Terrorists, who hate women

25-year-old Marc Lépine sat on the floor before the university secretary’s office. He was on the 2nd floor of the École Polytechnique, a three-story engineering school affiliated with the Université de Montréal in Montreal, Canada. He had arrived shortly before this Wednesday, 6 December 1989. Marc Lépine rummaged a little in a plastic bag. He looked pretty lost as he sat there, and most of all, he looked like someone who had been burned by a date. He didn’t make eye contact with anyone, and he didn’t talk to anyone. His posture was stiff, and he had a grim expression. Finally, an employee approached him and asked if she could help him. Marc Lépine did not answer, but got up, took his bag and left. The employee shrugged. Many students were tired and worn out at the end of the semester.

But Marc Lépine was not a tired student. In fact, he was not a student, either at the École Polytechnique or at any other university. Marc Lépine was a man on a mission. A crazy idea had formed in his head, sending him on a terrorist mission that would end up costing the lives of 14 innocent people. That is, in Marc Lépine’s own mind, they were the root of all evil. The 14 people had one thing in common, they were women.

Kilder:
globalnews.ca,  Weston, Greg; Aubry, Jack (February 8, 1990). "The making of a massacre: The Marc Lepine story Part II". The Ottawa Citizen, www.philo5.com, Arie W. Kruglanski and Shira Fishman Current Directions in Psychological Science Vol. 15, No. 1 (Feb. 2006), pp. 45–48, www.theguardian.com, www.diarmani.com/Montreal_Coroners_Report.pdf, montrealgazette.com,
www.cbc.ca, RJ Parker: Marc Lépine - the Montreal massacre, Crimes Canada, Vol. 2, Boileau, Josée (2020). Because They Were Women: The Montreal Massacre.

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Transcript

25-year-old Marc Lépine sat on the floor before the university secretary’s office. He was on the 2nd floor of the École Polytechnique, a three-story engineering school affiliated with the Université de Montréal in Montreal, Canada. He had arrived shortly before this Wednesday, 6 December 1989. Marc Lépine rummaged a little in a plastic bag. He looked pretty lost as he sat there, and most of all, he looked like someone who had been burned by a date. He didn’t make eye contact with anyone, and he didn’t talk to anyone. His posture was stiff, and he had a grim expression. Finally, an employee approached him and asked if she could help him. Marc Lépine did not answer, but got up, took his bag and left. The employee shrugged. Many students were tired and worn out at the end of the semester.
But Marc Lépine was not a tired student. In fact, he was not a student, either at the École Polytechnique or at any other university. Marc Lépine was a man on a mission. A crazy idea had formed in his head, sending him on a terrorist mission that would end up costing the lives of 14 innocent people. That is, in Marc Lépine’s own mind, they were the root of all evil. The 14 people had one thing in common, they were women.

You are listening to TerrorTalks - a podcast about some of the most spectacular terrorist attacks in history. In this podcast, I tell the stories of the terrorists, their victims and the consequences for the survivors and society. About people who will sacrifice their own lives or the lives of others for a political, economic, religious or social goal. Who was behind it, who they wanted to hit, and why.
My name is Natasja Engholm, and I am a Danish journalist with a Master’s in Middle Eastern Studies based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Unfortunately, terror has come close to home a few times in my life. The massacre of 69 people on the small island Utøya in Norway happened half an hour’s drive from where some of my close family lives. 
A good friend was only a meter away from one of the suicide bombers on the London Underground in 2005. He miraculously escaped with two burst eardrums. And finally, I worked in Afghanistan some time ago, where a major terrorist attack on a local cafe claimed the lives of 21 people. Among them was the owner, who had served me cake on my birthday the year before. 
Fortunately, I have never been in the middle of a terrorist attack myself. However, these experiences have awakened my curiosity, fascination and, not least, a fear that most people probably know about: that it will happen to me someday. That it comes close.
Before you start listening, I must warn you that the podcast contains descriptions and details that can be violent and unsuitable for especially small children and people affected by hearing about murder and violence. This section also includes a mention of suicide. If you or someone you know has suicidal thoughts, please call your local suicide hotline. 


