RedHanded - Episode 124 - École Polytechnique: The Montreal Massacre

Episode Date: December 5, 2019

The 6th of December 2019 marks the 30 year anniversary of the Montreal massacre, a dark day in Canadian history. It was the day that gunman Marc Lépine walked into an engineering school and shot dead 14 female students.  As he shot the women, he exclaimed that he hated feminists, and that feminists had ruined his life. This sentiment was backed up in his manifesto. A manifesto that shares a great number of themes with that of Isla Vista killer Elliot Roger, or the motivations the 2018 Toronto van killer, Alek Minnassian. But with the continued glorification and martyrdom of the likes of Lépine, Rodger and Minassian - how far have we really come? References: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spsAJ76rP3I&t=816s https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/dec/03/montreal-massacre-canadas-feminists-remember https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-wednesday-edition-1.4435607/this-is-how-one-survivor-described-the-montreal-massacre-the-day-after-the-shooting-1.4435613 https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/polytechnique-tragedy https://www.rapereliefshelter.bc.ca/montreal-massacre https://www.rapereliefshelter.bc.ca/learn/resources/women-violence-and-montréal-massacre-lee-lakeman https://www.flare.com/news/remember-the-women-of-the-montreal-massacre-by-more-than-just-their-names/ https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/polytechnique-massacre-lives-forever-changed https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/mass-shooting-reshaped-canadian-debate-about-guns-and-political-identity-180962013/ https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/montreal-massacre-ecole-polytechnique-trudeau_ca_5cd57b57e4b07bc729787a6d https://globalnews.ca/news/6187845/montreal-massacre-victims/ https://www.therecord.com/opinion-story/5184229-montreal-massacre-changed-us-forever/ http://theconversation.com/the-1989-polytechnique-massacre-was-an-act-of-terrorism-against-all-women-108260 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah.

I'm Saruti. And welcome to Red Handed, episode 120-something. I don't even know anymore. Like, I have to, like, look at it every time. I, like, write it to to Red Handed, episode 120-something. I don't even know anymore. Like, I have to, like, look at it every time I, like, write it, to, like, post the episode. I'm like, I have no idea. I have literally no idea how many this is. I have less than no idea.

No clue. Not a foggiest. Not a foggiest. I'm going to guess 124. It's been a long week. I know it's a Monday morning. Last week was a long week. Yeah, very, very long.

I feel like I was either permanently drunk or hungover. Like it just really, there was no in between. There was no in between, but it was all very important work related business that we were doing, of course. Yeah, it's true. It is actually true. How good was Friday night? Those of you who follow us on social media, you will know what a wonderful Friday we had we had a bit of a woman crush Friday our lovely promoter who did our UK tour kindly offered us um a while back actually these tickets to go see Liam Gallagher we were like yeah definitely it's in the calendar and when we went there who was there in the little suite that we were in but my favourite murder well not my favourite Karen and and Georgia. And Vince. God, can I just say they are just like the loveliest ladies ever.

Yeah, we had such a good time. We got the tube together. We did. That was my favourite bit of the night. It was really lovely. Sorry, Liam. We had a great time and we sat in this little suite with these teenagers who kept trying to throw themselves off the balcony.

It was all very strange. We sent them back to the US with a very, like, embarrassing opinion of British people. There was a lot of piss-throwing, teenagers jumping off balconies. They were like, is it always like this? Is that really piss? I was like, yes, and yes.

Welcome to Great Britain. They had a great time in Old Blighty, and they've left thinking exactly the accurate truth of what it is like to be here. Pleasure to meet them. Thank you to everybody at the Liam Gallagher gig who did great work for British culture that night. So thank you, everybody. That's enough of that. This week is actually the anniversary of the case that we're covering today, you can all read, so you already know, it is the Montreal massacre that happened in 1989, December the 6th.

That is this Friday, if you're listening to this on the day of release. But we're not going to start on the 6th of December 1989. We're kicking off where we've never started before, in a divorce court in 1976. And we are in Canada, if you hadn't already guessed. A lot of very difficult to pronounce French Canadian names today, so please forgive us. My French accent, I never did French at school. My French accent has been developed entirely

to take the piss out of my ex-boyfriend who is French. That is the only reason I have worked on it at all, so it is probably going to be offensive. I think it's like, if you just hold your nose and drop the end letter of every word is that the trick so let's get going with um these french canadian names and also some algerian ones so the couple in question in this divorce court in 1976 were comprised of canadian-born nurseique Lepine and her abusive, soon-to-be ex-husband, here we go, Rakidlias Garbi. And Rakid was from Algeria originally.

