A Brief History
Just after 4 pm on this date, December 6 in 1989, an apparently mentally disturbed Marc Lepine went to the Université de Montreal and entered the École Polytechnique building armed with a Ruger Mini-14 carbine, a knife, and murder in his heart fueled by a hatred for “feminists.”
Digging Deeper
Digging deeper we find a twenty-five-year old son of an Algerian father and French-Canadian mother who was instilled with a deep disrespect and hatred of women by his abusive father. Not fairing particularly well with his personal attempts to gain a college education, Lepine (born Gamil Gharbi, changing his name out of hatred for his father) had dabbled around the campus and therefore was familiar with the layout.
Entering a classroom, he ordered the four dozen or so males out and kept the nine young women there. He then began his killing spree after telling the girls of his hatred for feminism and females taking on traditionally male jobs. He killed six of the female students and wounded the other three, and stopped to write “shit” on some of their work before leaving that room.
He then proceeded down the corridor attempting to kill more female students but failing to create his desired carnage due to some trouble with the functioning of his carbine. (Note: The Ruger Mini-14 is a fairly compact rifle chambered to fire the 5.56 mm cartridge used by the M-16/AR-15 family of military rifles. It is deadly at close range, and his gun could use magazines of 5 to 40 rounds.) He also failed to gain entry to a locked classroom despite shooting the door 3 times, though he did manage to kill one and wound four more students in this area.
He continued his bloodthirsty quest in the cafeteria and shot 2 more people there before heading up to the third floor where the carnage continued. In a classroom on that floor his crazed shooting wounded and killed more people and then he got nasty! It was there that he drew his knife and also stabbed one of the victims to death. The killer then did his civic duty and saved all those tax dollars by avoiding a trial and long prison term by shooting and killing himself with his Ruger.
The killing spree lasted just 20 minutes and resulted in fourteen innocent female victims and himself dying, fifteen wasted lives. He had wounded fourteen other people, of which four were young men. He had 60 rounds of ammo left when he killed himself, so as bad as things were, they could have been worse. Lepine left a suicide note explaining (!?!) how he hated “feminists” and a list of 19 Quebec females he wanted to kill. This loser that blamed women for his own problems generated plenty of backlash from actual feminists who used this incident as a cause celebre to call attention to their agenda.
This incident also ignited tremendous gun versus gun control debate in Canada, which like the U.S. has a long history of armed population in the wilderness. Some gun control legislation was indeed passed largely due to this massacre, although some of it was later repealed.
Aside from the physical wounds suffered by the wounded victims, they and other students were traumatized emotionally, some being affected for years after the incident. At least 2 of those students later committed suicide after never seeming to get over that emotional trauma, and possibly more. The oldest fatal victim was only 30 years old.
Question for students (and subscribers): Why would Lepine hate feminists so much? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
The “Montreal Massacre” resulted in at least 3 books about the incident, one of which is co-authored by Lepine’s mother! Numerous other references are available as well.
Chalouh, Marie and Louise Malette, eds. The Montreal Massacre. Translated by Marlene Wildeman. Gynergy Books/Ragweed Pr, 1991.
Gagne, Harold and Monique Lipine. Aftermath: The Mother of Marc Lepine Tells the Story of Her Life Before and After the Montreal Massacre. Translated by Diana Halfpenny. Penguin Group Canada, 2008.
