Canadian True Crime - École Polytechnique Massacre [1]

Episode Date: July 7, 2018

A two-part series—In 1989, a 25-year-old man with a rifle entered the École Polytechnique engineering school with a specific target in mind: women. The ensuing massacre would go on to have lasting effects on the province of Québec, as well as the entire nation. Look out for early, ad-free release on CTC premium feeds: available on Amazon Music (included with Prime), Apple Podcasts, Patreon and Supercast. Full list of resources, information sources, credits and music credits:See the page for this episode at www.canadiantruecrime.ca/episodes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Well, it's finally here. My first Quebec case, the case that I decided to put on my schedule last summer, and has been hanging over my head all this time. Quebec people, I know there's a few of you listening. I apologize it's taken me so long to get around to you. The honest truth is that I kept putting this case off because after I did Robert Pickton, I felt completely burned out. When I decide to do these massive well-known cases, cases that many people request and other podcasts have covered, I put a lot of pressure on myself, and producing those picked-in episodes exhausted me both mentally and physically. And after that, I just couldn't face up to doing this case. It was too big, too important to the modern history of Canada, and even more important to Quebec. So I kept putting it off.

But now the time has come. I hope that I will have been able to do this justice. And please forgive me any mispronunciations. I tried my hardest, but at the end of the day, I'm not sure you want to hear an Aussie attempt a fake francophone accent. Anyway, thank you for your patience. Before we continue, here's a quick word from our first sponsor, Studio Sweden. Now, as you know, I listen to podcasts a lot.

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by visiting pseudioswedin.com or clicking the link in the show notes. As always, supporting my sponsors is another way to support my show and keep the lights on here. So thank you so much. This podcast may contain coarse language, adult themes, and content of a violent and disturbing nature. Listener discretion is advised. There was utter pandemonium outside the university building as ambulance is carted away the injured.

Police have now confirmed 14 students dead, all women. Another dozen people were hurt, caught in a rampage that witnesses called a human hunt, With the gunman yelling, I want women. The eyewitness accounts were horrified. I went down to the second floor, says this student. There were two people on the floor. One of them, her face was shot away. There was blood all over.

He was walking slowly, really calmly. Police were confused about the details. Apparently the gunman walked into a full classroom, about 60 people. He had a 22-caliber rifle. some witnesses say he separated the men from the women, sent the men outside, and then started shooting. He said in French, you're a bunch of feminists and he started to shoot him. Quebec is the largest province in Canada in terms of geographical area and is on the eastern side of Canada. To the left is Ontario and to the right are the Atlantic provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador and New Brunswick.

South of Quebec are the U.S. states of New York, Vermont. New Hampshire and Maine. Quebec has a complex history. Of course, the land had been inhabited by various First Nations and Inuit communities until the 1500s when the first European explorers started arriving. Frenchman Jacques Cartier was the first European to arrive in the area now known as Montreal in 1535.

He accidentally discovered it while searching for Asia. In the century that followed, Montreal became a busy colony, with settlers and missionaries from France coming over in waves. In 1791, Montreal became part of what was named Lower Canada, with Ontario to its left being called Upper Canada. On July 1, 1867, the province of Quebec, as we know it today, became one of the founding members of the Dominion of Canada. It confederated with New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Ontario,

provinces that had all been largely settled by British explorers. Years later, they would be included in the total 10 provinces and three territories that came together and became the country that is known today as Canada. But Quebec was always a little different to the rest. It's the only province to have a predominantly French-speaking population, and French is its sole official. language. Also, in contrast to other provinces, Quebec established its own unique culture, which borrowed heavily from French influence. Fast forward to the 1960s, and Quebec began an

intense wave of social change known as the Quiet Revolution. Before that, health and education were controlled by the Catholic Church under the watchful eye of the Premier of Quebec, Maurice de Pleisi. He would be known for initiating some of the worst instances of civil liberty abuse perpetrated by a Canadian government. An example of this was his treatment of babies born to unmarried mothers. He placed them in Catholic orphanages where their care was stretched thin by nuns. They were forced to grow up in the most dire of circumstances, shamed for being illegitimate children, and were not allowed access to the same education that other kids were.

