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The École Polytechnique Massacre, also known as the Montreal Massacre, occurred on December 6 1989, at the École Polytechnique de Montréal in Montreal, Quebec. A 25 year-old man, Marc Lépine, entered the campus and carried out a shooting rampage in which 14 women were killed and 14 other people were wounded, before turning the rifle on himself and committing suicide.

The massacre

Sometime after 4 p.m. on December 6 1989, Marc Lépine arrived at the École Polytechnique building, an engineering school affiliated with the Université de Montréal, armed with a semi-automatic rifle and a hunting knife. He had purchased the Sturm, Ruger brand rifle, mini-14 model, on November 21 1989 in a Montreal hunting store, telling the clerk that he was going to use it to hunt small game. Lépine was familiar with the layout of the building since he had been in and around the École Polytechnique at least seven times in the weeks leading up to the event.

Lépine sat for a time in the office of the registrar on the second floor, seated at the entrance. He was seen rummaging through a plastic bag and did not speak to anyone, even when a staff member asked if she could help him. He left the office, and was subsequently seen in other parts of the building before entering a second floor mechanical engineering class of about 60 students at about 5:10 p.m.
After approaching the student giving a presentation, he asked everyone to stop everything and ordered the women and men to opposite sides of the classroom. No one moved at first, believing it was a joke, until he fired a shot into the ceiling.

Lépine then separated the women from the men and told the men to leave, which they did. He asked the remaining women whether they knew why they were there, and when one student replied “no,” he answered: “I am fighting feminism.” One of the students, Nathalie Provost, said, "Look, we are just women studying engineering, not necessarily feminists ready to march on the streets to shout we are against men, just students intent on leading a normal life." Lépine responded, "You're women, you're going to be engineers. You're all a bunch of feminists. I hate feminists." Lépine then opened fire on the students from left to right, killing six and wounding three others, including Provost.

Lépine continued into the second floor corridor and wounded three students, before entering another room and attempting twice to shoot a female student. His weapon failed to fire, so he entered the emergency staircase where he was seen reloading his gun by another student. He returned to the room he had just left, but the students had locked the door and Lépine failed to unlock it with three shots fired into the door. Moving along the corridor he shot at others, wounding one, before moving towards the financial services office, where he shot and killed a woman through a door window as she moved away after locking the door.

Next, he went down to the first floor cafeteria, in which about 100 people were gathered. The crowd scattered after he fired shots, killing a woman standing near the kitchens and wounding another student. Entering an unlocked storage area at the end of the cafeteria, he shot and killed two women who were in a storage room next to the cafeteria. Lépine told a male student and a female student to come out from hiding under a table; they complied and were not shot.

Lépine then walked up an escalator to the third floor where he shot and wounded one female and two male students in the corridor. He entered another classroom and told the three students giving a presentation to "get out," shooting and wounding Maryse Leclair who also on the low platform at the front of the classroom. He fired on students in the front row and then killed two students who were trying to escape the room. Other students dived under their desks, and Lépine moved towards women students, firing and wounding three students and killing one. He changed the magazine in his weapon, and moved to the front of the class, shooting in all directions. At this point, the wounded Leclair asked for help and, after unsheathing his hunting knife, Lépine stabbed her three times, killing her. He took off his cap, wrapped his coat around his rifle, exclaimed "Oh, shit," then committed suicide by shooting himself in the head, 20 minutes after having begun his attack. About 60 bullets remained in the boxes he had carried with him. He had killed 14 women in total (13 engineering students, and one employee of the university) and injured 14 other people including four men.

Suicide Letter

Marc Lépine's inside jacket pocket contained a suicide letter and two letters to friends, all dated the date of the massacre. Some details were revealed by the police two days after the event , but the full text was not disclosed. A year after the attacks, Marc Lépine's 3 page statement was leaked to journalist and feminist Francine Pelletier. It contained a list of 19 prominent Québec women, including Pelletier, whom Lépine apparently wished to kill because of their feminism. The letter was subsequently published in the La Presse newspaper, where Pelletier was a columnist at the time. Lépine blamed feminists for ruining his life and outlined his reasons for the attack, including his anger about affirmative action, which he believed had kept him from claiming his 'rightful place' at the engineering school, and more generally at the women's movement itself and related social changes through which women were increasingly entering the workforce. He also mentioned Denis Lortie, who killed three government employees and wounded 13 others in an armed attack on the National Assembly of Quebec in May 1984.

