The Misery Machine - The École Polytechnique Massacre | The Montréal Massacre

Episode Date: December 14, 2020

This week, Drewby and Yergy discuss The École Polytechnique Massacre, also known as the Montreal Massacre, which was a mass shooting in Montreal at an engineering school affiliated with the Université de Montréal. Fourteen women were murdered and ten women and four men were injured. On December 6, 1989, Marc Lépine entered a mechanical engineering class at the École Polytechnique and ordered the women and men to opposite sides of the classroom. He separated nine women, instructing the men to leave. He loudly stated that he was "fighting feminism" and subsequently opened fire, shooting all nine women in the room, killing six. Lépine proceeded through corridors, the cafeteria, and another classroom, targeting women for just under 20 minutes. He killed eight more before shooting himself in the head. At the time, the incident was the deadliest mass shooting in Canadian history, only surpassed by the shootings in Nova Scotia taking place in April of this year. A very special thank you to Levi for supporting our show as our highest tier patron! Join Our Facebook Group to Request a Topic: https://t.co/DeSZIIMgXs?amp=1 Support Our Patreon For More Unreleased Content: https://www.patreon.com/themiserymachine PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/themiserymachine Instagram: miserymachinepodcast Twitter: misery_podcast Discord: https://discord.gg/kCCzjZM #podcast #documentary #truecrime  Source Material: https://murderpedia.org/male.L/l/lepine-marc.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_L%C3%A9pine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Jalbert https://www.gg.ca/en/honours/recipients/121-58272 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawson_College_shooting https://criminalminds.fandom.com/wiki/Marc_L%C3%A9pine https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/hope-lives-for-polytechnique-survivors-1.791821 https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/the-awful-echoes-of-marc-lepine/article1145087/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_Polytechnique_massacre  

Hi, we're the misery machine. I'm Yergin. And I'm Drewby. And this week we're doing another listener's suggestion. So thank you, Flex Truck, from our Discord. Thank you so much. It is the Ecole Polytechnic Massacre. So the anniversary for this passed just this past week.

It's unfortunately overlooked compared to other similar tragedies of its nature. So we'll be getting to that in a bit. But if you're listening on YouTube, please hit like and subscribe. We just hit 2,300 subscribers. So thank you to everybody that subscribed to. our channel. Yes, thank you so much. And if you haven't done so yet, hitting subscribe goes a long way to helping us in the YouTube algorithm as well as sharing the video. If you want to see us get bigger, please consider subscribing. So without further ado, the Eco Polytechnic Massacre.

The Eco Polytechnic Massacre, also known as the Montreal Massacre, was a mass shooting in Montreal at an engineering school affiliated with the University of Montreal, commonly known as UDM. 14 women were murdered and 10 women and four men were injured. Now, I should preface that my French, I'm very out of practice. I'm probably going to anglo-size some things. I'm probably going to butcher some pronunciation. I apologize in advance. We have a little habit of that anyway because we live in Lewiston,

which is, I don't want to call it a French colony, but it was a place that a lot of immigrants from Quebec came down in the 1800s. So a lot of names here are French in our town, but they say them extremely bastardized. Yeah, very differently. Lewiston was called Little Canada for a very long time, and it's not so much anymore. Most of the French people are gone or have died or have since moved on,

but it used to be a very French-speaking place. There was Quebec flags everywhere and things like that. There's still are some. There's still are some. But it was at a point where everybody spoke French at home. Everybody went to Catholic school, but long story short, they say these names very different here. Yeah, so that out of the way.

At the time, this incident was the deadliest mass shooting in Canadian history and the third deadliest in North American history. In Canadian history, it's only been surpassed by the shootings in Nova Scotia that took place in April of this year. So sometime after 4 p.m. on December 6, 1989, Mark Lepin arrived at the building housing the Ecole Polytechnique, an engineering school affiliated with the University de Montreal, armed with a Ruger Mini-14. semi-automatic rifle in a hunting knife. Le Pen had purchased the rifle on November 21st at Checkmate Sports in Montreal telling the clerk he was going to use it to hunt small game. Le Pen had been in and around the Ecole Polytechnic building

at least seven times during the weeks leading up to December 6th. Le Pen was first seen sitting in the office of the registrar on the second floor where he was rummaging through a plastic bag. He spoke to no one, even when a staff member asked if she could help him. Le Pen left the office and was a sudden. subsequently seen in other parts of the building before entering a second floor mechanical engineering class of about 60 students at about 5.10 p.m. After approaching the student giving a presentation, he asked everyone to stop everything and ordered the women and men to opposite sides of the classroom. No one moved at first, believing it to be a joke until he fired a shot into the ceiling.