A group of these children, later dubbed DuPlessy orphans, were falsely deemed mentally unfit, mainly because they'd been starved of stimulation and parental bonds, among other things. They were sent to psychiatric hospitals where they suffered even more abuse at the hands of the state, physical, mental and sexual. The era of Maurice DuPlessy is now referred to by many as the Great Darkness. Out of these catastrophic circumstances, driven by the de Pleissie government together with the Catholic Church, grew an uprising of Quebecers with an appetite to move away from the grip of the church towards secularisation. This was the start of what would be called the Quiet Revolution.

This movement gave many French Quebecers a sense of collective identity and pride. They wanted change. They needed change. Maurice Duplasi died in office in 1959 and in 1960, Quebec elected a new liberal premier to govern the province, Jean Lusage. His campaign was based on modernism and progression, and when he became premier, he was instrumental in progressing the quiet revolution, which undertook radical, political and social transformations,

like expanded rights for women. Ended in 1964, right in the middle of all of this change, a little boy was born in Montreal. 25 years later, this boy would be the sole perpetrator of another tragic event in Quebec, a massacre. This tragedy, this crime, would be a watershed moment that inspired many debates, triggered many changes and would have lasting effects right up until today. This is Christy and you're listening to Canadian True Crime, Episode 28, The Eco Polytechnic Massacre, Part 1. But first, back to the 1960s in Montreal, when the little boy was born.

The quiet revolution became not so quiet, and from it came a movement vocalising their beliefs that the radical changes so far weren't enough. They wanted Quebec to be sovereign, to separate from Canada and gain its own independence. In the early 1960s, the Fraud de Liberation do Quebec, FLQ for short, or Quebec Liberation Front in English, was founded, a separatist political group.

They were a Marxist-Leninist militant group who used violence to get attention. Between 1963 and 1970, they were responsible for some 100,000. incidents that claimed the lives of eight people and injured numerous more. Of note was the bombing of the Montreal Stock Exchange in 1969, which fortunately didn't kill anyone but caused massive destruction and seriously injured 27. In October 1970, the FLQ instigated a series of events that would go on to be called the October crisis. Desperate to broadcast their message, they killed. kidnapped the British Trade Commissioner in Montreal, as well as a Quebec politician,

demanding that the FLQ manifesto be broadcast across all media outlets in Quebec, in English and French. After the second abduction, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, father of current Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, announced the enforcement of the War Measures Act, which suspended the civil liberties of Canadians and put the province under martial law. This was only the third time this had been enforced in Canada. The first two times were during World Wars 1 and 2. Tanks were sent in and the army was ordered to occupy several cities in the province.

Many Quebecers thought this action by the federal government was excessive. Unfortunately, the following day, the Quebec politician that had been abducted, Pierre Laporte, was executed by the FLQ. Things came to a head, and finally, after weeks of armed presence in Quebec, the FLQ surrendered the other man they'd abducted, the British diplomat, in exchange for the kidnappers being granted safe passage to Cuba. This was arranged, but over the next five years all of them were caught and returned to Canada to face trial.

The October crisis may have been over, but it had a lasting effect on the Quebec people, bringing them closer together and deepening their rift with the rest of Canada. In 1976, René Levec won leadership of the province by running a campaign on the platform of independence for Quebec. The groundswell of separatism continued and the first referendum on the question of whether to separate was held in 1980, but was rejected 60% to 40%. In the 1980s, Canada proposed the constitution, Act and Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but these were not endorsed by Quebec.

In response, the federal government proposed a series of amendments designed to persuade the Quebec government to approve of the amendments as well as alleviate tension between the province and the predominantly English-speaking provinces, but these measures failed. In the end, the federal government passed the Constitution and Charter of Rights and Freedoms without Quebec's consent, and to this day, the province has never signed. In 1995, another referendum was held on whether Quebec should separate. It was also rejected, but with a much slimmer margin of 49% to 51%. For now, at least, Quebec remains a province of Canada.

So, as you can see, Quebec has always been a little different to other provinces in Canada, with a rich and complicated unique history. The city of Montreal is now the second largest in Canada after Toronto. It's known for having a certain unique vibe. People go to Montreal for a cultural experience, whether it be at music festivals, art and theatre, architecture, shopping, amazing restaurants, and of course the famous Montreal smoked meat sandwich.

