Montreal massacre- 16th anniversary!

Catherine Bergeron, sister of
shooting victim Genevieve, and
NDP Leader Jack Layton hug
during a memorial marking the
16th anniversary of the Ecole
polytechnique shootings
Tuesday in Montreal.
(CP/Paul Chiasson)






Violence still haunts women: Activist
By CARLY KRUG, 24 HOURS

On the 16th anniversary of the Montreal massacre the
issues of equality and violence against women that
surrounded the death of 14 female students still remain
today.
At first they thought it was a joke. It was Dec. 6, 1989,
the second last day of school before Christmas break,
when Marc Lepine walked into a classroom of 60
engineering students at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique
Interrupting the lecture, he asked the women to move to
one side of the room and the men to leave.
A few people laughed, but no one moved.
Lepine then lifted a semi-automatic rifle, fired two shots
into the ceiling and yelled, "You're all a bunch of feminists,
and I hate feminists."
Six women in the room were immediately shot dead.
Lepine then went on a rampage, stalking women through
the halls, cafeteria and classrooms, gunning down 27 and
taking the lives of 14, before eventually turning the gun on
himself.
Some believe this black mark on Canada's history is an
example of a need for stricter gun control. Debra Critchley
of the B.C. Coalition of Women's Centres said it's less
about guns, and more about equality.
"The women in Montreal were killed because they were
women," she said, adding, "The shooter's actions were
an exaggerated and horrific version of what goes on
everyday."
One hundred and two women were murdered last year in
Canada, at the hands of their male partner, says Critchley,
who blames welfare and childcare cutbacks for forcing
women to stay in situations that lead to their death.
"At the end of the day it's still about equality,"
says Critchley,
"You would not be able to bash a woman's head in if she
had equality."
With Lepine's suicide note was a list of 19 other
"radical feminists" he originally planned to kill, including the
province's first female firefighter and a woman who worked
at a rape shelter, said Lee Lakeman.
Rather than taking time off today, Lakeman and her
colleagues remembered the 14 women who died in
Montreal, and thousands elsewhere, on Sunday.
"Today we'll be right here answering the phones,"
she said, "doing the very thing (Lepine) was protesting."

A horrible memory