Le Pen then separated the nine women in approximately 50 men and then ordered the men to leave. He asked the remaining women whether they knew why they were there, and when one student replied, no, he answered, I'm fighting feminism. One of the students, Natalie Provost, said, look, we are just women studying engineering, not necessarily feminists ready to march on the streets to shout that we are against men, just students intent on leading normal life. Le Pen responded in French,

you are women, you're going to be engineers, you're all a bunch of feminists, I hate feminists. He then opened fire on the students from left to right, killing six and then wounding three others, including provost. Before leaving the room, he wrote the words shit. Some sources say, oh shit, twice on a student project. Le Pen continued into the second floor corridor and wounded three students before entering another room where he twice attempted to shoot a female student. His weapon didn't fire and was seen reloading his gun in a nearby emergency staircase.

He returned to the room he had just left, but the students had locked the door. Le Pen shot the door three times as an attempt to open it, but he was seen. failed. Moving along the corridor, he shot at others, wounding one before moving towards the financial services office where he shot and killed Maurice Lagunierre through the window of the door she had just locked. He then went down to the first floor cafeteria in which about a hundred people were gathered. The crowd scattered after he shot a woman standing near the kitchens and wounded another student. Entering an unlocked storage area at the end of the cafeteria, Le Pen shot and killed two more women hiding there. He told a male and female student to come out from under a

table, which they did and they were not shot. Le Pen then walked up an escalator to the third floor where he shot and wounded one female and two male students in the corridor. He entered another classroom and told the three students giving a presentation to get out and then shot and wounded Maurice Leclair. He fired on students in the front row and then killed two women who were trying to escape the room, while other students dove under their desks. Le Pen moved towards some of the female students, wounding three of them and killing another.

He changed the magazine in his weapon. and moved to the front of the class, shooting in all directions. At this point, the wounded Leclair asked for help. Le Pen unsheathed his hunting knife and stabbed her three times killing her. He took off his cap, wrapped his coat around his rifle, exclaimed, oh shit, and then died by suicide, shooting himself in the head 20 minutes after having begun his attack. Now, I couldn't find a solid answer on why he chose to kill himself at that point, but I assume it's because he had no motivation to get in a shootout.

with police and was only there to kill women who were engineering students. Roughly 60 unspent rounds were found on his body. Le Pen killed 14 women, 12 engineering students, one nursing student, and one employee of the university, and injured 14 others, 10 women and 4 men. So before we go into what kind of happened and what led up to this, I want to do something that I feel a lot of podcasts, a lot of news sources don't do. even the yearly remembrances of these victims. It's usually just a rattling off of names in their ages. I'd like to give more information than that. And this is what can make these things hard.

When you look up victims in either a murder case or a tragedy such as this, there's unfortunately a lot on the perpetrators and very little on the victims. So I gathered up as much as I could hear. There was some conflicting info. If you are a friend or a relative of one of the victims, and you would like to leave us a comment or send us an email correcting anything we said, I'd be happy to update it. So the first one, Jean-Vév Bergeron, was 21.

She was a second-year mechanical engineering student. Some sources say civil engineering. She was considering a career in music after she graduated due to her talent with it. And talented she was. She played the clarinet and she also sang in the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. She often babysat for the daughter of then mayor of Montreal, Jean Dore. And other hobbies of hers were swimming and playing basketball. The next victim was Helen Colgan, age 23, a mechanical engineering student in her final year.