A big source of pride is Montreal's own NHL. the Montreal Canadiens, affectionately named the HABs, short for habitants after the first European settlers of Quebec. The city has an eclectic mix of old and new, and there's a part of the city called Old Montreal, which is very similar in feel to Paris, complete with the cobblestone streets. Montreal is also a popular destination for students and is known for its highly respected universities and colleges. But one of these educational institutions would go on to be remembered

for all the wrong reasons. In 1989, the Ecole Polytechnique, the University of Montreal's Engineering School, would be the setting of a tragedy perpetrated by the boy who grew up during the quiet revolution, where radical, political and social change happened,

and women's rights became increasingly important. He was six years old when the October crisis happened and a martial law was declared in Quebec. 19 years later, armed with a rifle and hunting knife, this shooter arrived at the university with a specific goal of targeting women. Women who had been accepted into the engineering school when he himself had had troubles. In just 20 minutes, he would shoot 28 people, killing 14 of them. All of the dead were women. The shooter was born Gamil Roderig Garby

on October 26, 1964 in Montreal. His parents were Monique Lapine, a Montreal nurse, and father Rashid Lias Garby, an Algerian-born businessman who generally went by Lias. Monique had been a former nun who left the convent and then went a bit wild for a while before settling down with Lias. The couple met at a restaurant and were married a year later,

but the marriage wasn't supported by Monique's family, largely because she was Catholic and Liasse was a Muslim, albeit non-practicing. Monique's husband Liasse was later described as, quote, a very bright guy. He could sell the Brooklyn Bridge to anyone. He was a snazzy dresser who enjoyed the finer things in life

and during the first four years as a family, he worked for a mutual fund called Investors Overseas Services or iOS. This mutual fund was worth $2 billion, and led the Garby family to move to exotic locales such as Puerto Rico and Costa Rica. Lias was raking in the money, and his family were enjoying a privileged lifestyle. Two years after Gamil was born, the family welcomed the addition of a daughter,

Nadia. The family seemed perfect. But things were not as they seemed. The marriage was not a good one, and Father Liasse was described as physically and psychologically abusive. He frequently ignored his wife, particularly in social gatherings, and treated her as if she were his property rather than his equal. If she did begin talking, he would interrupt her and show her no respect. He was described as volatile, possessive and unfaithful. Monique wasn't the only woman Lias was disrespectful towards. He was an incessant womanizer, while at the same time being generally contemptuous of all women. He would often rub his crotch on them, no matter where he was, whether at parties, his house,

his neighbour's house, and even on the bus. He was rumoured to have had several mistresses and even other children. In 1969, the Garby family moved back to Montreal and purchased a home on a quiet tree-lined street in a nice suburban neighbourhood. Unfortunately, the stock market crash not long after, and the family was left with virtually nothing because most of their funds had been invested into the mutual fund Lias worked for. As they scrambled to get back on their feet,

Liass continued to display his male chauvinism and authority, often in the form of violence against his wife Monique. One time he threw the dinner she'd cooked outside into the snow and then physically assaulted her, beating her in front of the children. She escaped by running into the basement where she cowered for the next four hours. Monique would later say, He would speak of love and other things and out of nowhere I'd get blow to the next four hours. and other things, and out of nowhere I'd get blows to my face.

I didn't know if I was supposed to be his wife or his servant. Lias also exerted the same physical force against his son, Gamil. A close friend of the family said that he would cling to his father's legs as Lias struck him, and that often he was struck hard enough that he would bleed from his nose and ears. According to Monique, quote, He would hit my son right in the face and it left marks, sometimes for a week at a time. Leass would also hit both children for the smallest things, like if they forgot to say good morning to him. He considered his children to be tiresome.

Monique also said that after his violent outbursts towards the children, he would stop her from consoling them. He was of the opinion that doing this would be spoiling them. One night in February 1970, after another violent outburst, Monique decided she'd had enough. She woke up Gamil and Nadia, aged six and four, bundled them into the car and fled to her sister's house. Unfortunately, Lias tracked her there and when he arrived began throwing her against a stone wall repeatedly. When Monique's brother-in-law tried to intervene, Lias struck him as well. After two months, Leas convinced Monique to come home and give the marriage another try. Unsurprisingly, the physical and mental abuse began within weeks of her returning home.

