A driving force in initiating Toronto’s Take Back the Night marches, Women Against Violence Against Women was a feminist organization active in Toronto and Vancouver. Susan G. Cole, one of the founders of Women Against Violence against Women, describes how, in 1978, the organization catapulted the issues of violence against women onto the public agenda. Susan describes the demonstrations WAVAW organized against a Snuff movie, against a concert trivializing abuse against women by the group Battered Wives, against the rape of women in War, and against the objectification of women in a Harry Rosen shop window. 

“[Women were] sitting there with their own experience and keeping it inside and keeping our fear and thinking it only happens to us, and it’s so important for women to understand that it happens to us all, that we’re not alone, that it’s not our fault, that there’s something else going on that has to be dealt with.”