I love in some places you've just given up on writing Rashid and just written Richard. I'm dyslexic, man. You nailed it, though, when you said it out loud. I was reading along and I was like, good. Yeah, I literally didn't even notice I'd done that. So he worked as an investment fund salesman primarily in the Caribbean so he bounced his family around between Puerto Rico and Costa Rica for almost a decade until they finally settled down in Canada

in 1968 where he forced his wife Monique to be his secretary even though she was a trained nurse and when she made mistakes he would hit her over the back of the head. He also beat his children so severely that they would have bruises that lasted for weeks. And one of these children would grow up to be the perpetrator in our case today. Rikid felt that a woman's place was in the home and that women were inherently worth less than men were. And they were only there to serve their husbands pop-out babies and make dinners. And he passed that ideology on to his son. His son's given name was Gamil Rodrigues Garbi, but after his parents separated, young Gamil changed his name as a result of bullying. And he changed it to Marc Lepine, taking his mother's maiden name.

And that is the name that would go down in history. And we will be referring to him as Mark Lepine for the rest of the episode as well. Now, Mark was a bright kid, but he lacked basic social skills. He had a tough time at school. His sister teased him, and he only saw his mother on weekends. In the week, she was busy working two jobs to support her kids. Monique tried to give Mark a male role model by enrolling him in a Big Brother program. And this showed positive results for the first couple of years. But it all ended suddenly when Mark's assigned Big Brother was accused of child molestation. Now, we couldn't find any information that these allegations were substantiated.

Only that both Mark and his big brother vehemently denied it. It's not great though is it having your mentor taken away because they might be molesting children. Yeah it's not the ideal role model you're looking for in another man. No that comes into your life. I'm not even sure his dad stayed in Canada. Like I just know that his mum got custody of him and his sister. I'm not sure where his dad went. So it's a bit like little Mark, young little Mark, has a dad who beats him and then pisses off, and then a big brother who potentially either molested him or at least some other kids, maybe, but not quite.

Always acting suspiciously enough to be accused of molesting other children, yeah. So, so far, his male role models are two thumbs down, I'm going to say. In 1981, Mark tried to join the Canadian Armed Forces, but he was rejected. Many sources say that this was because he displayed antisocial behavioural traits. The official line of the Armed Forces in later years would be that Mark Lepine was found to be unsuitable, in air quotes, if you couldn't hear it in my voice. You can decide what you think the truth is, maybe it is both. So the next year, 1982, Mark enrolled in a community college in Montreal and worked a part-time custodial job at the hospital at which his mum was the director of nursing.

He studied science for a year and then he quit. And then he started a three-year technical program that had a much more practical approach to employment. Kind of like an apprenticeship-y type thing. From what I understand, it just had much more practical applications than studying science in a sort of academic sense. Yeah, so maybe more like actually how to do electronics, DIY, so you can be like a tradesperson. Exactly.

And Mark actually did much better here than he had at the community college. He showed an aptitude for electronics. But one day, he just stopped going. He moved out of his mum's house and moved in with an old school friend. And he applied to the University of Montreal's engineering school, École Polytechnique, which I believe has a different name now. But he was denied entry. Then he was fired from his job at the hospital for insubordination and neglect of his duties.

But that didn't stop him from completing his technical college diploma and applying again to École Polytechnique. But once again, he didn't make it, because he did not have all of the necessary prerequisites. This is important. Some sources claim that he never applied to École Polytechnique, but I've seen it in more places that he did apply twice. So it's really hard to know.

But you would think that would be a pretty easy thing to prove. Yeah, I don't know why there is so much controversy around that particular fact. It's really strange. Some people would be like, oh, like many media, I don't know why I'm pretending to do a French accent, many media outlets misreported that he had applied and been rejected what the fuck does it matter like also why can't you just prove it when you go on to like see what he did it would make sense that he was rejected from the school I think it's probably true I think he probably did

apply and get rejected but there doesn't seem to be hard and fast a pit like a fact on that i don't know you can make your own mind up please bear it in mind as we go on through the rest of the story and i think uh not only the fact that you see it reported in more places that he did than that he didn't i also think if you look at his sort of not demeanor his sort of behavior around this time the things that he's doing the fact that he is quitting, he's losing jobs for insubordination. I feel like he thinks, and this is a big theme of this entire episode, the level of entitlement, the level of the fact that he thinks he should be doing something better than he currently is. I think with that kind of mentality, in my opinion, of course he applied. And of course he didn't take rejection well. He'd already been rejected by the armed forces and now here is one more rejection. But this takes us all the way up to December the 6th, 1989. Marc Lepine was now 25

and at about 5pm, he walked right into Le Col Polytechnique with a semi-automatic rifle that he had legally acquired and a large hunting knife. This happened a decade before Columbine. And before we go into what happened next, let's do a quick roundup on the political climate in Quebec at the time. The pro-choice movement was picking up steam six months before the December that we're discussing this week. Chantal Diagel had overturned an injunction obtained by her

abusive ex-partner that prevented her from having an abortion. More than 10,000 women protested in the streets of Montreal on her behalf. But of course, not everyone sided with Chantelle. As the feminist movement was in full swing, there was a counter-argument. One that if you listen to our Incel episode, and if you haven't listened, it's episode 45, go back and have a listen, you will be more than familiar with. What happened on December 6, 1989 at École Polytechnique would be recognized by some as the explosion of the resentment that had been growing against women in Canada for quite some time. Here's what happened.