A year later, Monique was finally done. She told Leash she wanted a divorce and in response he threw her and the kids out of the house. Gamil was now seven and Nadia five. In 1972, Monique was granted custody of, of the children. Lias had only paid a small amount of child support in the previous 11 months, and when Monique was granted custody, he stopped paying her altogether. Then, he virtually disappeared from their lives for three years. Essentially, he abandoned them. In the early years after his parents' separation, young Gamil Garby found another male role model in an uncle who lived on a farm

in Quebec. His uncle was a former member of the armed forces where he'd been a paratrooper and trained with elite American special forces. This was an important relationship. This uncle would be the one who taught young Gamil how to shoot a gun. As a single mother, Monique needed to return to work as a nurse, but also saw that with two kids to support on her own, she would need to earn more. In 1974, society lacked the ability to adequately support the needs of a single mother. So Monique returned to school with the goal of getting the qualification she needed to advance her career and therefore earn enough money to adequately support her kids. But with working, studying and keeping late hours,

Monique didn't feel that she could give them the stability that they needed. So she made a decision to leave them with friends and relatives during the week and she would see them on the weekends. In 1975, Monique recognised that she and the kids were experiencing some residual effects as a result of the tumultuous life they'd lived so far. So she began seeking treatment for the entire family in a psychiatric program at St. Justine Hospital. She stated,

It seems we had difficulties expressing our need to love and be loved. By 1976, just four years after she was left as a single mother, Monique's hard work paid off. She took the position of Director of Nursing at a Montreal hospital, where she oversaw 160 staff. And with the assistance of her father, she also purchased a new family home in the Pierre Fons, a nice middle-class neighbourhood of Montreal. Gamil was 12 and Nadia was 9. This year was also important as Monique's request to divorce Lias Garby was granted. This came after a painful court case where Monique was required to relive specific examples of how Lies had physically and mentally abused her in the kids.

Several witnesses also spoke. When the divorce court date came, he suddenly reappeared in their lives wanting custody of the kids. He denied the abuse, saying, quote, It is certain that from time to time during life that someone receives a slap or something else, but to hit in the sense to hurt, no. The judge didn't believe him, later saying it was, clear in my heart, that he had been abusive. She said that she was most affected by the fact that Leas physically abused the children, but then would not let them seek consolation with their mother.

As a result, Leas only received one visit, per month and that was strictly supervised. But it soon became evident that all of Liasse's bravado about wanting to see his kids was all talk. He didn't care about them. He obviously felt bruised because Monique won custody the first time and he didn't want her to win again. As soon as the divorce and custody hearings were over, he went back to the way he was,

not showing any interest in his children and not paying his children. child support payments. But he continued to try and spite Monique at any chance he could. When she tried to take the kids overseas on vacation, he blocked her move to get their passports. In grade 7, Gamil would meet his first friend, who it seems would be his only close friend throughout his teenage years. Jean Belanger sat next to Gamil on the bus and described him as a mouth and a chin and a fringe of curly brown hair poking out from under the yanked down peak of a baseball cap. Jean initiated the conversation and after this the pair were together constantly.

Jean's family welcomed Gamil with open arms, but initially he was resistant and avoided interaction with them. Jean described it as though Gamil was afraid of something. He would say, quote, If he would have a problem, he would never ask for help. If something hurt him inside, he would keep it to himself. Gamil was an above-average student but was rarely seen carrying books home. He would often sit in the back of the classroom, hiding beneath the bill of his ever-present baseball cap.

The two friends were not into sports, clubs, drinking or drugs. They didn't like eating lunch with everyone else at school. and went off together to a secluded spot in the woods behind the school. They rode their bikes everywhere, often riding 20 kilometres into town, where they would just wander around. They occasionally visited an army surplus store where Jean remembers Gamil once purchased an old army jacket and a gas mask. He remembered,

It wasn't that he had some sort of fascination with war. It was just things we found interesting, like, hey, they actually. wore this stuff. The boys frequently rode their bicycles 30 kilometres out of town to go camping, but a large part of their time was spent in the basement of the Belanger's house where the two would design and build electronic gadgets. Gamil was an intelligent kid just like his father and was able to construct an electric saw out of an old desk, an old sawblade, a car fan belt and a discarded pool pump. He had hundreds of books and magazines, most of them how-to magazines about electronics.