She planned to go on to pursue her master's degree. She had received three job offers and was considering accepted one of them from a company based near Toronto. Her father described her as a conscientious and patient girl who always pushed things through. to the ends. Natalie Krotto, age 23, she was also a mechanical engineering student and was three months away from receiving her degree. She was characterized as an outgoing and loyal person. She was good friends with Halen Kogan, and they too were planning to take a two-week vacation to Cancun at the end of the month to celebrate their approaching graduation. She is a community center named in her honor at Broussard, Quebec, which is her hometown. Barbara Deggneau, age 22, was

also a mechanical engineering student in her final year set to graduate at the end of the year. Engineering ran in her family. She was a teaching assistant for her father, Pierre, who taught mechanical engineering at University de Quebec and Montreal, also known as Uquam. Emery Edward was age 21. She was a second year chemical engineering student. She loved outdoor sports such as riding, diving, and especially skiing. She was buried in her eco-polytechnic ski team jacket, and after her death, her teammates wore patches with her initials on their uniforms. Maude Avernick, age 29, a second-year metallurgical engineering student. She had already graduated with a degree in environment design from Uquam. She was giving her final presentation when she was shot and killed.

A scholarship was set up in her name at Uquam. Maurice Lagunier, age 25, was the only non-student who perished. She was a budget clerk at the Eco Polytechnic's financial department. She is the youngest of 14 siblings, though some accounts say it's 11, and she had just recently married. Maurice Leclair, age 23, was a fourth-year metallurgical engineering student. She was the oldest of four girls. She was characterized as a confident and rebellious girl. She was a big fan of British punk and new wave music, and would have probably been friends with us.

Probably. The daughter of a lieutenant of the Montreal police force, who was the one who found and identified her body shortly after he had given the statement to the press. Anne-Marie LeMay, age 22, a fourth-year mechanical engineering student, known as a very talented singer who performed with the South Shore Parish Choir. She pursued engineering because she wanted to make improvements in prosthetic limbs. Sonia Peltier, age 28, was a mechanical engineering student, described as mature and a hard worker.

She was the youngest of eight children. She was the head of her class with grades between 95 and 98. She dreamt to starting her own engineering firm. Michelle Richard, age 21, was a second year metallurgical engineering student. Nicknamed Mimi, she was described as brilliant and gentle. She planned to marry her longtime boyfriend and dreamed to have her once estranged father walk her down the aisle. They had only recently reconciled. Age 23, Annie Saint Arnault was in her final year as a mechanical engineering student.

She had a passion for poetry and the arts and was the only. only girl in her science club in high school. She was scheduled for a job interview the day following the massacre with Alken Aluminum. In 2015, a library in her hometown of Latouc, Quebec, was named in her honor, Bibliotech Annie Saint-Arnault. Annie Tarcault, age 21, was in her first year as a metallurgical engineering student. She was very interested in environmental issues, especially recycling. She was an avid swimmer and in the summer offered free swimming classes to kids with disabilities. Barbara Kluchnik Vidovich, age 31. She was a first year student who gave up her career as an economist to pursue nursing.

She spoke five languages. She settled in Montreal two years before the massacre, having moved from Poland with her husband, a physician, who was there in the cafeteria when she was killed. They were there purely due to the fact that the cafeteria had the lowest prices on campus. Her husband said to the press, quote, we believe that Canada was the safest place in the world. We could have gone to West Germany or Switzerland, end quote. So details like this is how we prevent people from fading away into history. Most people in general will fade away into obscurity after enough generations pass.

It's just the unfortunate nature of life. But if you talk about who people were, if you talk about what made them passionate for life, you help their memories live on. People are more than just names. Victims are more than just names. And I think things like this are important. All of these women were on seemingly a very good path to do very successful things.

And given what some of these women set out to do and achieve in their professional careers, they were looking to make very positive impacts on the world. And it's very sad that this was taken from them and that they were taken from us before they even got a chance to do that. So we'll get to some of the motives in the aftermath in a bit. But first, here's a clip from our friend Kristen about her upcoming podcast dropping December 15th. Growing up as a latchkey kid in a small town in Maine,

I always assumed I was safe. After all, unless it makes national news, murder isn't something people talk about around here. But that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Murder she told is a true crime podcast featuring crime stories, unsolved murders of missing persons, and baffling cold cases from my home state of Maine, New England, and small towns across America. These are the crime stories your hometown doesn't want to talk about.

