In Commemoration of

Black text over an illustration of a red rose on a white background

On December 6, 1989, fourteen female students at an engineering school in Montreal were murdered by an armed gunman named Marc Lépine. The event became known as both the École Polytechnique massacre and the Montreal massacre. Lépine targeted women. He entered classrooms and separated the students by gender before shooting the female students. After the twenty minute massacre, Lépine shot himself with his final bullet. The fourteen women who lost their lives on that day 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. While the futures of these women had been bright, the past of shooter Marc Lépine had been shadowed by abuse, misogyny, and rejection. After applying to and being rejected by the École Polytechnique in 1986 and 1989, Lépine apparently refused to accept that it was due to the fact that he failed to meet the requirements for admission. Instead, he blamed the female students who attended instead of him, specifically, “feminists.” Lépine’s suicide letter was leaked to the press, including the list of women’s names whom Lépine planned to kill for being feminists.