At ten minutes past five in the evening, Marc Lepine walked into a lecture hall that was filled with 60 engineering students. Three of them were standing at the front of the class, giving a presentation. For many of the students in the room, this was the last day of class before they finished their degrees. Marc Lepine walked into the room and ordered that everyone stand up and separate themselves by gender. The students looked around confused, thinking that this guy couldn't be serious and that this had to be some sort of joke. But after Lepine fired two shots into the ceiling, it was clear that this was absolutely no joke.

The students stood up and separated themselves, women on the one side of the room and men on the other. Lepine ordered all of the men to leave the room, which they all did without protest. There were nine women left in the room. Nine out of the 60 engineering students in that class were women. Women made up less than 20% of the entire student body at École Polytechnique. And when the men left the room, Marc Lupin shouted at these women that he hated feminists and feminists had ruined his life. Student Nathalie Provost spoke out. She told Lepine, listen, we're just women who are studying engineering. And she also said that not all of them were even feminists, and she had never fought against men herself.

But Marc Lepine just opened fire, exclaiming that they were all women who were going to be engineers. Six women died right there on the spot. The rest were injured. Nathalie Provost was one of them. Lepine's bullets grazed her leg and foot. Before he left, Lepine took the time to write shit, exclamation mark, shit, exclamation mark, on a piece of work that was lying on a desk in the classroom. I've seen that. It was very neatly written. How fucking, just sums out how fucking puerile he is. He goes in there, he shoots a bunch of women

and then takes the time to write, to grade their papers. So Mark Lepine then moved out of this classroom and into another one and another. He rampaged around the university for a further 15 minutes and he killed 14 women in total. Many more women and men were injured. He only shot at men though who tried to get in his way. He was there to kill women and that much was clear. Perhaps he thought that women were the reason that he couldn't be an engineer rather than the fact that he simply didn't meet the entry requirements for the prestigious school that he had applied to.

Almost all of his victims were under the age of 25. Two of them didn't even study engineering. And after his 20-minute death spree, Mark Lepine, like so many other mass killers, turned his gun on himself. The police made it into the building after Lepine had shot himself in the head. They formed a perimeter around the building

and in the time that it took them to do so, Lepine had killed seven women. Once the police were inside, they found a suicide note

in one of Lepine's pockets. It read, this is, you've got to remember this is translated from French, so it's, the phrasing is

quite bizarre and it's not necessarily words that we would use. But obviously so much of English is based on French that you kind of you get it. Anyway, so this is what it is. It read, would you note that if I commit suicide today, it is not for economic reasons, but for political reasons, because I have decided to send the feminists who have always ruined my life to their maker. I have decided to put an end to those viragos, do we think?

I have never heard that word before. Basically, I looked it up. It means like bad-tempered woman. Oh, okay. I had never seen it before either. I think it must be a French word. Yeah. Also, just remember what he's saying in there.

Remember the phrasing. This is not for economic reasons, but for political reasons. We'll come back to that. It goes on to say, Even if the mad killer epithet will be attributed to me by the media, I consider myself a rational erudite that only the arrival of the Grim Reaper has forced to take extreme acts. And this statement was followed by a list of women who Lapine planned on killing if he had time.

And according to Lapine, these women were all radical feminists who deserved to die. On this list, there was a freelance journalist, the first woman firefighter in Quebec, a television host, the vice president of the Confederation of National Trade Unions, the Quebec immigration minister, the first woman police captain in Quebec, the Canadian champion of the 1988 Chartered Accountant exams, the former vice president of the Montreal Trust, a radio sports show host, and a transition house worker. Transition house means like that halfway house. So this is women of all shapes, all backgrounds, all jobs. It doesn't matter to him whether they were rich or poor or famous or not. What matters

is that they were women who were doing things that he didn't think women should be doing. Francine Pelletier is the journalist who is on that list. And she went on to make a documentary film about what would become known as the Montreal Massacre. It's called Legacy of Pain. It's on YouTube. I've linked it below. And she later stated, quote, I always felt those women died in my name. Some of them probably weren't even feminist. They just had the nerve to believe that they were peers, not subordinates of their male classmates. Lepine's suicide note was not released publicly for a very long time. Even now, it's very difficult

to find it in its entirety. The authorities claim that they did not release it to attempt to limit copycat killings. But I think that they didn't release it because it made it a lot easier for them to pass him off as just another lone madman, a lone wolf, rather than as a symptom of a larger societal problem. It's not the first time we've seen that, is it? Absolutely not. And it most definitely will not be the last time we see it. So Melissa Blaze is a lecturer at the University of Quebec and is the leading scholar on anti-feminist massacres. And she agrees with us. She interviewed women who were active feminists in 1989 and found that a majority of them felt responsible for the events of December the 6th. And so they stayed silent to avoid further violence.

