In just a few days it will be the 35th anniversary of the Montreal Massacre, the tragic day when 14 women were gunned down at Ecole Polytechnique.
Ahead of that day, a young woman from Alberta received the Order of the White Rose, a scholarship created in honour of the woman who lost their lives in 1989.
Makenna Kuzyk, a mechanical engineering graduate from the University of Alberta, was introduced as the latest winner of the $50,000 scholarship at the Montreal school on Monday.
The scholarship, now in its 10th year, was founded by the school, renamed Polytechnique Montreal engineering school, and survivors of the tragedy.
Kuzyk, who is from Calgary, recently became the first woman to be admitted to the International Test Pilots School Master of Science in Flight Test Engineering program, which operates out of the London International Aiport in southern Ontario.
Kuzyk said she was shocked to discover that she was this year’s recipient.
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“I was shaking because I just finished my pilot’s licence, which pretty much drained my bank account,” she told reporters on Monday. “I wasn’t sure how I was going to pay for my master’s degree… but this is going to go miles in helping me.”
Kuzyk said she also aims to help boost the visibility of women in the aerospace industry as she studies microgravity, a field involving extreme low-gravity environments, such as spacecraft, that appear to have no gravity at all.
“I feel like my dream has grown from just going to space and wondering what’s beyond our skies to actually growing the platform,” she said. “I think Canada has a lot of resources to do it, but we just haven’t done it yet.”
Nathalie Provost, a survivor of the 1989 shooting, is one of the Grandmothers of the Order of the White Rose. She introduced Kuzyk as this year’s award ceremony and said she thinks this year’s winner has an incredible future.
“She’s stronger than what she thinks she is and she radiates with joy. So I was completely under her charm,” Provost said. “She seems to have no boundaries in her dreams, in what she is, in what she accomplishes. And it’s very compelling. You want to follow her.”
Provost said she believes it is important for the Order of the White Rose to continue to raise the profile of young Canadian women.
“The more I am involved with the Order of the White Rose, the more I think it’s important that we do not only recognize [what] wonderful women they are, but our responsibility to accompany [them] in that journey because nobody can build a world together by themselves,” she said.
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