Fourteen Cold Lake men stepped out in glamorous footwear at the Energy Centre on Saturday morning.
It was all part of the Stepping Stones Crisis Centre’s “Walk A Mile In Her Shoes” event to raise
awareness around the issue of gender-based violence. In addition to fostering public awareness, participants and sponsors managed to raise more than $5,000 for the Centre.
Cold Lake mayor Bob Mattice and councillor Ray Cowell were among the participants. Staff Sergeant Ryan Howrish and some RCMP colleagues also took part, along with Stepping Stones board member Armand Gagnier and several others.
“Walk A Mile In Her Shoes is an international event that we host at a local level,” said Dallin Schmidt, Stepping Stones’ marketing and communications specialist.
“It’s a men’s march to raise awareness of gender-based violence, especially right within our community,” Schmidt said. The guys who show up are wearing the big red high heels and and it’s quite fun and light-hearted, although it is obviously still a fairly sobering subject.”
The first thing Walk A Mile attendees see at the event is a table full of shoes placed in memory of Alberta victims of gender-based violence, and especially gender-based homicide.
Schmidt says the table is “a reminder that even though we’re laughing and having fun and got good music on and everything, it is still a very serious topic and a serious problem.”
The numbers are indeed sobering. In Canada in 2022, 184 women and girls were victims of violent homicides and intimate partner violence resulting in homicide.
“That’s someone every 48 hours, a woman or a girl in Canada every 48 hours is killed through intimate partner violence,” Schmidt said.
“And that’s just one aspect. Children who witness intimate partner violence are twice as likely to have psychiatric disorders as those from non-violent homes. Within the last year, 61 per cent of women in Canada report being victims of sexual violence or unwanted sexual contact,” he said.
In the face of such a serious problem, Schmidt says it’s important to reach out to men particularly, without implying collective guilt or shame. Instead, the light nature of the event is meant to inspire men to see gender-based violence as a problem they can help solve.
“It’s not saying, ‘this is my fault.’ This is a situation that we are handed,” Schmidt said. “And though it’s not necessarily our fault, it is our responsibility to help those who can’t help themselves or can’t see a way to help themselves.”
“We do have a role to play in that, to dismantle the toxic masculinity and the assumption that ‘boys will be boys’ or whatever,” he said.
“That’s just not the way it is. and it’s not the way that it can continue to be.”