Murder victims

• Geneviève Bergeron (b. 1968), civil engineering student.
• Hélène Colgan (b. 1966), mechanical engineering student.
• Nathalie Croteau (b. 1966), mechanical engineering student.
• Barbara Daigneault (b. 1967) mechanical engineering student.
• Anne-Marie Edward (b. 1968), chemical engineering student.
• Maud Haviernick (b. 1960), materials engineering student.
• Maryse Laganière (b. 1964), budget clerk in the École Polytechnique's finance department.
• Maryse Leclair (b. 1966), materials engineering student.
• Anne-Marie Lemay (b. 1967), mechanical engineering student.
• Sonia Pelletier (b. 1961), mechanical engineering student.
• Michèle Richard (b. 1968), materials engineering student.
• Annie St-Arneault (b. 1966), mechanical engineering student.
• Annie Turcotte (b. 1969), materials engineering student.
• Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz (b. 1958), materials engineering student.

Marc Lépine

Marc Lépine was born Gamil Gharbi to a French-Canadian mother and an Algerian father. Marc's father was a Muslim who wanted women to stay in traditional roles. He was physically and verbally abusive to his wife and son, and discouraged tenderness between mother and child. After his parents separated when he was 7, he lived with his mother. He attempted to join the Canadian army during the winter of 1980-1, but was rejected, according to his suicide letter, because he was "anti-social". Gharbi changed his name legally to Marc Lépine in 1982. The brief biography of Marc Lépine that police released the day after the killings described him as intelligent but troubled. He completed three years of CEGEP and spent an additional year studying electronics.. He applied to the École Polytechnique in 1986 and was accepted providing he complete two additional CEGEP courses. He completed one of them in the winter of 1989.

Aftermath

The massacre profoundly shocked citizens across Canada. The Québec government and the Montréal city government declared three days of mourning.
The day of the attack, television journalist Barbara Frum interviewed survivors; she later questioned why people insisted on "diminishing" the tragedy by "suggesting that it was an act against just one group?"
A public inquiry was not ordered as it was feared that extensive public discussion would cause pain to the families and lead to antifeminist violence.
The injured and witnesses among university staff and students suffered a variety of physical, psychological, social, existential and financial consequences, including post-traumatic stress syndrome. A number of students committed suicide of whom at least two noted in their suicide notes that their anguish following the massacre was the reason for their suicides. Nine years after the event, survivors reported still being affected by their experiences, though with time some of the effects had lessened.

The massacre was a major spur for the Canadian gun control movement. One of the survivors, Heidi Rathjen, who was in one of the classrooms Marc Lépine did not enter during the shooting, organized the Coalition for Gun Control with Wendy Cukier. Their activities, along with others, led to the passage of Bill C-68, or the Firearms Act, in 1995, ushering in stricter gun control regulations. (See Gun politics in Canada).

Police response to the shootings was heavily criticized for the amount of time it gave Lépine to carry out the massacre. The first police officers to arrive at the scene established a perimeter around the building and waited twenty minutes for the SWAT team to arrive. During this period, several women were killed.

Subsequent changes to emergency response protocols led to praise of emergency responders' handling of the Dawson College shooting in 2006 in which one woman was killed by a lone gunman. In that incident, coordination amongst emergency response agencies and prompt intervention was credited with minimizing the loss of life.

Memorials

The anniversary of the massacre has been marked since 1991 as the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women, intended as a call to action against discrimination against women. Each year, commemorative demonstrations are held on December 6 across the country in memory of the slain women. Numerous memorials have been erected in various centres.

The Place du 6-Décembre-1989 in the Côte-des-Neiges/Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough of Montréal was created as a memorial to the victims of the massacre. Located at the corner of Decelles Avenue and Queen Mary Road, it includes the art installation Nef pour quatorze reines (Nave for Fourteen Queens) by Rose-Marie Goulet.
A memorial erected in Vancouver sparked controversy because it was dedicated to “all women murdered by men,” implying, according to critics, that all men are potentially murderers. As a result, women involved in the project received death threats and the Vancouver Park Board subsequently banned any future memorials that might “antagonize” other groups.

