WUNRN
"I want the women. I hate
feminists!," Separating the men from the women, Marc Lépine expelled the
men at gunpoint, lined up the remaining women students against the wall, and
began to fire.
MONTREAL MASSACRE - WOMEN STUDENTS
MURDERED - GENDERCIDE
The Montréal Massacre of December 6,
1989, in which 14 women students at the École Polytechnique were systematically
killed and 13 other students wounded by a lone gunman, is indelibly imprinted
on the minds of Quebeckers and others who struggled to comprehend the worst single-day massacre in
Canadian history.
Background
Since the
beginning of Québec's "Quiet Revolution" in the 1960s, women had been
making increasing strides in non-traditional occupations and educational
programs. In the 1970s and 1980s, growing numbers flocked to the École
Polytechnique, the
One of these was Marc Lépine, a 25-year-old Quebecker and child-abuse survivor who, as an adult, was described by acquaintances as a moody loner. Lépine had sought to join the Canadian Armed Forces, but was rejected. He had also studied for admission to the École Polytechnique, but was not accepted -- a decision he apparently blamed on "affirmative action" policies promoted by feminists and their sympathizers. In the suicide note he would leave on his body, Lépine provided some insights into the virulent mindset that fuelled his rage against women and feminists:
Please note that if I am committing suicide today ... it is not for economic reasons ... but for political reasons. For I have decided to send Ad Patres [Latin: "to the fathers"] the feminists who have ruined my life. ... The feminists always have a talent for enraging me. They want to retain the advantages of being women ... while trying to grab those of men. ... They are so opportunistic that they neglect to profit from the knowledge accumulated by men throughout the ages. They always try to misrepresent them every time they can.
Attached to the letter was a list of 19 prominent Québec women in non-traditional occupations, including the province's first woman firefighter and police captain. Beneath the list Lépine wrote: "[These women] nearly died today. The lack of time (because I started too late) has allowed these radical feminists to survive." It was, instead, dozens of ordinary women at the École Polytechnique who would bear the brunt of his fury.
The act of gendercide
On the
evening of December 6, 1989, shortly after 5 o'clock on the penultimate day of
classes before the Christmas holidays, Lépine carried a concealed Sturm Ruger
Mini-14 semi-automatic rifle into the École Polytechnique. His first female
victim, Maryse Laganiere, was killed in a corridor. He then proceeded to Room
303, a classroom which held 10 women students and 48 men, along with a male
professor. Firing two shots into the ceiling and shouting, "I want the
women. I hate feminists!," Separating the men from the women, he expelled
the men at gunpoint, lined up the remaining women students against the wall,
and began to fire. Six women died; the others were injured, but survived.
"Then,
Lépine went down to the first floor," wrote Maclean's (December 18,
1989). "Firing at diving, ducking students as he went, he entered the
cafeteria, where he killed [Anne-Marie] Edward and two of her classmates. Still
on the hunt, Lépine climbed back up to the third floor, where he strode into
Room 311. Students, unaware of the unfolding tragedy, were delivering
end-of-semester oral presentations. 'At first, nobody did anything,' recalled
Eric Forget, 21. Then, the gunman opened fire, sending two professors and 26
students scrambling for cover beneath their desks. 'We were trapped like rats,'
said Forget. 'He was shooting all over the place.' Other witnesses said that
Lépine leaped onto several desks and shot at women cowering beneath them. Four
more women were killed. Then, roughly 20 minutes after embarking on his
rampage, Lépine took his own life." By the time he blew off the back of
his own head, fourteen women lay dead, and thirteen other students were injured
(nine women, four men).
The murdered
women were:
Geneviève
Bergeron, aged 21;
Hélène Colgan, 23;
Nathalie Croteau, 23;
Barbara Daigneault, 22;
Anne-Marie Edward, 21;
Maud Haviernick, 29;
Barbara Maria Klucznik, 31;
Maryse Leclair, 23;
Annie St.-Arneault, 23;
Michèle Richard, 21;
Maryse Laganière, 25;
Anne-Marie Lemay, 22;
Sonia Pelletier, 28; and
Annie Turcotte, aged 21.
The
aftermath --
A shared responsibility?
In the wake
of the horrific murders, Quebeckers and Canadians -- along with many others
around the world -- rallied to commemorate the victims and denounce the
anti-feminist wrath of their attacker. Many called Lépine a "madman,"
but others rejected the term as downplaying the calculating nature of his
hatred towards women and feminists. Indeed, Lépine himself had rejected it in
his suicide note: "Even though the Mad Killer epithet will be attributed
to me by the media, I consider myself a rational and erudite person that only
the arrival of the Grim Reaper has forced to undertake extreme acts."
Declared Judy Rebick, who was spurred by the massacre to run for the leadership
of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women: "If he'd killed
14 Jews, he'd have been seen as disturbed, but also anti-Semitic."
Municipal
and provincial authorities declared three days of mourning; the flag at the
Canadian parliament flew at half-mast. Candlelight vigils were held across
Since 1989,
December 6 has been officially designated a national day of commemoration. Over
the years, debate has raged (renewed for the tenth anniversary commemorations
in 1999) as to whether the slaughter was an isolated act, or a symbol of male
violence against women. It was certainly, as noted, an act of mass murder
unprecedented in Canadian history. And the ritual, gendercidal separation of
women from men -- as also noted -- usually leaves men dead and women still
alive. Nonetheless, Lépine's rampage had strong echoes in the numerous acts of
domestic murder and abuse committed by men fearful that "their" women
will assert greater independence and move beyond traditional female roles.
(Lépine's suicide also typified the pathological self-hatred and
self-destructiveness which regularly features in such acts, and which makes it
difficult to speak of a simple exercise of "patriarchal power.")
Some carried
the argument of generalized male responsibility further still. "Men kill
women and children as a proprietary, vengeful and terrorist act," wrote
Montréal Men Against Sexism. "They do so with the support of a sexist
society and judicial system. As pro-feminist men, we try to reveal and to end
this continuing massacre, which will go on as along as we do not end sexism and
sexist violence, along with all of men's alibis for them."
Thinking along
similar lines,
In November 1996, the
Canadian Women's Internet Association founded the "Candlelight Vigil Across
the Internet", with the stated aim of "rais[ing] awareness of
violence against women across
The Montréal
Massacre was also a key moment in the struggle for gun control in
Lastly, if
Lépine had sought to terrorize Canadian women into staying put in their
traditional roles, his rampage may have had the opposite effect. Between 1989
and 1999, the proportion of women enrolled in Canadian engineering faculties
rose from 13 to 19 percent. And in absolute numbers, it more than doubled, to
nearly 9,000.