Ringing hand bells in one hand while holding umbrellas in the other, people of all ages participated in Friday’s Take Back the Night march in Williams Lake.
Organized by the Violence is Preventable Committee, the event kicked off at the Save On Foods parking lot, despite the drizzling rain, with marchers walking through the downtown and returning for a barbecue.
“I have participated in this walk the last 12 years,” said the committee’s chair Tamara Garreau. “It’s been going on for a long time.”
Stuart Thompson was walking holding hands with his wife and their two teenage daughters on either side.
He was inspired to participate by his wife who has worked at Chiwid Transition House — the women’s shelter — for 21 years.
Take Back the Night is an international event and non-profit organization with the mission of ending sexual, relationship, and domestic violence in all forms.
In 2001, a group of women who had participated in the earliest Take Back the Night marches, came together to form the Take Back the Night Foundation in support of the events throughout the United States and the world.
Next up the committee will mark National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women on Dec. 6 — the memorial day for the 14 female engineering students who were murdered at l’École Polytechnique de Montréal on December 6, 1989 by an act of gender-based violence.
“We normally just do presentations in the high schools for that event and do presentation on be more than a bystander from the Ending the Violence program,” Garreau said.