25-year-old Marc Lépine held a Ruger Mini semi-automatic military rifle in one hand and a hunting knife in the other. He had bought his deadly weapon in a sporting goods store two weeks before the massacre, on 21 November 1989, where he told the clerk that it would be used for a “little game”. Lépine knew the layout of the building as he had been inside and near the École Polytechnique at least seven times in the weeks leading up to this day. Lépine left the corridors in front of the office on the second floor. Classes were still in progress, so the corridors were empty, and there was no one to raise the alarm. The staff in the school offices were getting ready to go home. He had attached a so-called banana clip magazine to his rifle, a banana-shaped weapon magazine that made it possible to fire 30 rounds in a row from his semi-automatic rifle. In addition, Lépine had plenty of extra ammunition. He was ready. Silently he entered a room on the university’s 2nd floor where over 60 engineering students were present. They barely understood what was going on. Marc walked up to a student who was giving a presentation and said:
“Everyone, stop everything”.
Professor Bouchard, a teacher on the team, looked at him, annoyed. He narrowed his eyes as if trying to think of who this student was. In French, the young man asked 10 female students to stand up and walk across the room. He then asked the men to leave the room. No one moved. Someone laughed because they thought he was farting with them. They shouldn’t have done that. Lépine became enraged, raised his rifle and fired twice into the ceiling.
“You’re all a bunch of feminists”,
he shouted angrily.
“And I hate feminists!”
One of the students, Nathalie Provost, said.
“Look, we’re just women studying engineering, not necessarily feminists ready to march on the streets and shout we are against men. We are just students intent on living a normal life.”
Lépine replied: 
“You’re women, you’re going to be engineers”.
And then he started shooting at the students from left to right. One of the first he killed was 23-year-old Hélène Colgan. She was a bright student on her way to completing a degree in mechanical engineering. At the time of the murder, she had as many as three job offers she was considering, and she was a woman who always had many projects.
“She was a conscientious and patient girl and always pushed things through to the end. She wanted to go to the farthest limits of life. She had so much ambition and hope, and I don’t even want to think what she could have done “,
her father, Clarence Colgan, told the Montreal Gazette shortly after the massacre.
Hélène Colgan's best friend Nathalie Croteau was also killed. She was an outgoing and enterprising 23-year-old woman who, just three weeks later, would have been sitting in Cancun, Mexico, celebrating New Year’s Eve, among others, with Hélène Colgan, if she had not fallen victim to Marc Lépine’s madness.
The terrorist’s third victim was 22-year-old Barbara Daigneault. She was just seven years old when she asked her father Pierre-Alain Daigneault, a mechanical engineering professor at the Université du Québec à Montréal, why she couldn’t become pope? However, she instead followed in his footsteps and studied engineering while working as his teaching assistant at the university. Barbara was also a very ordinary woman of 22 who shared photocopies of her notes with her fellow students, met with friends for coffee and lunch, and had a penchant for shrimp omelette and chocolate cake with whipped cream.
Sonia Pelletier, aged 28, was the type who won all competitions, scholarships and was always number one in the class. She was a quiet person who grew up with five sisters and two brothers as a source of joy and pride to the family. A few days before she was killed as Marc Lépine’s fourth victim, she had passed her degree as a mechanical engineer with top grades in all subjects. Despite their loss, her sister Micheline stated that the family had always thought of the terrorist’s mother:
“We, the families of the victims, had pride in our sisters and daughters. But she had nothing at all.”
Annie St-Arneault, aged 23, was also on the forced line of women Marc Lépine had lined up and became his fifth murder victim. She was studying her last subject before graduating as a mechanical engineer. She then had to decide whether to work at an aluminium smelter or travel to Africa to join her brother working there as a missionary. St-Arneault wanted to make the world better and had a penchant for the environment.
Anne-Marie Lemay became the sixth innocent woman whose life was ended by a bitter and radicalised man that day. The 22-year-old woman from Boucherville, a suburb of Montreal in eastern Canada, had actually considered studying medicine. However, she ended up studying mechanical engineering, inspired mainly by the fate of a good friend. As a teenager, Anne-Marie Lemay experienced a good friend losing the ability to use his legs, and she visited him several times a week to help him with his rehabilitation. In this context, she became aware of the importance of mechanical machines. The night before she was killed, Anne-Marie Lemay wrote an almost eerily prescient note to herself:
“Tomorrow is the last day of classes… and of my life, too. Whoa! Now that sounds depressed, at 3 a.m.”