When Blaise first became a feminist in 2000, she was, quote, puzzled to see that some were still reluctant to talk in political terms about the attack. It seemed as though the most efficient way to dismiss the feminist explanation was to reduce everything to the psychology of a single madman.

Marc Lepine had never been diagnosed with any mental health issues or personality disorders. Of course, that doesn't mean that he didn't have any. If you're going to go into a school and shoot a bunch of people up, you're not totally okay. And there is no doubt that he was miserable. One of his friends was interviewed in Francine Pettelier's film. So she, yes, correct, you heard that correctly, he did have women as friends. She says in the documentary that if it weren't for the massacre, people would retell the story of Marc Lepine as a really tragic life story.

And I think that they still do. At the time, a vast amount of the media chose to look for evidence of Marc's unstable mental state rather than taking his ideological statements into account. We've got a lot to cover when it comes to ideology this episode and we will get there but first before we do that I think it's really important to acknowledge the victims and in mass killings like this it's so easy to read off their names in a long list and not think about them as actual people and I can't take credit for compiling this list and it's linked again in the notes below.

But here are the women who died at the hands of Marc Lepine for being women and for studying to get degrees in engineering. So we've got Annie St-Arnaud. She was 23 when she died and she was in her final engineering class before she graduated. She was deciding whether to be an aluminium smelter or a missionary in Africa. She wrote poems and when she was a kid, she made a clown statue out of rice. Helene Colgan was also 23 the day she died, and she was just about to go off to Mexico for New Year with her friends. She'd already had three job offers, even though she was yet to graduate.

One of her friends told the press, I don't even want to think about what she could have done. Nathalie Couture was 23 as well, and she was going on that think about what she could have done. Natalie Cotillard was 23 as well and she was going on that Mexico New Year's Eve trip too. Her and Elaine were very close friends. Barbara Dagenour was 22 and when she was seven she had asked her mum why she couldn't be the Pope. She was an exceptional student who loved shrimp omelettes. Anne-Marie Edward was an avid skier, so much so that she was buried in her ski jacket and her teammates added her initials to their emblem. She was 21 when she died and she once had capsized a boat 56 times on a family sailing trip. Genevieve Bergeron was just 21 and in her second year she had a scholarship to École Polytechnique and sang in a professional choir at the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. Maud Havannick was 29.

She was a sculptor who had returned to university to study materials engineering. She was killed during her last class before graduating. Barbara Klusnik-Videvic had fled Poland with her husband in 1986 when her home country was placed under martial law. They chose Canada because they thought that it was the safest place in the world. Barbara was studying nursing. She was having dinner in the cafeteria with her husband when they were shot at by Lepine. Barbara's husband survived. Anne-Marie LeMay was 22 and chose to study mechanical engineering because a childhood friend of hers had lost the use of their legs. She was in a band and had a talent for connecting with people.

The day before the massacre, she wrote herself a note that read, Tomorrow is the last day of classes, and of my life too. And then she wrote, Whoa! Now that sounds depressed, at 3am. Maryse Langanier worked as an administrator at the university. She had recently got married. Her husband believed that she was pregnant when she was killed. She had been hiding in an office, and Lapine had spotted her when she had tried to lock the door.

Maryse Leclerc was in her fourth year of engineering. She liked British punk rock and New Wave, and her father was a head of public relations for the Montreal police. And it was he who found her body. Sonia Peltier was an overachiever who loved rock music and cooking pasta from scratch. She was 28 when she died. Her sister told the press that she felt sorry for Marc Lepine's mother, Monique, saying, quote, we, the families of the victims, had pride in our sisters and daughters,

but she had nothing at all. Michelle Richard, or Mimi to her friends and family, was 21 when she died. She was planning on getting engaged to her boyfriend the following year. And Annie Turcotte was the recipient of a Women in Science bursary. And in the summers, she volunteered at a summer camp,

teaching children with disabilities to swim. The Montreal massacre was described in contemporary reports as a crime and a tragedy, but never as a terrorist attack. As usual with white mass murderers, Marc Lepine was painted as a troubled youth, not a figure indicative of a larger problem. Right after the shootings, media outlets denied that women were being specifically

targeted. A psychiatrist from the Hôtel-Dieu Hospital in Quebec stated that Marc Lepine was, quote, as innocent as his victims, and himself a victim of an increasingly merciless society. It's really interesting because we don't take it lightly to call

this a terrorist attack, which is obviously what we're not hinting at. That's obviously what we're saying because we just had a terror attack in London over the weekend. And all of the stuff that you just said about people coming out and saying he was as innocent as the victims and he was a victim of an increasingly merciless society and all the stuff we're about to say. Have you heard one single person come out and say that about the London Bridge attacker? Nope. Don't think so. Was it because he was brown and had a beard and was, you know, a Muslim?