Jean said that Gamil wanted to become an electronics engineer or a computer engineer, some sort of engineer. The two boys would occasionally go hunting pigeons behind Gamil's house with their pellet guns. One time, Gamil shot Jean in the right thumb and responded, Ah shit, what did I do? Jean said that this was Gamil's favourite expression. Ah, shit. In grade 8, Gamil admitted to John that he hated his father and wanted to change his name because of it. He only ever once discussed the physical abuse with John,

and that was only after his friend had questioned him about it. Gamil would give Jean just one anecdote. If his family were all sitting at the dinner table and his mother, Monique, served anyone before his father, Lias would react violently. Father-son relationship dynamics aside, Gamil told Jean he was also sick and tired of being teased for being an Arab. He wanted a name that sounded like it was more Montreal. He intended to take his mother's maiden name, Lapine, as his surname.

And for his first name, he wanted to change it to Jean, just like his best friend. but Jean convinced him that it would be too confusing being called John and John, since they spent so much time together. Gamil thought about it some more and came up with a new name for himself that he liked. Legally, Gamil wasn't able to change his name independently until he was 18 years old, and his mother Monique wouldn't sign off on it, but this didn't stop him. He started signing everything as his new name from that time on. This confused and confounded his teachers and school administration staff.

Gamil and his younger sister Nadia were often left alone together because of Monique's involved work schedule. Gamil was told to look after Nadia and do the chores around the house. He essentially took on the role of man of the house in his mother's absence. And according to Jean, he was not happy. Quote, it was in his face. You could tell he was unhappy, especially at night when he had to leave my parents' place to go home to bed. He would want to stay up later or stay here.

Things were not helped by the fact that Gamil and Nadia had a strained relationship. They were polar opposites. Nadia was quite sociable and extroverted and found it easy to taunt her older brother, the more withdrawn one. There was no love lost between the siblings. Their mother Monique would later say that when Gamil was 12, he dug a grave by the light of the moon and put down a photo of Nadia with her name written on it. Monique said that a few months later,

the cat she loved vanished into thin air. She believed that he did something to the cat to hurt her. Gamil seemed to have a problem with them both. After his name change, Nadia continued to call him by his birth name, which made him quite angry. Gamil, Gamil, Gamil, Gamil. She seemed to know which buttons to push

and he would fire up very easily. Monique Lepin was worried about how Gamil openly detested his father and as he was now 14 years old, she decided he needed a decent male role model in his life. He wasn't seeing his uncle much anymore. So she enrolled him in the Big Brothers Association, who partnered him up with a man called Ralph, who was in his 40s and enjoyed photography and motocross.

Ralph, Gamil and Jean hung around a lot together over the next few years, playing with electronic equipment generously supplied by Ralph. Personality-wise, Gamil was an unremarkable student, and most of his teachers at high school didn't really remember him. At age 15, best friends, and Jean got together with his first girlfriend, Gina Kuzano, who eventually became Gamil's other best friend. Like the three musketeers, the three of them were always together. Jean and Gina tried to convince Gamil to try dating and maybe find a girlfriend, but they were

unsuccessful. Gamil refused to attend any dances or parties or any kind of social function. Gina remembered, the problem was that he was too shy to go out. after them, and the girls thought him too much a nerd to come after him. Around this time, Gamil's sister Nadia was giving her mother Monique a lot of grief. At age 14, she was starting to rebel, hanging out with what Monique considered to be bad friends, doing drugs, and generally acting up. Monique felt that she was out of options on how to keep Nadia in line, so she put her daughter into foster care, and there Nadia would remain for the next four years.

When Gamil was 17 years old, his big brother figure Ralph suddenly disappeared out of their lives. When Jean asked about what happened to Ralph, Gamil told him that the man was gay and had been charged with assaulting a young kid, so he told him to get his things and go. Jean didn't know if this was true or not, and reporters later checked out the story. but found no court records in Quebec of anyone by any name similar to Ralph's. No one really knows what happened with Ralph or whether Gamil's story was true. Shortly after Ralph disappeared, Gamil walked into an Armed Forces Recruiting Centre, age 17. After being interviewed and assessed, his application was rejected, with the reason that he was

unsuitable. Gamil himself would later write that this was by, because they saw him as antisocial. However, a national defence spokesman would later say that there could have been a multitude of reasons that Gamil was deemed unsuitable, not related to his personality. Other military officials have stated that it was highly unlikely

that anyone would have explicitly told Gamil that he was anti-social, let alone that it was the reason for him not being accepted. Just a few months after this blow happened, mother Monique decided to move house again to be closer to the hospital where she worked. Moving from Pierre Fons to Cartierville, a suburb about 20 minutes away, meant Gamil had to change schools,

effectively ending his friendship with John. And Gamil's eyes, this move was the beginning of the end. Before they lost touch completely, Jean did visit Gamil after the move. quote, Gamil didn't seem very happy there. We'd been together for so long. I guess maybe he was lonely. He didn't have very much to do.