Marc Lépine contemplated the bloody scene he had just caused in the room for mechanical engineering students at the École Polytechnique. In addition to the six innocent women he had just shot and killed, he had wounded three others. Nathalie Provost, the woman who had tried to convince him that they were just students with ordinary lives, he had shot three times. Before leaving the room, he wrote the word “shit” in two places on a study project.
After shooting in the classroom, Lépine moved on to his next targets, moving through the hallways, the cafeteria and another classroom to search for more so-called “feminists” to kill. First, Lépine headed for the second-floor hallway, where he attempted to kill a female student in a classroom after injuring three students in the hallway. When that failed, he went up an emergency staircase to reload his weapon. He then tried to shoot through the locked door where the female students had been hiding but without success.
Icy, Lépine walked down the corridor, shooting at people in his path and wounding one. Then he went on to the accounting department. Here, 25-year-old Maryse Laganière had just put on her boots and coat to go home after work. The 25-year-old woman was the youngest of 14 children raised in Montreal and worked as an accountant in the school’s finance department. Here, she met the love of her life, Jean-François Larivée, in 1986 and whom she had married in August 1989, three months before the massacre. Maryse Laganière desperately tried to escape into the office she had just left, but Marc Lépine shot and killed her through the window of the door she had just locked.

On the 1st floor, around 100 people gathered in the cafeteria, where they usually enjoyed a break and got something to eat and drink. Near the kitchen stood 31-year-old nursing student Barbara Maria Klucznick, unaware of what was happening in the classroom on the floor below. Born in Poland, she fled with her husband in 1986 when the then-military junta declared her homeland a state of emergency. In 1987, two years before the massacre at the university, they came to Quebec. Barbara Klucznick was eating with her husband in the cafeteria when Marc Lépine entered. He started shooting and hit Barbara Klucznick, who fell to the ground and died. Her husband Witold Widajewicz later had a daughter with another woman and stated
“Sometimes, I fear she might die if some maniac were to go after her for being too smart or too beautiful “.
Besides Barbara Klucznick, Marc Lépine injured another woman. Panic broke out among the over 100 people in the cafeteria. Everything was chaos. As people desperately tried to escape, Lépine entered an unlocked storage room. Anne-Marie Edward and Geneviève Bergeron, both 21 years old, tried to hide, unfortunately in vain. Lépine discovered and killed them both. One of the women, Anne-Marie Edward, was known for her love of sports, especially skiing, which she practised at school and with her family. She was buried in her school team ski jacket, and her teammates from the Université de Montréal alpine ski team wore badges with her initials on their uniforms after her death. Anne-Marie Edward studied chemical engineering, and in 2014 her mother told the press that her daughter would be proud that her memory was being used to end misogyny.
The other woman killed in the kitchen, Geneviève Bergeron, had celebrated her 21st birthday two weeks before she was killed and loved to play music. In fact, she had found it difficult to choose between music and technology. She played clarinet and sang in the choir of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra while studying for her second year of civil engineering.
“She loved to sing,” 
her mother, Thérèse Daviau, told the Montreal Gazette shortly after the massacre. 
“It’s a rare combination of interests.”
When Marc Lépine had shot the two young women, a male and a female student then asked to come out from under a table. They obeyed and were not shot.