Probably. Probably. And we've seen this with Dylann Roof. We've seen it with, you know, we've sort of looked at mass shootings quite a lot. And more often than not, it's either one or two white guys. Very, like, almost always just one. We conflate many things in the West and that most of the terrorist activity happening in the world is coming from radical islamic terrorism yes that is a fact but most of terrorism that happens in the west is actually not it is actually

either white supremacist or this kind of anti-woman anti-feminist attacks that seem to be happening but we don't call these terror attacks so they don't they aren't sort of counted as part of that they're just called mass murderers or mass killings and they're just brushed off as being lone single crazy wolves who are crazy and society has done them wrong and that's why they've done it but fuck that shit if you're gonna call one thing what's the thing if it looks like a duck it walks like a duck and it quacks it's a fucking duck this is that I think what I found most shocking about this one was like reading a lot of contemporary reports and obviously you know we're only as good as the the resources that we have I'm not Canadian I wasn't there I wasn't even alive when this happened but I was two months old

I was absolutely floored by the press surrounding this because all that keeps coming back is that there's no problem with women nobody actually cares about women women have nothing to worry about obviously they fucking do because 14 of them just got shot for going to uni it's unbelievable it's the hypocrisy of it because this happened because this guy decided to go into a university and shoot all of the women, specifically the women who were there studying, right? But the hypocrisy of it is when the Malala case happened, we'll be like, oh my God, aren't the Taliban awful for shooting at young girls who want to go get an education? Do not remove yourself from what is happening in our own backyards. Like, this is a widespread issue that knows no boundaries

in terms of the countries, the nations, and the people that it affects because you can't point fingers there and say, oh, isn't that a travesty? Oh, but this isn't really that. This is something different. Coming back to his own fucking statements, he said this was not due to economic reasons. I don't see myself as insane, blah, blah, blah.

This was a politically motivated action. He himself said that. And I find it remarkable whenever this kind of thing happens, whether it's Dylann Roof, whether it's this, whether it's Elliot Rodger, whether it's any kind of terrorism, we always want to look away from what the attacker says is their motivation and their reason for doing it. We're like, no, no, no, that's not what he meant. Let us ascribe a different reason and a different rationale to why he did what he did. Why don't we listen to them when they say the reasons that they're doing it? Because he makes it very clear.

Yeah, he is very clear and straightforward and to the point. And as we said, he has never been diagnosed with any sort of mental health issue. Does that mean it's not there? Of course not. But it's important. But that didn't stop many mental health professionals speculating to the media about how many things must have been wrong with Mark Lupine. No one had a medical file to look at because he has, as we said, never been seen by, let alone diagnosed by a doctor.

I mean, I'm sure he went to the doctor when he had the flu, but like he never went to a mental health professional. There is no doubt that there was a reluctance to politicize the massacre, even though Lepine himself in his suicide note insisted that his motives were nothing but political. Martin Dufresne, the founder of Men Against Sexism, argued that the late 80s was a time of significant growth for men's rights activists in Canada and that the public felt too uncomfortable with the political explanation. To say that Lepine's actions were not political

takes away the agency of his actions. It's the same as telling women they have nothing to be afraid of. Nathalie Provost, the survivor who challenged Lepine during his rampage, was asked what the shooting made her realize and she said that the day before it had happened she thought that she was equal to men. After that day she said that she realized that not everyone saw it like that. At the time Nathalie thought that feminism was aligned with being militant and therefore did not count herself as a feminist. She said, quote, I realised many years later that in my life and actions,

of course I was a feminist. Psychologist Guy Cournot claimed that the Montreal Massacre was nothing to do with feminism, but rather the fault of Lepine's absentee father and the expression of a masculinity crisis. No, it's nothing to do with the thing that he directly fucking told us. Yeah, it's literally nothing to do with the thing he shouted as soon as he got into the building.

No, no, no, shush, shush, shush, shush, shush. No, we can't let the women know they're onto something. I'm sure it didn't help that he had an absentee father. I'm sure his masculinity was in crisis, but he fucking tells you why and he fucking blames it on women. But we're going to ignore that, are we? No, not here. Not today. He was hip hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Combs. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about.

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Anti-feminist movements have accused feminists of jumping all over the attack to push their own far-left, man-hating agenda. If their agenda is that women shouldn't be shot down in the classrooms of the universities that they attend for the sole reason that they are women, because remember, he chucked all the men out. This wasn't just let me shoot as many people and see who I get. He's very, very accurate about what he's doing.

And if that is the sole thing that these feminists are claiming, then actually it doesn't seem very much like a far left ideology. Yeah, like how is that radical? I don't think so. Like is it radical to think that women should be allowed to go to university? I really don't think so. This is what is so mind-blowing about this. It is mind-blowing.