Gamil set his sights on getting into engineering school and after he'd finished high school, he enrolled in a pure sciences course, which was a popular route to get into engineering. But for the first time ever, he suffered academic failure. His intelligence alone wasn't able to get him through this. Whether it was just due to loneliness or difficulty adjusting to the move, in his first term the fall of 1982, he failed two subjects.

By now he officially had no friends and spent most of his time alone, tinkering away on an old computer. In his second term, his grades improved, but by now he'd decided to take a different route to get into engineering school. In the winter of 1983, Gamil moved from pure sciences into a three-year vocational trades program in electronics, where his grade picked up to the level that he was used to. It's important to note that Gamil never drank alcohol or did drugs. He'd always been withdrawn, but now he was becoming increasingly manic, hyperactive and nervous.

His teenage hormones had wreaked a bit of havoc on his face, and the resulting acne and scarring embarrassed and angered him. In January of 1986, Gamil applied to get in to the Eco Polytechnic Engineering School, part of the University of Montreal. He was conditionally admitted into the course, but told he needed to complete two more prerequisite courses before he could start. Although he wasn't far from graduating from his latest program, he stopped going to his classes shortly after the term began on January 31st.

He didn't officially withdraw, he just stopped attending altogether. By now he was 21 and decided he'd had enough of studying, so he started working in the kitchen at St Jude's Hospital where his mother worked. After a couple of months, he was making enough money to move out on his own. Gamil rented a one-bedroom apartment in Laval, a suburban northwest Montreal. He paid his $300 rent on time, kept the place clean and tidy, and never complained or made trouble. His building superintendent said that he seemed like a good man, but that he also seemed isolated. He noticed that Gamil owned more than a few books on the subject of war.

At work in the hospital cafeteria at St. Jude's hyperactive nature and frenetic pace caused numerous problems. He broke dishes and spilled food. He was moved to the task of serving food in the busy cafeteria. His managers figured that this would be a good place to put him, given the fast pace that he worked. But the kitchen conditions flared up his acne and the hospital employees he was serving food to,

complained. Evidently, his out-of-control acne had put them off of their food. Gamil was removed from serving and hidden away in the back of the kitchen. He tried to grow a beard as a sort of cover, but the facial here he was able to grow was scragly and seemed to make his acne stand out even more. He tried to tell jokes to compensate for his embarrassment, but they never quite hit the mark. He was much more awkward than funny. People thought he was a bit strange. While going through these struggles, he was befriended by a co-worker at the hospital, Dominique Leclair. She said, I was kind to him because he was so hyperactive and nervous. Everyone else tried to avoid him. He was a bit strange because of his shyness. However, in 1987, Dominique left the job to go back to school.

She thought that would be the last time she would see or hear about her strange co-worker. But to her surprise, the next time she would hear his name would be in conjunction with her cousin's name, Maurice Leclair, who two years later would be the last victim of Gamil's shooting spree. The following year, 1988, Gamil quit his job at the hospital and tried again to get into the courses he needed to get into the EcoPolytechnique Engineering School. He enrolled at the nearby Montmoreseye College,

where he studied mass communication, politics and algebra, finishing off with good marks. After Christmas, he stayed in his apartment and played with a new Apple Macintosh computer he'd purchased with his savings from his job at the hospital. Two months later, he enrolled in a computer course at the Control Data Institute in downtown Montreal. He lied about his work history and references to get in,

but his expert computer experience gave him a head start. He got 90% on his admissions test. This course suited Gamil. It was self-paced, so there were no classrooms, no classmates, and no personal interaction. While enrolled in this course, Gamil moved house into a touch. two-bedroom apartment with an old high school acquaintance, Eric Cosette. This would be his last home.