Just 20 minutes had passed since Marc Lépine began his mad pursuit of innocent women until the police stormed the building. One of the first officers on the scene was Pierre Leclair, a senior officer in Montreal in charge of public relations. He went from floor to floor to get an overview of the situation. Pierre Leclair did not have the good grasp and objective view of events of an impartial officer, for his own daughter was a student at the university. The 23-year-old Maryse Leclair was the eldest of Pierre’s four daughters and studied engineering in her fourth year. She liked listening to British punk and new wave music, and for several months before she died, she had been in love with a fellow student named Benoit, with whom she planned a future of study and travel. On Sunday, three days before the attack, she had dinner with her father, Pierre Leclair. She was wearing a brand new red sweater that had been bought especially for the upcoming holiday.
Pierre Leclaire went up to the hallway on the third floor. Then he stopped abruptly. He saw a young woman lying on her back through a window in the hallway. His eyes and brain could not comprehend what he was looking at. The young woman was wearing a red sweater. It was his daughter. As he ran towards her, it dawned on him that she was dead. She had been both shot and stabbed with a knife.
Shortly before Pierre Leclair arrived in the hallway on the 3rd floor, three male students were about to give a presentation to their team. Then suddenly, shots rang out outside the classroom, and a moment later, the gunman Marc Lépine entered. In a commanding voice, he ordered the men to leave the room. Then he shot Maryse Leclair first.
While Leclair lay bleeding on the floor, he shot 29-year-old Maud Haveiernic, who tried to escape. She had a bachelor’s degree in environmental design. She had started working as an interior designer before returning to study to pursue her dream of becoming an engineer and studying materials engineering. On the day of her death, she gave her last presentation to her team and her fellow student, 21-year-old Michèle Richard, with her beaming smile and gentle nature. Richard planned to get engaged to his boyfriend of four years, Stéphane, in the spring of 1990. Plans which unfortunately could never be carried out, as she and Maud Haveiernic were both shot during their escape attempts from the classroom.
After Marc Lépine had killed Maud Haviernick and Michèle Richard, he went towards some female students and shot and wounded three of them and killed 20-year-old Annie Turcotte. Annie was the youngest of three children who had been inspired to study at École Polytechnique by her older brother Anders. Turcotte was in many ways ahead of her time: she fought for the environment and at a summer camp for children with disabilities, Turcotte taught swimming for free. For the rest of the year, she gave free lessons to the children who lived with their families at the Turcotte family motel.
“She was amazing with kids,”
remembers her brother.
“We’d go somewhere, and they’d be all over her”.
On the classroom floor, Maryse Leclair, daughter of Officer Pierre Leclair, lay severely injured as she pleaded for help. Unfortunately, that only made Marc Lépine turn his attention to her again. He sat down next to the badly wounded woman as he wordlessly pulled his hunting knife from the sheath attached to his body and stabbed her in the heart. She screamed in shock and pain. Those who witnessed this horrible act were deeply shocked. But there was nothing they could do. He pulled out the knife and stabbed her twice before she fell silent. Blood ran from the wounds and over her dead body. Then Lépine exclaimed:
“Oh shit”.
He turned the barrel of the rifle towards his own face, pressed the barrel to his forehead and pulled the trigger. The gun went off, and parts of his skull fell to the floor. No one moved. A stench of hot metal, gunpowder and fresh blood was in the air. But nevertheless, it was finally over. He had killed 14 women: 12 engineering students, a nursing student and a university employee, and wounded 14 others, including four men.