The mysteries buried deep in the newspaper archives of local American history. These are the homicides you've probably never heard of before. Through detailed storytelling and connections with family, friends, and investigators closest to the case, murder she told will hit home for any true crime fan, whether you're from Maine or from away. Visit Murder She Told.com to suggest your hometown crime story and subscribe now wherever you get your favorite podcasts. I'm Kristen Sevey and this is Murder She Told. So the Quebec and Montreal governments declared three days of mourning.

A joint funeral for nine of the women was held at Notre Dame Basilica on December 11, 1989, and was attended by Governor Jean Sauve, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, Quebec Premier Robert Burrassa and Montreal Mayor Jean Dore along with thousands of other mourners. The shooter was 25-year-old Mark Lepin. He was born Gamil Roderig Lias Garby, and I hope I pronounce that right.

He was born to a French-Canadian mother, Maniq Lepin, and an Algerian father, Rashid Lias Garby. His father, a mutual fund salesman, did not consider women to be equal of men. He was physically and verbally abusive to his wife and son,

discouraging tenderness between mother and child. He was possessive and jealous and forced his wife to be his personal secretary. He would slap her if she made any mistakes typing and would not let her tend to their child until she had finished her work. As a young child, he lived in Costa Rica and Puerto Rico where his father was working for a Swiss mutual fund company, which later led to nearly bankrupting the family. When Le Pen was seven, his parents separated after an incident where he was struck viciously across the face by Garby, which led to Le Pen needing surgery on his ear. Garby ceased contact with his children, and soon after defaulted on his mortgage, leading the family's possessions and home being seized.

Le Pen lived with his mother and younger sister Nadia. His mother returned to nursing to support the family, and because of her schedule, the children lived with other families during the week. At age 14, his name was officially changed to Mark Le Pen, citing his hatred of his father. as the reason for taking his mother's surname. However, other reasons led to the name change. He was frequently the target of bullying and due to his name was taunted as an Arab. He refused to talk about his father with anyone after this. Le Pen was characterized as being a poor communicator and didn't show his emotions.

He suffered from chronic acne which further led to bullying and low self-esteem, even by his sister who would publicly humiliate him about it, as well as the fact that he never had a girlfriend's. Le Pen fantasized about her death by his own admission and was overjoyed when she was placed in a group home at age 13 due to delinquency and drug abuse. Nadia would later die in 1996 of a cocaine overdose at age 28. According to accounts, she was 95 pounds

and was shooting cocaine into her arm leading up to her death. Le Pen attempted to join the Canadian Army during the winter of 1980 to 1981, but according to his suicide letter, was rejected because he was antisocial. The Canadian Army confirmed publicly after the shooting that Le Pen was assessed but did not qualify. Le Pen's inside jacket pocket contained a suicide letter and two letters to friends all dated the day of the massacre. Some details from the suicide letter written in French were revealed by the police two days after the event, but the full text was not disclosed. The media brought an unsuccessful access to information case to compel the police to release the suicide letter.

A year after the attacks, Le Pen's three-page statement was leaked to journalist and feminist Francine Peltier. It contained a list of 19 Quebec women who Le Pen apparently wished to kill because he considered them feminist. The list included Peltier herself, as well as a union leader, a politician, a TV personality, and six police officers who would come to Le Pen's attention. as they were on the same volleyball team. The letter was subsequently published in the newspaper LaPresse, where Peltier was a columnist. Le Pen wrote that he viewed himself as a rational person and blamed feminists for ruining his life.

He outlined his reasons for the attack, including his anger towards feminists, for seeking social changes that, and I quote, retain the advantages of being a woman while trying to grab those of men, end quote. He also mentioned Denise Lorty, a Canadian Armed Forces Corporal, who killed three government-imboral,

employees and wounded 13 others in an armed attack on the National Assembly of Quebec on May 7, 1984. It also should be known that Le Pen had documented writings about his support and idolizing of Adolf Hitler. A public inquiry was not held, and Mark Le Pen's suicide letter was not released, as government and criminal justice officials feared that extensive public discussion about the massacre would cause pain to the families and lead to anti-feminist violence. There was a police investigation into Mark Lippen after the killings took place, but the final report was not made public. The media, academics, women's organizations, and family members of the victims

