”Women on the List were stabbed, choked, beaten to death and thrown into dumpsters. Or burned. Depersonalized. Treated like garbage. That is true hate, true femicide in all it’s fury.”
Her hope was that the List would carry on. A group called walkforjustice carried the List across Canada to Parliament Hill. It was a proud moment for Mary and I. Nothing came of it. For awhile there was a flurry of funding for non profits for programs. I checked a few months ago and found that the List I have in my book is still the best List out there. I checked every person to make sure the information was right. I have seen other lists that have men on the list by mistake, women who committed suicide on the list, as well. Still, the majority of women killed are due to domestic violence.
However, what shocked me when I was working on the List was the number of older women murdered by their sons and grandsons. Women in their eighties raped. Rape is not about what you are wearing or how pretty you are. It is an act of violence. Collateral damage in many wars. Raped after the killing stops.I feel like I should get back to work add more names . . .but then I feel like Mary that I am getting too old for this. Reading about the horrible cruelty day after day takes its toll.
Mary just knew right from wrong. Mary was a determined woman who thought shedding light on the deaths; the brutality and the shame would help. I cant even imagine what she would think of the Epstein files. Or the popularity of the Manosphere.
She would probably advise that now is not the time to quit. Now is the time to rise up once again. Mary called her work The Femicide List; Facing the Horror and it was. I still remember the day the boxes of newspaper clippings arrived and I sat down to look through them. It was only ten years worth of records. Just a handful of the women who have been killed. There are so many missing that will never be found. As Mary compiled the List she added comments full of rage and sorrow. I thought I was a feminist before I read her List. I thought I knew all about the harsh reality of being born a woman. I did not. I was shocked with every story, sickened by the depravity of man.
I did add children and babies to the List. Some of the babies were killed by their moms. Women do commit murder just not usually by choice.
I spent six years on the List and the book, It took me years to recover. Even though I added, doubled even, the List it was always Mary’s List and it always will be. She was a woman to be admired. Her legacy will live on. Because of her there are many lists being kept, data being analyzed and women being honoured. We both participated in many Take Back the Night events, Memorial Marches and Shoe Memorials. I hope Mary was able to sleep better when she got older. I hope she was able to make peace with the horror. She was an ordinary woman who went on an extraordinary journey.
My mentor, my friend.
