A large crowd met at Westmount Park Sunday for the March for Humanity, an event that aimed to mark the 1915 Armenian Genocide, which saw an estimated 1.5 million Armenians killed by Ottoman Turks in Europe.
“We not only wanted to remember our victims but at the same time start a new journey, a journey of educating the population that a genocide did exist,” Georges Tsovikian of the Armenian Genocide Centennial Committee of Canada told CTV Montreal Sunday.
Organizers sought not only to bring attention to the plight of the Armenians 10 decade back but also welcomed such groups targeted by genocide such as Ukrainians, Rwandans, Cambodians.
Widespread murder based on ethnicity is still going on and events like stress that the practice must stop forever, as participant Meghri Doumania put it, “because we see genocide is still going on after two centuries and it's just not acceptable.”
And while the event occurred before anybody in attendance was born, one woman said that her mother knew the heartbreak.
“She suffered so much. I was a child and every night, every night, I was awoken because my mother wasn't sleeping. She was crying, crying, crying,” said Dikranuhi Arevian.
And while the event was far away in time and location, the memory lives on.
“We've inherited the Canadian culture, we believe in the Canadian culture but at the same time we'll never forget our heritage,” said Rafy Froundjian.