I feel like surely in a, I don't want to say in a world that's increasingly polarised, it's been polarised forever. Let's not pretend. We're just much more aware of it now because of the constant news and social media and everything that we're being bombarded with. It's always been polarised. But is there one thing that we can agree on?

That women should be allowed to safely go to university and not be scared that they might get shot? That doesn't seem like a radical ideology or a radical leaning to have it's just like it's what always happens is that it all just gets pushed into this like narrative of like man haters yeah you can demand safety for women and you can demand equality without saying without it being conflated with man hate and this is the thing that we see time and time again. We talked about it in other cases with Elliot Roger, with the Dylann Roof case.

Whether it is racism, whether it is misogyny, whether it's homophobia, whether it's transphobia, whatever it may be, we always see that certain individuals within the groups that are in power due to the status quo at the time can push back when those that they oppress are those that are oppressed within the society that they exist. Push back and demand equality. These people see

equality as a zero-sum game that somehow, if these women are to have equality and to have a place at this university, that it takes it away from him. Obviously, not everybody thinks that if we did, we'd all be fucked. But these minorities do. And that's the problem. It's much more prevalent than I thought, though. Oh, yeah. When I say, you know, minorities, I'm saying in the grand scheme of things. But of course, it's much more prevalent.

And if this hadn't been with women, it would have been with something else. Like we look at Dylann Roof, whatever it is, whichever way that you're aligned, whether it is a terrorist radicalization, whether it's this kind of thing, it is always about somebody is demanding equality and that comes at my expense and I'm not having it and sadly that is a quite a common thinking you're right so yeah someone said to me at a party the other day they were like that this person is a solicitor and is also a man and he was like of course I don't want gender equality quotas because statistically speaking that means I've got less chance of being a partner. If more women are allowed to come into my business, then statistically speaking, that does make me not have a shot as much as I used to. So obviously I don't want it. And I was like, well, you're abhorrent.

Yeah, well, at least he's honest. There you go. Whatever. God. So whatever we want to say that these feminists were demanding at the time, or whatever they were pushing, women rose up in their thousands to commemorate the 14 dead all over Canada. One perfect example is a young woman from Montreal talking to a TV crew, saying, this is another event of violence against women, which is part of everyday life. She was interrupted by a man telling her to calm down and that her statement was not the point.

What is the point then, Mr Interruptee? What is the point? He doesn't know. Lone wolf, mad man. Mental health problems. Yeah, we're here to commemorate the deaths of women, not to talk about how you want equal rights. How dare you hijack this? It's a thing we see all the time whenever something happens.

When it is a problem that people don't want to have linked to political issues, they'll just be like, how dare you politicise this? How dare you politicise this? How dare you politicise this? Spoilers, everything's political. Taking the bus is political. Putting your bins out is political. Anyway, the doctors have told me I have low blood pressure. I think my blood pressure is reaching normal now.

Vigils were held across the country, and in some areas, men were asked to remain at home. This led to the memorial services being called a quote kind of mind terrorism by alderman Johannes van der Wies. A television news anchor on BCTV added that the vigils were sexist and extreme compared to the quote legitimate mourning that was taking place on college campuses. I think he just means if men aren't present mourning is illegitimate. Don't really know how else to take that. And the fact that this was a crime against women alone continued to be erased in the media. Journalists called it a crime against humanity, not women. Another woman called Bonnie

at a vigil was asked by a male news reporter on CKUV-TV. And this news reporter asks her, aren't there any nice guys out there? And Bonnie said, well, one in four of us is raped and not all by the same man. About half of the women living with lovers are physically abused. And the reporter replies, yes, but I'm asking you to make a concession to say that there are some good guys. I don't know why that needs saying. We're not here to talk about all of the nice guys that are out there. We're here to talk about the people that are doing awful, abhorrent things to women. Why does she need to qualify that?

Because it's erasure. Because it's saying that there's not really a problem. What we've got here is a man walking into a university with the express intention of killing women. He then killed 14 women and left a note expressing that he had killed them for being women. How has this narrative turned into a trope of the man-hating feminist, jumping all over a cause to destroy every man? That's the thing. It's let's take this thing that this terrorist did and let's, when people cry out about it, let's turn the tables on them, turn it round on them and say that they are perpetuating the trope of man-hating feminists when I'm what it's it's a bizarre hijacking of this tragedy that has happened professor Jennifer Scanlon who I came

across this week um she's a professor of women's studies and she raised a really interesting point in 1994 she said why do we understand pornography women earning less money than men, beer advertisements, and men hitting their wives, but not the killer. He's part of a continuum, not removed from society, but part and parcel of our women-hating. Feminists were accused of taking advantage of this situation by talking about misogyny. The killer was crazy, many argued. His actions had nothing to do with the women, and everything to do with his psychosis. But I think we're both in agreement that it was quite a lot to do with his hatred of women. Of course, because he told us we're not ascribing some meaning to an action that this man committed and he never claimed his own intentions. Absolutely. As Hannah said earlier, to say