But who was this Marc Lépine who harboured such a deep hatred of women? Marc Lépine was born on October 26, 1964, as Gamil Rodrigue Liass Gharbi. His mother was a native Canadian, and his father was an Algerian immigrant. For the first four years of his childhood, the family moved around a lot, including Costa Rica and Puerto Rico, before settling permanently in Montreal in 1968. The father, Rachid Liass Gharbi, was strict and patriarchal and treated his wife as his servant. He was also violent towards her and his two children, Gamil and his sister. He was also a verbally abusive father who was rude and strict towards his children, as he believed one spoils children by showing them love and care. Once, he beat his son so hard that he left marks. Apart from the physical and verbal abuse, which became increasingly brutal, he did not give his children much attention. The father was generally known to look down on and mistreat women.
In 1976, when Gamil was 12 years old, his parents divorced, and Gamil’s mother got custody. The father cut off contact with his children, and Gamil never saw his father again and refused to talk about him. However, the mother had to work hard to make ends meet, so Gamil and his sister spent most of their time with family. Gamil is described as a brilliant child, but he was also withdrawn and felt uncomfortable among his peers and family members. In 1977, Gamil moved with his mother and sister into a new house in the suburb of Pierrefonds, where he completed 9th grade and high school. He was still a withdrawn and quiet student, but academically he was bright and got above-average grades. He was teased with his baptismal name, Gamil Rodrigue Liass Gharbi, so at 14, Gamil Gharbi changed his name to Marc Lépine. He was still bullied, even by his sister, who publicly made fun of his acne and for not having girlfriends. Lépine’s mother, on the other hand, tried to help her son and looked for a role model for him in a so-called Big Brother program. In the two years, Lépine was in the program, things went well for him. He was interested in photography and motorcycles, but unfortunately, his Big Brother was one day accused of sexual abuse. Although both Big Brother and Marc denied this, it eventually ended their relationship.
Marc Lépine now began to show signs of a dark mind with, among other things, an obsession with Adolf Hitler and World War II. He was also fascinated by action and horror films. In September 1981, Lépine enlisted in the Canadian Army aged 17. However, he was rejected due to his anti-social personality if the suicide note he later wrote is to be believed. However, the official justification from the military only stated the reason as “unsuitable”.
The next seven years were characterised mainly by break-ups and probably some insecurity in Marc Lépine’s student and private life. A period he later described in his suicide note “had given him no joy at all”. In 1982, seven years before he attacked the women at the university, Marc Lépine and his family moved again, this time to Saint-Laurent in the province of Quebec. This meant that Lépine had to say goodbye to his best friend, and once again, he felt lonely and despairing. Lépine had now turned 18 and was attending a two-year preparatory course in science at CEGEP de Saint-Laurent, a French-language public college in Montreal. He flunked two subjects in the first semester but did considerably better in the second semester. He also worked part-time at a local hospital where his mother was the head nurse. Lépine served food to the patients and performed various small tasks. His colleagues perceived him as a nervous, hyperactive and immature person.
After completing one year of college, Lépine dropped out of the science program in 1983 and instead studied IT technology, a three-year course. His teachers described him as hardworking, quiet and someone who did well in class, especially in subjects such as electronics and technology. However, Lépine also missed out on this education. Suddenly and without explanation, Lépine stopped attending classes, his grades dropped significantly, and he ended up dropping out.
At the same time, Lépine left his mother’s home and found an apartment. He applied for a new degree at the University of Montreal, where, this time, he was admitted to the engineering course. Shortly afterwards, Lépine was fired from the hospital for disrespecting his superiors and not attending to his work.
Between 1987 and 1989, Lépine completed several preparatory courses necessary to apply to university. During this period, he also moved into an apartment in Montreal with his best friend from high school.
Although Marc never felt comfortable in the company of women, he wanted a girlfriend. He used to brag about his knowledge in front of women and flirt with them. Even when Lépine was with other men, he often spoke of his hatred of feminists and how much he hated career women, especially those who took jobs he believed were aimed at men, such as the police. He firmly believed that women should stay home and care for their families. Lépine once again applied to the University of Montreal, but his application was rejected the second time because he did not have the required programming course.
When he met the admissions officer at the Université de Montreal, he complained about how women dominated the job market and constantly stole men’s opportunities. So that’s where Lépine was shortly before the Montreal massacre, with an ingrained hatred and substantial prejudice against women and feminism. It was now that things really began to build up in Lépine. The years with an abusive father and his failures in studies and work made Lépine so angry that he began to concoct a terrible plan. A plan to carry out a series of gruesome murders on those he blamed for his failed life. Several people in Lépine’s life described him as becoming erratic and throwing tantrums when frustrated. There seems to be no doubt that the attack was planned: in the two months leading up to the attack, Lépine was seen at least seven times at the École Polytechnique, and despite always paying his rent on time, he failed to pay it 1 December 1989, six days before the attack.

