Yesterday was the anniversary of the massacre at Ecole Polytechnique, which left 14 women dead. Sixteen years ago, a man (whose name I’m not writing because he deserves no recognition, no legacy, and no mention here) walked into the school toting a semi-automatic rifle — with a plan to kill women, simply because they were women and in a “man’s” place. He shot and killed one woman in the hallway, then entered an engineering class and told all the men to leave the room. He lined the women up, and open fired on them while screaming, “You’re all a bunch of feminists! I hate feminists!” Then he went downstairs, firing at random on the way, and he killed three people in the cafeteria. After that, he went into another classroom, where students and professors were cowered under their desks. He climbed on top of the desks to shoot the women underneath them, killing four more people. Then he killed himself.
It is the worst single-day massacre in Canadian history. Two more students who were there the day of the killings committed suicide afterwards. From the killer’s suicide note:
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 that note was a list of 19 prominent Quebec women. He wrote, “[These women] nearly died today. The lack of time (because I started too late) has allowed these radical feminists to survive.”
The killer had been rejected from Ecole Polytechnique, and blamed affirmative action policies intended to increase the percentage of female students.
Sixteen years ago, this tragedy mobilized Canadians to address the issue of violence against women. Gender-based violence is certainly not a problem that we’ve solved yet, and it remains a far-reaching one. It’s just usually quieter and more private than this.
This man’s act was intended to terrorize women everywhere, and his aim was to scare them back into traditional roles. He thoroughly failed: From 1989 to to 1999, the number of women in Canadian engineering schools more than doubled, to more than 9,000.
The names of the murdered women are:
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.