Under the Mat is a dark history podcast uncovering the overlooked corners of our collective past, centring feminist and anti-violence perspectives to challenge how we remember.
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Under the Mat is a dark history podcast uncovering the overlooked corners of our collective past, centring feminist and anti-violence perspectives to challenge how we remember.
Episode 30: Misogynist Violence, Collective Memory, and Engineering Futures ft. Francine Pelletier & Makenna Kuzyk
Under the Mat: A Dark History Podcast
51 minutes 6 seconds
1 month ago
Episode 30: Misogynist Violence, Collective Memory, and Engineering Futures ft. Francine Pelletier & Makenna Kuzyk
Host Aubrianna Snow speaks with Francine Pelletier about the legacy of the École Polytechnique massacre and the progress of feminism and with Makenna Kuzyk about the Order of the White Rose Scholarship and building brighter futures for women in engineering.
Francine Pelletier has had a long career as a journalist, both in print and for electronic media, in French as well as in English. Her career includes co-founding and acting as editor-in-chief of the women’s monthly magazine (La Vie en rose, 1980-87), social and political commentary in Montreal’s La Presse (1988-92) as well as Le Devoir (2013-2022) newspapers. She worked as a Quebec National Assembly correspondent for Radio-Canada’s Le Point (1993-1995). Then, as a reporter for CBC’s The National and, shortly after, as co-host of CBC’s flagship current affairs program, the fifth estate (1995-2000). In 2001, Francine Pelletier began writing, directing and producing independent documentary films. She has a dozen films to her name, including Public Enemy Number One (2003), on former Premier Jacques Parizeau, Sex, Truth and Videotape (2004), a 6-part series on women and sex and Battle for Quebec’s Soul (2022), on how Quebec nationalism has become more and more conservative. In 2015, she joined Concordia University’s Journalism Department as a lecturer. Francine Pelletier has won many awards, including the B’nai Brith Human Rights Award, the Judith-Jasmin award and three Gemini awards. She is the author of four other books: Second début: Cendres et renaissance du féminisme, Atelier 10 (2015), on her involvement in Quebec’s women’s movement; L’Art de se mouiller : Chroniques pour nourrir le débat. Écosociété (2022), a selection of her columns in Le Devoir; Au Québec, c’est comme ça qu’on vit : La montée du nationalisme identitaire, Lux Éditeur (2023), on the rise of conservative nationalism in Quebec; Dream Interrupted : The Rise and Fall of Quebec Nationalism, Sutherland House Books, (2025), an updated English version of the preceding book.
Makenna Kuzyk is currently completing her Master's Degree in Flight Test Engineering at the International Test Pilot School in London, Ontario, and is a recipient of the Order of the White Rose scholarship. She earned her undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Alberta, where she founded Mission SpaceWalker— the first all-female team to participate in the Canadian Reduced Gravity Experiment Challenge, which continues to conduct space-related research. She has been involved in Students for the Exploration of Space (SEDs) Canada, participating in their stratospheric balloon and analog research projects. Her internships included working at Rocketlab as part of the inaugural class of the Zenith Fellowship, the Canadian Space Agency, National Research Council Flight Laboratory, and Zipline as a 2024 Brooke Owens Fellow. She enjoys writing music under the Spotify artist name Mak <3, flying planes as a private pilot, and playing a variety of sports from snowboarding to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
Under the Mat is a dark history podcast uncovering the overlooked corners of our collective past, centring feminist and anti-violence perspectives to challenge how we remember.
