The Montreal massacre: Canada's feminists remember (but, there is NO war on women!)

The Montreal massacre: Canada's feminists remember
In 1989, a gunman killed 14 women students in Montreal. This week, Canadian feminists will remember an event that scarred the country – and strengthened their radicalism
Massacre at Montreal, Canada, 1989


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Students in shock at Montreal's École Polytechnique. Marc Lépine killed 14 women and injured 10 others on 6 December 1989. Photograph: Ponopresse Internationale/Rex Features



It was a cold, drizzly day on 6 December 1989 when a young man brandishing a firearm burst into a college classroom at the École Polytechnique in Montreal, Canada. The 60 or so engineering students there had little time to react before the men were ordered from the room and the gunman began shooting the women. Six female students were killed instantly, while three more were left injured.

The killer, 25-year-old Marc Lépine, was armed with a legally obtained Mini-14 rifle and a hunting knife: he had earlier told a shopkeeper he was going after "small game". Lépine had previously been denied admission to the École Polytechnique and had been upset, it later transpired, about women working in positions traditionally occupied by men. Before he opened fire, Lépine shouted: "You're all a bunch of feminists, and I hate feminists!" One student, Nathalie Provost, protested: "I'm not feminist, I have never fought against men." Lépine shot her anyway. The gunman then moved through the college corridors, the cafeteria, and another classroom, specifically targeting women to shoot. By the time Lépine turned the gun on himself, 14 women were dead and another 10 were injured. Four men were hurt unintentionally in the crossfire.

Francine Pelletier, a feminist activist and newspaper columnist at Montreal's La Presse newspaper, describes feeling "totally floored" on hearing about the massacre, but nothing prepared her for the discovery that she was on a list found by police in the killer's pocket. "Nearly died today," it read. "The lack of time (because I started too late) has allowed these radical feminists to survive."

Immediately after the shootings, various media commentators and quasi-psychologists proclaimed that Lépine was a madman and that the women just happened to be in the way, as opposed to being specifically targeted. A psychiatrist at the Hôtel-Dieu hospital in Quebec was quoted in La Presse as saying that Lépine was "as innocent as his victims, and himself a victim of an increasingly merciless society". "This was a period of a significant growth in men's rights groups," says Martin Dufresne, founder of Men Against Sexism, a group active at the time of the massacre. "But the public felt too uncomfortable with the political explanation."

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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/dec/03/montreal-massacre-canadas-feminists-remember