Gamil crammed his bedroom with his bulging collection of war books and videotapes, as well as random computer parts. His floor was covered in piles and piles of books from floor to ceiling, and on his bedroom wall was a print depicting a war scene. Gamil's fascination with war seemed to be snowballing. His housemate Eric had not really noticed anything out of the ordinary with Gamil, apart from the fact that he often made sexist remarks. For example, Gamil thought female police officers were a hair-brained idea because he didn't think women had the physical strength to do the job. Quote, I could see that his prejudices were deeply ingrained. Other than that, Eric said that in his opinion, Gamil's sexist comments weren't that unusual from what other men made at the time.

Eric also noted that Gamil seemed quite emotionally repressed and would fly into a rage over simple accidents. For example, one time when he was cooking, he burned the meat, and his instant reaction was to punch a hole in the wall. Eric also noted Gamil's fascination with guns in war. In 1988, Gamil attended a high school reunion for the class of 1982, hoping to see his old friend Jean Belanger there. However, Jean was in the hospital with a crushed leg after a garage door fell on him. The third musketeer of the group, Gina Kuzano, was in attendance, although she and John had long since broken up. Gina and Gamil spent several hours catching up. When Gamil told her that he'd left his hospital job, she asked why. He told her that he

had been fired by a woman and they hired another woman in his place. The next day, Gamil called his friend Jean since he'd missed him at the reunion. During the conversation, Gamal mentioned he was thinking of joining the army, which was in stark contrast to what he told others about his goals to get into engineering school. This would be the last time the two would ever speak. In 1989 at age 24, Gamil decided to take a chemistry class, one of the classes he needed to start engineering at Ecol Polytechnique.

While he'd made gains with his computer classes, he still needed chemistry. It is here that he met 28-year-old Sylvie Druin, who would be the closest thing he would ever be the closest thing he would ever have to a girlfriend. They met when Sylvie asked him if he wanted to be her lab partner. She recalled that Gamil was pretty harsh with her when they first started out as lab partners, stating that the lab wasn't done right, she was always wrong, and she needed to do her calculations differently. She called his behaviour fascist, he ordered her around. He would also call her

Freeline, a German word for an unmarried woman that isn't often used now because it's considered by some to be disrespectful and sexist. Finally, Sylvie'd had enough. She confronted him and said he would have to find a new lab partner if he didn't stop being so hard on her. He made a big point of scowling in response, but ultimately backed down. Shortly after that, Sylvie asked him for assistance with a computer class she was taking and he seemed quite happy to assist. She visited him at his apartment, saying at first that he welled her with all the things he could do on the computer. But she soon realized he was more concerned with showing off his knowledge than actually assisting her to learn. He would just do the problems himself. They spent many

evenings together in 1989, but their relationship never moved beyond that. of a friendship. One day, Gamil suddenly signed out on the attendance sheet at the computer course, even though he was only two months away from being finished. This seemed like a pattern for him now. He signed that he was quitting and gave the reason that he was going to change his career, although he didn't specify what exactly his plans were. But he didn't tell anyone other than the computer course's administration that he'd quit it.

Sylvie thought that he was still enrolled, but began to notice that he was becoming more and more withdrawn and harder to communicate with. At the same time, a lab assistant in the chemistry class, Andre Trombly, noticed Gamil's eyes were constantly bloodshot, as if he was having trouble sleeping. Andre also remembered that one evening, Gamil came to chemistry class with a newspaper article about a Montreal police woman who had saved a man. from a burning house. Gamil again ranted about how he didn't believe that women should be on the police force. He went on to say that there were only six women on the Montreal force. When Andre questioned him about how he knew that, because surely there must be more than six,

Gamil said he'd only found the names of six of them in newspaper articles. He had actually spent time pouring over newspapers looking for mentions of women police officers. A week after the chemistry class ended, Sylvie told Gamil that she'd been accepted into the engineering program at the University of Quebec Canvas in Tuadivir, and in return, he told her that he would be going to EcoPolytechnique in the fall for engineering. The last time they saw each other was just after the last chemistry class. Sylvie said she came away from that meeting with a strange feeling. quote, like I would never see him again, that I didn't want to see him again, and I didn't.