Marc Lépine left behind some kind of explanation for his actions. In his jacket, police found a three-page suicide note and two letters addressed to some of his friends. Each letter had imprinted the date on which the massacre was carried out. In the days after the attack, police did not reveal the entire contents of the letters, but only a few details. But three years later, the entire contents were published to the world. Marc Lépine had drawn up and brought with him a list of names of women he wanted to kill, and this list was sent to the journalist Francine Pelletier. The list contained the names of 19 women in Quebec, the province where the city of Montreal and the Université de Montreal is located. These women were specific targets, as he considered them strong supporters of feminism. Among these 19 feminists were Francine Pelletier, a union leader, a politician, a television personality and six female police officers whom Lépine had caught the eye of when they played on the same volleyball team. In the letters, Lépine justified his actions for the brutal attacks, expressed his extreme hatred for the so-called feminists, and presented himself as rational. 
Among other things, he wrote.
“Would you note that if I commit suicide today, 6 December 1989, it will not be due to economic reasons (...), but for political reasons. Because I have decided to send the feminists, who have always ruined my life, to their Maker. For seven years life has brought me no joy and being totally blasé, I have decided to put an end to those viragos. Being rather backward-looking by nature (except for science), the feminists have always enraged me. They want to keep the advantages of women (e.g. cheaper insurance, extended maternity leave preceded by a preventative leave, etc.) while seizing for themselves those of men. are so opportunistic they [do not] neglect to profit from the knowledge accumulated by men through the ages. They always try to misrepresent them every time they can. Sorry for this too brief letter. 19 women nearly died today. The lack of time (because I started too late) has allowed these radical feminists to survive.”

Someone might ask – why is this terrorism? Wasn’t it just the work of a madman? To that, I will answer no, and I will try to explain why I think so: There are over 100 different attempts to define terrorism, but not even the most prominent organisations or international communities, such as the UN and the EU, have managed to agree on, what precisely characterises terrorism. This is due, among other things, to the classic problem of distinguishing between freedom fighters and terrorists. Still, there is also disagreement on an academic level: The experts disagree on whether terrorism should be defined based on its goal, its methods, whether states can commit terrorism and whether it is even necessary to define terrorism? I have picked a bit from different definitions to create my framework. In my definition, terrorism can be aimed at both national and international targets. There can be disagreement about whether it is a freedom struggle or terrorism, just as regimes can misuse the term to suppress legitimate opposition. Sometimes ideological ideas overlap with underlying conflicts or goals such as secession. For me, it’s the common denominators that are important: all the attacks I describe are deliberate and random attacks on innocent people aimed at spreading fear through an entire population to raise awareness of a cause.
So to return to today’s episode: Why do I characterise Marc Lépine’s actions as terror? I do that because the target was feminists. Many femicides and even serial killers kill women because they hate women. But for Marc Levin, it was not just a problem that they were women, but that they were products of political currents and changes – feminism – that had given women education, more influence and power. And Marc Lépine never hid in his discussions with friends that he was vehemently opposed to women occupying career positions traditionally held by men.
Mélissa Blais, a lecturer and PhD student at the University of Quebec, is one of Canada’s leading researchers on the massacre and its anti-feminist context. She interviewed several women for her research who were active feminists in 1989 and found that many felt responsible for what happened in Montreal.
“Afterwards, they chose to be silent to avoid further attack. “
Francine Pelletier, the feminist who was one of the names on Marc Lépine’s death list, agrees that Lépine’s action was highly political and believes that he knew exactly what he was doing that day.
“I always felt those women died in my name. Some of them probably weren’t even feminist,” 
she says,
“they just had the nerve to believe they were peers, not subordinates of their male classmates”.
As I have also touched on in previous sections, this case is always much more complex than it might be tempting to conclude. It would be wonderfully easy and preventive concerning future attacks if we could chop off specific points that characterise a terrorist. After all, Marc Lépine didn’t wake up on 6 December 1989 and started hating women. It was probably a mixture of the father’s influence; his sense of failure and perhaps mental illness also played a role.
A terrorist attack is not always something that a group of people sit and plan together. Every once in a while, there are people who commit an attack on a group of people who share common characteristics such as faith, skin colour, gender, political beliefs or something else. There is no academic or societal term for this type of attack. So, for lack of a better one, the term “lone wolf” or a lone wolf in Danish is often used. The term originates from the notion of a wolf abandoned or ostracised from its pack.
After this type of attack, it is often discussed in the media and the public debate whether the person really had a political message or was mentally ill. We have experienced this, among other things, with terrorists who were both Muslims, but where it also subsequently emerged that they had a history of mental problems or mental illness. It is often difficult to define whether it is due to one or the other or a combination, especially if the perpetrator subsequently commits suicide. Sometimes, and as is the case here with Marc Lépine, the perpetrator leaves a manifesto, i.e. a justification for why he went after the selected group. In this way, the act acquires a political or ideological character, which distinguishes it from mass murder, serial murder and other mass crimes which are based on different motives.

