Lessons of the Montreal massacre

The Toronto Star:

Columbine. Dawson College. Virginia Tech. There've been so many school massacres since Dec. 6, 1989, we've grown disturbingly used to them. The Montreal Massacre was different. Lépine had a specific target: women.

He blamed them for his own failures. His suicide note listed other women he'd set in his sights: a politician, a union leader, Quebec's first female firefighter and police captain, among others. He'd settled for easier targets – the young women at Université de Montréal's engineering school, who had the audacity to study for careers that still today are the domain of men.

In 20 minutes, he shot or stabbed 27 people, mostly women, before shooting himself. Fourteen of his victims died. All of them were women.

It was an event that changed the lives of students at school, and women around the country. We all had posters of those women on our walls. We went to commemorations. We walked the streets in Take Back the Night marches. We felt exposed to a hatred many of us hadn't realized was festering – over the fact that we could work too, that we could study men's subjects, that we could be good at it.

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