protested the lack of a public inquiry and the scarcity of information released. The gender of Mark Lepin's victims, as well as his oral statements during the massacre, and in the suicide note, quickly led to the event being seen as an anti-feminist attack, and an example of a wider issue of violence against women. Le Pen's mother later questioned if the attack was directed as a statement towards her. Some would have considered her a feminist since she was a single working mother. Others, including television journalist Barbara Frum, pleaded that the massacre was not to be seen as an anti-feminist attack or violence against women and questioned why people insisted on diminishing the tragedy by suggesting that it was an act against one group.

I mean, I guess we should probably say that viewpoints and what some people would quote, qualify as feminist behavior differs from now. Obviously, a single working mother or even women working jobs now is not considered a feminist action. But back then, some people might have had that viewpoint. Some saw the event as an isolated act of a madman. A psychiatrist interviewed Le Pen's family and friends and examined his writings as part of the police investigation. He noted that Le Pen defined suicide as his primary motivation and that he chose a specific suicide method, namely killing one's after killing others, which is considered a sign of a serious personality disorder. Other psychiatrists emphasize the traumatic events of his childhood, suggesting that the blows

he had received may have caused brain damage, or that Le Pen was psychotic, having lost touch with reality as he tried to erase the memories of a brutal, yet largely absent father, while unconsciously identifying with a violent masculinity that dominated women. A different theory was that Le Pen's childhood experiences of a led him to feel victimized as he faced losses and rejections in his later life. His mother wondered whether Le Pen might have suffered from an attachment disorder due to the abuse and sense of abandonment he had experienced in his childhood. Me personally, I don't know why it can't be both.

Why can't it be insanity as well as instilled misogyny? Why couldn't this person have gone insane due to severe abuse or due to underlying mental illness or a combination of both. It is both. Right. And then because of that, the result is this crazy skewed viewpoint towards women. I mean, look what happened to the sister. She went a different way, but she still died because of all this crap.

Right. And don't quote me on this. It's been a while since I've researched this. But for my understanding that men tend to externalize trauma outwardly where women tend to internalize it inwardly. So men are more likely to outwardly harm where women are more likely to inwardly harm. I'd say that's pretty accurate. I believe so, though some people might confuse this. And I'm just saying that for my own personal.

And some people tend to confuse this with a statistic. Well, I thought men commit suicide more. Well, from what I understand, women are more likely to self-harm. And again, if I'm getting this wrong, please correct me in the comments. But men are more likely to go through with suicide, if that makes sense. However, in general, men tend to lash out outwardly where women lash out inwardly. And in the case of Nadia, she lashed out inwardly. And there's not a whole lot of information on how did Nadia suffer?

Because they had the same father. I just don't know. But given the fact that she was abusing drugs at age 13, I just think that she definitely felt the effects of it as well. Others expressed a broader analysis framing Le Pen's actions as the result of societal change. that had led to the increased poverty, powerlessness, individual isolation, and polarization between men and women. The injured and witnesses among the university staff and students suffered a variety of physical, social, existential, financial, and psychological consequences, including post-traumatic stress disorder.

At least two students left notes confirming that they had committed suicide due to the distress caused by the massacre. Nine years after the event, some survivors reported still being affected by their experience. I can completely understand that. So this next part is just absolutely needless and just I'll get into it. Okay, so male survivors of the massacre have been subjected to criticism for not intervening to stop Le Pen. Just so gross. In an interview immediately after the event, a reporter asked one of the men why they, quote, abandoned the women.

imagine surviving a shooting and just to have someone shove a microphone in your face and ask you that just how barbaric Renee Jalbert who is the sergeant at arms for Quebec at the time he was responsible

for the surrender of Denise Lorty during his 1984 attack he openly stated to the press that someone should have intervened at least to distract Le Pen but he did acknowledge that ordinary citizens can't be expected to react heroically in the midst of terror. Right-wing newspaper columnist Mark Stein suggested

that male inaction during the massacre illustrated, quote, a culture of passivity, end quote, prevalent among men in Canada, which enabled, enabled, he said this enabled Le Pen's shooting spree. Quote, yet the defining image of contemporary Canadian mailness is not Mark Le Penh, but the professors and the men in that classroom who ordered to leave by the lone gunmen meekly did so and abandoned their female classmates to their fate, an abdication that would have been unthinkable in almost any other culture throughout human history. That just kind of reads to me when you say Canadian mailness is not Mark Le Pen but the professors. It's almost like saying we'd prefer Canadian maleness to be Mark Le Penh.