See also

• Concordia University massacre (August 24 1992)
• Dawson College shooting (September 13 2006)
• School shooting

References

1. ^ Sourour, Teresa K., (1991) Report of Coroner's Investigation Retrieved on 2006-12-28.
2. Weston, Greg (2006-09-14). "Why? We may never know". Toronto Sun. Retrieved 2006-12-31. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
3. "Gunman massacres 14 women" (video stream). Archives. CBC. 6 December 1989. Retrieved 2006-12-29.
4. ^ Chun, Wendy Hui Kyong (1999). "Unbearable Witness: towards a Politics of Listening". Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies. 11 (1): 112–149.
5. Malarek, Victor (12 December 1989). "More Massacre Details to be Released by Police, but an Inquiry Ruled Out". Globe and Mail.
6. Malarek, Victor (1989-12-08). "Killer's letter blames feminists". Globe and Mail. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
7. "A Difficult Story to Tell". The Story of the fifth estate. CBC News. Retrieved 2006-12-28.
8. Pelchat, Martin (24 November 1990). "Lépine avait des motifs "politiques"" (in French). La Presse.
9. "CityNews Rewind: The Montreal Massacre". City News. December 6, 2006. Retrieved 2006-12-28.
10. Eglin, Peter (2003). The Montreal Massacre: A Story of Membership Categorization Analysis. Waterloo, ON: Wilfred Laurier University Press. p. 58. ISBN 0-88920-422-5. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
11. CTV.ca News Staff (2006-09-25). "Mother of Marc Lepine finally breaks her silence". CTV. Retrieved 2007-01-01.
12. Malarek, Victor (1989-12-09). "Killer Fraternized with Men in Army Fatigues". quoted in "The Montreal Massacre: A Story of Membership Categorization Analysis" Eglin,P. and Hester, S (2003). Globe and Mail. Retrieved 2007-01-02. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
13. ^ Rathjen, Heidi (1999). December 6th: From the Montreal Massacre to Gun Control. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart. ISBN 0-771061-25-0. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
14. Came, Barry (1989-12-18). "Montreal Massacre: Railing Against Feminists". Maclean's Magazine. Retrieved 2007-01-04. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
15. "Lepine spares male students" (video stream). The Journal. CBC. 6 December 1989. Retrieved 2006-12-28.
16. Ruddy, Jenny (December 2004). "Barbara Frum, quoted in Reframing violence against women". The Commonwealth. Saskatchewan New Democrat Party. Retrieved 2006-12-29. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
17. Malarek, Victor (12 December 1989). "More Massacre Details to be Released by Police, but an Inquiry Ruled Out". Globe and Mail.
18. Parent, G (2003). "Conséquences à long terme d'un mass murder :le cas de Polytechnique, neuf ans plus tard". The International Journal Of Victimology. 1 (3). Retrieved 2006-12-29. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
19. Ha, Tu Thanh (4 December 1999). "When the snowflakes start to fall, we all remember". Globe and Mail. Retrieved 2006-12-31. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
20. Sheppard, Robert (September 15, 2006). "A sea change in police tactics when it comes to gunmen". CBC News. Retrieved 2006-12-29.
21. Rakobowchuk, Peter (September 14, 2006). "Lessons learned from 1989 Montreal massacre help save lives at Dawson college". Canadian Press. Retrieved 2006-12-28.
22. Fitzpatrick, Meagan (December 6, 2006). "National day of remembrance pays tribute to victims of Montreal massacre". CanWest News Service. Retrieved 2006-12-27.
23. CBC news (1999-12-05). "Monument to slain women unveiled". CBC. Retrieved 2007-01-04. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
24. Campbell, Charles (11 November 2004). "Magnets for Memory". The Tyee. Retrieved 2006-12-31.
25. Cooper, Rachelle (19 April 2006). "Book a Monument to Canadian Women Murdered by Men". at Guelph. Retrieved 2006-12-31.
26. Ingram, Gordon Brent (2 February 2000). "Contests over social memory in waterfront Vancouver: Historical editing & obfuscation through public art". on the w@terfront. Retrieved 2006-12-31.

External links

• CBC Digital Archives
• Crime Library
• Interview with Marc Lepine's mother
• Coroner's Report on the massacre

• 1989 in Canada
• History of Quebec
• Crime in Montreal
• Spree shootings
• Université de Montréal
• School massacres in Canada