Fourteen has long been a significant number at Polytechnique Montréal.

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Fourteen women were killed at the engineering school on Dec. 6, 1989, in a mass shooting that is now recognized as a femicide. This misogynist massacre has cast a long shadow over the city and Polytechnique, where the duty of remembrance remains strong 36 years later.

But this year, 14 will be given new and powerful meaning at Polytechnique. The Order of the White Rose, the scholarship and sisterhood established to commemorate the 14 women who were murdered, will be expanded by 14 new recipients, up from just one.

On Sunday, 14 women will gather in Montreal to meet each other for the first time and perhaps spark life-long connections. The names of the 14 laureates will be unveiled at a ceremony on Monday before dignitaries, donors and family. Each of the 14 will receive $50,000 to study at the graduate level anywhere in the world. The 14 new members of the Order will carry the torch of the 14 women whose lives and potential were extinguished.

Polytechnique has always tried to learn from the dark events of Dec. 6, 1989 by making the future brighter, said Maud Cohen, the engineering school’s president. Now it’s magnifying the promise of brilliant young women 14-fold.

“It’s true that all this is very symbolic, that year after year we’ll recognize 14 young women with these scholarships,” said Cohen. “The importance isn’t necessarily for them to bear the weight of representing the 14 women, the importance is for them to be able to achieve what they want to do in the profession of engineering. … It’s an opportunity for them to try things, to accomplish things, to push themselves further than they ever imagined.”

The idea started with a simple questions: What if there were 14?

It was initially posed by Franca Gucciardi, who was then CEO of the McCall MacBain Foundation, a charitable trust started by Canadian entrepreneurs John and Marcy McCall MacBain, who made the largest single charitable gift in Canada at the time, giving $200 million to McGill University to fund scholarships.

Once the seed was planted, it was up to Cohen and Polytechnique to grow it.

But ramping up from one to 14 recipients of the $50,000 bursaries was no easy feat. It required a major fundraising push as well as an overhaul of the usual programming, said Valérie Bélisle, Polytechnique’s vice-president of philanthropy and alumni relations.

“We’re at 14 for this year, but trust me, it’s been challenging,”  she said. “It really came about by........

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