that this had nothing to do with feminism, to say that it is now just feminist, and the way that Jennifer Scanlon describes this is perfect. The idea that it is being taken advantage of, that these deaths are being taken advantage of by feminists to propagate their man-hating agenda is a nonsense because it is to take away his agency, Mark Lepine's, to say that this had nothing to do with women because he told us that many many times and this of course sends us all thinking in the same direction the incel direction those of you who again haven't listened to episode 45 where we talk about this and then and if you're hiding under a rock and you have been there for the past like five years and you don't know what an incel is it is a particular subculture of men

that refer to themselves as incels or involuntary celibates. Yes, it is a thing. It is absolutely terrifying. I believe incels.me has now been taken down as well. They're bouncing around all over the internet. They're absolutely terrifying. You will not be surprised to hear that incels, of course, absolutely fucking love Mark Lepine. He is hailed as a hero, not unlike our old mate Elliot Rodger. And some of them even use the hashtag Je suis Lepine. I read that when we first did this as Jesus is Lepine. I knew you would. God.

You did French GCSE. What's your excuse? I don't know. Fucking shit class mate i just sat there and like listened to french audio tapes until i got an a and then walked out that room and never thought about it ever again and also we talked a lot about elliot roger we've talked a lot about um mark lepine obviously but uh don't forget alec manassian the man that we talk about in episode 45 was also canadian so how much has really changed in 30 years because alec manassian, the man that we talk about in episode 45, was also Canadian. So how much has really changed in 30 years?

Because Alec Manassian did his crime like, what, last year? The year before, maybe? Yeah, really recently. Really recently. And in 2017, so just two years ago, 84% of victims in cases of homicide carried out by an intimate partner were women. That's roughly one woman every six days. Half of all Canadian women are said to have experienced

an incident of physical or sexual violence since the age of 16. Indigenous women and girls are six times more likely to be killed than others. And there are more than 550 women's shelters and transition houses across the country for women and children. But the turn-away rate for shelters has consistently remained at about 70 to 75% from 2014 to 2018 due to a lack of capacity and resources. So let's try to put that into context. In the UK, one in four women will experience domestic abuse in their lifetime. Two women every week are killed by a former or current partner.

I don't know if we can say that the situation in Canada is any better or worse than in the UK. I really tried to figure it out. But they're not great stats. No, it's not good. Because obviously Canada is a much bigger country than we are, but our population is much higher. So I tried to work it out. And also because of the way the United Kingdom is split up, England and Wales kind of come as a pair, and then Scotland and Northern Ireland

are separate. So it's quite difficult to get a statistic that sort of goes across the whole of the UK. And even trying to figure out what it is in England and Wales was almost impossible. So if you know, please let us know. But I really couldn't figure out either way, neither the UK or Canada is doing fantastic. So whether it changed the instances of violence against women or not, but I think we can reasonably safely say not much. The aftermath of the Montreal massacre certainly impacted gun control in Canada. You all thought that we're all going to get through this with just one hot button political issue? Sorry. No, I'm not. Survivors of the attack, Heidi Raithje and Benoit Languignier, dedicated their lives to the reformation of gun control in Canada.

Heidi founded the Coalition for Gun Control with Wendy Kruka, who is a university professor, and their efforts directly contributed to the 1995 Bill of Federal Firearm Control legislation. They collected 560,000 signatures after the attack for what was at the time the largest petition in Canadian history. The aim was to ban the sale of military assault weapons, like the semi-automatic that Lepine was able to buy. He just told the shopkeeper that he intended to hunt small game. Heidi told the Montreal Gazette that this law saved at least 300 lives a year.

So over 10 years, that is 3,000 people. And she said, we will never know who they are, of course, but that is already worth every hour we put in. Like many, Benoit, who also survived the attack, wrestled with the question whether he could have done anything to help. But he doesn't think so. Several students involved in the attack later committed suicide, and at least two of them wrote about the massacre in their suicide notes. So Benoit, he was married to one of the victims, and he sort of feels like, I couldn't do anything at the time, but I can help with gun control.

So he just sort of has committed himself to that. And according to Heidi, she said, gun control is rational. You can base it on science science and its impact is measurable. And I find that quite difficult to argue with. Oh, of course. This isn't an emotive piece. This isn't about hatred of guns or whatever, like other rationale for it. It's not about stomping out the political power of incredibly powerful gun associations, though, you know, those things would all be pretty good in what I've read about it. But it is, of course it is, of course it is measurable when you have gun control. Like, whatever, like we're getting in deep, guys. Our true colours are finally being revealed.