But did Marc Lépine succeed in his undertaking? Did he scare Canadian women from believing in their equality with men, getting an education, and daring to be themselves? Fortunately, you can answer that with an extensive and resounding no.
Lépine’s actions naturally led to lifelong trauma for those who witnessed the attack. Many students and staff who witnessed the incident suffered financial losses, social problems and psychological disorders, including PTSD. There were even students who committed suicide. Some wrote in their suicide note that the pain and sorrow caused by the massacre was too much to bear. Sarto Blais, a candidate, hanged himself eight months after the massacre, writing in his suicide note that he was torn by guilt for not stopping Lépine. The following June, his parents also committed suicide, unable to cope with the loss of their only son.
The massacre also led to pressure for increased gun control. One of the survivors, Heidi Rathjen, started a movement for stricter gun control, passed by the Canadian Parliament (year). That meant gun owners now had to undergo training, and applicants had to undergo screening. In addition, the rules for storing weapons and ammunition and registering and transporting weapons were also tightened.
In 2008, after keeping silent for a long time, Monique Lépine, Marc’s mother, finally decided to present her views to the world. So she published a memoir called Aftermath. In the memoir, Lépine’s mother described all her grief and misery after the incident. Monique also lost another child. Her daughter, Lépine’s sister Nadia Gharbi, died of a drug overdose in 1996.
The date, 6 December, has since been named the National Day of Remembrance and Action Against Violence Against Women. The attack did not make women who fought for feminism drop their cause. On the contrary, it only increased their frustration and anger at the inequality between men and women. After the incident, women took to the streets across Canada to demonstrate. Provost, the woman who stood up in the first classroom and declared that she was not a feminist but just an “ordinary student”, said that the shooting changed her view of feminism. At 23, Provost did not consider herself a feminist. Feminism was something she associated with her mother’s generation and historical struggles such as suffrage, abortion and more significant causes.
“I said to Marc Lépine that I was not a feminist in 1989. It took me time to understand that I obviously was one by what I was doing and living”.
You have listened to TerrorTalks, a podcast about terror and radicalisation.
This episode was written, produced and narrated by me, Natasja Engholm, while Niels Peter Nielsen voiced the men in the story. Also, thank you to consultant and journalist Lars Hvidberg, who contributed with sparring and wise thoughts. Today’s episode has greatly benefited from the information in the book Because They Were Women: The Montreal Massacre by Josée Boileau.
You will find the episode’s sources in the show notes where you listen to your podcast.
Listen to the next episode, where I talk about a terrorist attack that claimed the lives of 14 people only because they were women. Also, feel free to go in and follow TerrorTalk’s social media on Instagram and Facebook, where you can see pictures from today’s story.

You have listened to TerrorTalks, a podcast about terror and radicalization. This episode was written, produced and narrated by me, Natasja Engholm, while Jon Lobb voiced the men in the story. Also, a big thank you to consultant and journalist Lars Hvidberg, who contributed with sparring and wise thoughts. Today's episode has greatly benefited from the information in the book Because They Were Women: The Montreal Massacre by Josée Boileau.
In the next episode, you will hear a story about a terrorist attack that preceded an ongoing conflict. And where the debate still rages about whether those involved can be called terrorists or freedom fighters. You will find the episode's sources in the show notes where you listen to your podcast. Also, feel free to go in and follow TerrorTalk's social media on Instagram and Facebook, where you can see pictures from today's story.