It took three decades to call the Polytechnique massacre by its name: a crime against feminism. Thirty years to get to the first step.
During all this time, the commemorative plaque at the Place du 6-décembre-1989 mentioned “un événement tragique,” a tragic event. The 2019 version, “Attentat antiféministe,” now properly honours the memory of the 14 assassinated women. For decades, people had resisted using the proper words, despite all evidence to the contrary, because, well, honestly I don’t really know why. I have my theory, and it makes me angry, so instead I will focus on the fact that we eventually got it right.
Some of you may not remember Dec. 6, 1989. I do. I’d just turned 19 years old, living in the Montreal area. It hit me close.
I never called myself a feminist but I always benefited from the efforts of feminists. I can vote, work in any field I want, decide for myself whether to marry or have children or not. These gains were still fragile in 1989, but they seemed real.
And then Marc Lépine showed up.
We didn’t use that word at the time, but he was what we now call an incel, or involuntary celibate. He couldn’t get girls interested in him, and in his mind that was their fault, not his. He blamed feminism for his lack of romantic or sexual success instead of making himself a more attractive prospect.
I never called myself a feminist but I always benefited from the efforts of feminists. I can vote, work in any field I want, decide whether to marry. These gains were still fragile in 1989, but they seemed real.
Late in the afternoon, he walked into Polytechnique in Montreal, armed with a semi-automatic rifle and a hunting knife, went into a mechanical engineering class, separated the women from the men, told the latter group to get out, and shot the nine women, killing six of them. He then walked through the school for 20 minutes, targeting and shooting women before killing himself. He said he was “fighting feminism.” One woman tried to reason with him that they were just students, not necessarily feminists. He responded, “You’re women, you’re going to be engineers. You’re all a bunch of feminists. I hate feminists.”
The women he killed were: Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault, Annie Turcotte and Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz.
Lépine injured another 10 women, as well as four men.
The murdered women had families, friends, lovers, dreams, worries, plans for the weekend, maybe a cat to feed. To Lépine they were nothing, except the embodiment of feminism. He thought he was suffering, so he killed them. In a suicide letter that was released a year after the massacre, he made it clear what his reasons were. (The contents are deeply disturbing.)
Thirty years have passed and every December it’s the same thing. People bicker about whether to call the event what it was: an attack not just on women but on the idea that women have as much right as men to decide for themselves what to do with their lives.
Nobody was able to help the 14 victims that day. The men in the classroom exited as they were instructed. The professor who was teaching that class, Yvon Bouchard, told his story for the first time in three decades last week. He told La Presse he thought they were in a hostage situation and assumed Lépine had accomplices who would be guarding the men separately. It wasn’t until shots were fired that he realized what was happening, and by then it was too late.
These men deserve sympathy, not judgment. Bouchard and the other male survivors have been living a nightmare for 30 years. At least two committed suicide , having left notes behind giving the massacre as the reason.
Violence has always been with us, in one form or another. I want to hope we can one day defeat it. I need to believe it’s possible. But to do that, we first have to call it by its proper name and deal with its causes. No matter how long it takes.
Brigitte Pellerin is an Ottawa writer.
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2019