Also, I was like curious, was your Benoit wrestled with a little Easter egg about Chris Benoit the wrestler? Yes. I love it. I really love hiding things in the script. It's like my favorite thing to do. It's so funny. It's like a little treasure hunt. I love it. There you go. Happy Easter. Happy Easter hunting. In 1997, the Liberal government in Canada passed a law requiring the licensing and registration of firearms. It also banned some semi-automatic weapons and handguns. But in 2012, the Conservative government abolished the long gun registry and ordered that its database be destroyed.

This meant that gun owners outside Quebec are no longer required to register firearms, provided that they are non-restricted. In 2015, Quebec also deleted their registry, although the government did propose to start a new one. Emergency response in the instance of shootings also changed after the attack on École Polytechnique, after the police were heavily criticised for the way the massacre was handled. In 2006, these changes to protocol were praised for minimising the loss of life in the Dawson College shooting.

Michelle Thibodeau-Tuguaia was the head of public relations at École Polytechnique in 1989, and she does not agree that the attack was emblematic of a deep-rooted problem within society. She stated, quote, some people say it was a madman, that it wasn't the problem of society. It was a problem of one person. And I tend to think that that makes sense. I bloody bet you do, head of PR. The thing is is i don't know why she feels the need to like spin it she's just head of because she's the pr yeah but of equal polytechnique not of like canada why does she need to say there's not a deep-rooted problem in society well i think because the the university were quite heavily criticized for not protecting their students. Oh.

So she's sort of saying, you know, how could we possibly have seen this coming? If she's saying it's a problem within society that we're all aware of, then that makes them a bit more culpable. I guess so. And she went on to say, I think it's important that nobody feels left out in society. I have an image of nobody being left feeling they're in a garbage can because then you have nothing to lose. That I do agree with. That I agree with. I think this harks back to

everything we've said. Whatever you're being radicalized into, whether it is this kind of thing, whether it is terrorism, whether it's racism, whatever it may be, it starts from a place of choosing a victim who is in a place where they feel marginalized from society, where they feel like they have nothing to lose. They have nowhere else to drop. They might as well go out with a bang, so to speak. Even Nathalie Provost, who is not without empathy for Mark Lepine, she described him as being deeply in pain and living in a different world. She said, He found the world unjust.

He wasn't able to make a place for himself in it. So he had the impression there was no future for him, and he felt like screaming it loud and clear. It's abominable that he took people's lives. But yes, I have a lot of compassion. To kill 14 people is inhuman. It's foreign to our human reflexes. To get to that point, he must have been in unbelievable pain. I don't think I would be able to get to that point if someone had shot at me.

I think it's remarkable that she got there. I think if you stand on the sidelines of this case, it is easy to say that. Well, not easy, because many people can't even bring themselves to look at it from that perspective. I think it's not about having sympathy. It's about having empathy, because it's like we said, these people have been radicalized because they feel that they are living in an unjust world. They're not right about what's being unjustly forced upon them. He certainly wasn't. He felt entitled and he felt angry and he felt downtrodden. So he was going to take it out by killing as many women as he could because he thought that they were his oppressors.

But I think it's remarkable that Nathalie got to that point. In 1991, the House of Commons Subcommittee on the Status of Women was created and this led to the creation of the Canadian Panel on Violence Against Women, which is tasked with increasing women's equality and the reduction of violence against women. The reports produced by this panel have been highly criticised over the years. Again in 1991, the Parliament of Canada declared the 6th of December to be a National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. It's also called White Ribbon Day. You know, I really do

have to wonder how far we've come in the last 30 years. And we're going to leave you this week with a quote from feminist writer Andrea Dworkin. And I came across it in the reading for this week, and it feels quite apt and poignant. I know that she is not everybody's favourite feminist, but if you've got a problem with Andrea, come and speak to me afterwards. This is what she said. She said, it is incumbent upon each of us to be the woman that Mark Lepine wanted to kill we must live with this honor this courage we must drive out fear we must hold on we must create we must resist I'm sure it will be hopefully all over the news this week I would hope so considering it's the 30th anniversary

i'd be interested to see how it's being reported on today yeah me too we'll leave it with that guys and uh don't let the bastards grind you down no exactly exactly um patreon patreon patreon thank you so much all our lovely patrons um we just released because we're recording on the monday before we release this on the wednesday slash thursday we just released, because we're recording on the Monday before we release this on the Wednesday slash Thursday, we just released a fantastic new episode for $10 up patrons on the case of Michelle Hadley, stalker or stalked. It's a really interesting case. If you would like to listen to that, just head on over to patreon.com slash redhanded and subscribe so you can hear that. And here are some wonderful people who have been pledging to us recently.

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It is fantastic. So, yeah. Thanks, guys. We will see you next week. See you next time. Bye. Bye. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life.

You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery+. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life.

I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me, and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery

app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to life some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to life some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes.

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