Twenty years ago today, Marc Lepine walked into the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal and killed 14 women in his fight against feminism. An event referred to as the Montreal Massacre.
The above photo is a plaque in the gardens at Government House in Victoria, BC.
I remember that day very clearly. I first heard 'did you hear? there's been a shooting at a uni in Montreal? some nutjob with gun is killing students' comments from various people while at university. Back then there was no internet (very hard to imagine now!) and I had to wait until I got home to see some version of the following on the telly:
At that time in my life I was the same age as the women killed in Montreal, I was also, like them, a student at university and scarier still, one of my classes was feminist theory.
To hear that someone had gone to a university to kill as many women as he could and blame feminism for his actions was very frightening. For the first time in my relatively safe and sheltered life I truly felt personally threatened not really as a woman but as a woman who believed in social, political, economic, etc justice. I wondered how could anyone be so opposed to something so just and ethical? How could someone be so opposed that they kill?
Obviously, after twenty years of study, reflection, discussion, documentaries, lectures and books later, I have my answers. Ha! Truth is, I really only have a more theoretically complicated answers that just boil down to the same bewilderment I felt at age 21... some things in life are just truly fucked-up.
I haven't seen this film yet but this is a clip of the first 90 seconds of Polytechnique. Chilling.
I briefly mentioned this film in a previous post and I've finally just watched it.