I told him I might call in the summer, but I never did. On August 29, 1989, Gamil went to the Montreal headquarters of the Quebec Provincial Police to get an application form for a firearms acquisition certificate. He was issued with his permit six weeks later and went to Checkmake Sports, to check out guns. The staff there remembered him asking a lot of questions. On November 21st, two weeks before the massacre, Gamil made one last visit to checkmate sports.

He bought a Sturm-Rouja Mini-14, 223 calibre, which is what some SWAT teams use. The weapon he purchased was a semi-automatic that comes standard with a five-round magazine. He also bought five boxes of shells, each holding 20 shells, 100 bullets in total. He told the shop assistant that he was going hunting for small game. And the next day, he was seen wandering around on the second floor of the Eco Polytechnic. Eight days after that, on December 1, 1989, he was again spotted loitering there in two locations.

first in the corridor on the fourth floor and the second time on the second floor near the bookstore. The next day, Monique Lapine saw her son for the last time. It was December 2nd and Gamil brought her an early birthday present, even though her birthday wasn't until the end of the month. Other than this, she noticed nothing unusual about his behaviour and said their goodbye was no different to usual. That same weekend, the landlord dropped by Gamil's apartment to collect the rent,

but received no answer to his knocks or later phone calls. It was the first time ever that he was late to pay his rent. On December 4th, Gamil was again seen at the E-Cole Polytechnique in the Students' Association office on the second floor. The next day, December the 5th, was the day before the massacre, and he was seen by witnesses again in that same office, and then in the cafeteria. He was scoping out the scene before taking action.

And that's where we're going to leave it for part one. Part two will be released in just a week on July 15th, so you won't have to wait the full two weeks. In that episode, I'll take you through the massacre itself and then go through the aftermath and how it affected both Quebec and Canada. I wanted to say a huge thank you to a couple of people who helped me out with this case. Thank you to Suzanne St. John for her research and writing and Meg Zhang for additional research.

And another huge thank you goes to journalist Tracy Linderman, who helped me shape the episode, guided my writing of the introduction, and provided me with valuable insider perspective. And thanks also to Dave Wolfman for assistance with firearms and arms. information. And to you, thank you so much for listening. And as always, if you've left me a good review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app, thank you so much. Reviews really help my show continue to gain traction. If the ads bother you and you'd like to receive early release episodes, it costs just $2 a month on Patreon. Visit www.com.com slash Canadian True Crime to sign up. There's

also a link in the show notes. And a huge thanks to these patrons for your support. Joanne M., Melissa N., Gavin W., Stephanie G., and Ashley B. This week's podcast recommendations are both about pretending. Pretend Radio is about people pretending to be someone else, a kind of true crime offshoot. And the second is, we're all just pretending. A touching and hilarious podcast produced by the lovely Lainey from True Crime Fan Club, one of my favorites. Take a listen. There's also links in the show notes. Hi, I'm Lainey.

Host of the new podcast, We're All Just Pretending. It's a podcast that has elements of Dear Abby with a twist of post secret. Every episode, I'll read listener questions and provide advice and insight as a friend. My own pod friends will even join in and offer their advice on parenting, relationships and even give you really bad advice on purpose. Since we all have secrets to share, there'll also be a segment focusing on letting the skeletons out of your closet. If you're looking for advice or want to share a secret,

head to allpretendingpod.com. And remember, we're all just pretending here. At the heart of every crime, there's a lie. In order to do this job well, you're going to have to learn to lie. but you're going to have to remember who you're lying to and when to lie and when not to lie. But a lie is only powerful if you choose to believe it. It all came out.

All the story came out. It turned out he had two wives and five fiancés that he wasn't marrying women because he loved them. He was actively impregnating women to rip them off for money, me being one of them. So why do we fall for it every time? My father told me at a young age, He says, Carl, the two easiest things to sell anybody, anything that will improve their looks, and anything that'll make them money.

And that's what you want to sell. Pretend Radio is a documentary podcast about people pretending to be someone else. I interview real con artist, snake oil salesman, and former cult members, anyone living alive. Search for Pretend Radio wherever you get your podcast. This episode of Canadian True Crime was written by me, with help from Suzanne St. John, Meg Zhang and Tracy Linderman. Audio production was by Eric Crosby. The Canadian True Crime theme song was written specifically for me by We Talk of Dreams.

I'll be back soon with Part 2. See you then.