not these people who have no training in combat who are in their teens and early 20s have never had a gun fired around them in their life and now all of a sudden somebody's just ripping rounds through a place that they thought was safe and they go and hide they protect themselves like how can you blame someone for this if you're going to express that this is a severe act of misogyny which i totally agree it is and challenge old world culture norm on genders, you can't then enforce those same gender norms onto men and be like, okay, well, women, you don't have to abide by those gender norms, but men, you still do. What's wrong with you?

This is so disgusting. And I just can't believe that in the same sentence, basically, the media attacked gender norms, but then defended them based on what gender they were talking about. Just disgusting. And as far as Denise Lorty is concerned, René Jalbert is a decorated soldier who saw combat in World War II in Korea. So this is an incredibly damaging narrative. He walked in there when Denise Lorty was shooting people

and had the gunshot right by his head, didn't flinch, and talked him out of killing more people. Only a battle-hardened veteran like Rene Jalbert could have done something like that. That should not be the expectation of just a regular civilian in their 20s. And when Renee Jalbert did this, I'm pretty sure he was in his 50s, it's late 50s. The most unthinkable things you think a soldier can see overseas, he saw it. So I just don't think the two are comparable. It should also be mentioned one man, his name was Sarto Blay.

He killed himself after he graduated as he was racked with guilt over not stopping Mark Lepen's rampage. His parents unable to handle the grief of losing their only son killed themselves 10 months later. Another boy had wallowed in self-doubt over 10 years due to his guilt and couldn't hold a career or get his life together. I have to put blame on the media and people like Renee Jalbert that pushed that narrative. Because if this is happening in the media, imagine what people in your everyday life are seeing you, perceiving you, saying to you, I just feel like, those people couldn't escape it. And there should have been no blame placed on them. I don't think so either because, I don't know, I think you've covered it pretty freaking well. Okay.

You really have. Okay. Another talking point that deserves mention is that some people blame Mark Lippin's extreme misogyny on him allegedly being Muslim. So from what little information I've found on the matter, his mother was a former Catholic nun who rejected religion after leaving the convent. And his father considered himself a non-practicing Muslim. So I couldn't find anything stating Le Pen's belief in any sort of religion. Could there have been an indirect impact? Well, it could be assumed that Le Pen's father's misogyny came from more extremist views of religion. And that was probably the biggest influence on Le Pen's views.

But to say that this massacre was done in the name of the Islamic faith, I just don't see it. No, I don't think so either, because Le Pen, first off, is biracial. Algeria's North Africa. I believe they're a French-speaking. nation. So he's not going to have to deal with the same issues an immigrant would have coming to Quebec and not speaking French. Right. He was bullied. People did perceive him as Middle Eastern, but I don't believe his cultural identity had anything to do with that. And given his lack of connection with his father, I would highly doubt. And his mother being a former nun, I just don't believe

his father taught him anything about being a Muslim or anything like that or anything about the Islamic faith, especially when his father was a non-practicing Muslim himself. I think the only thing that was communicated and taught from father to son was just abuse and an extreme form of misogyny. That's really what I think it comes down to. So the following that we have here is a translation of the suicide letter written by Le Pen on the day of the shooting. You're original letter in French is also available. Now, this is written very oddly, so I'm going to try to clean it up as best as possible. So these are not direct quotes. I'm just going to paraphrase it for the sake of clarity, because some of it is really just jumbled. So it begins with, forgive the mistakes,

I had 15 minutes to write this. Please note that if I commit suicide today on December 6, 1989, it's not for economic reasons, for I have waited until I exhausted all my financial means, even refusing jobs, but for political reasons, because I have decided to send the feminists who have always ruined my life to their maker. For seven years, life has brought me no joy and being totally blasé. I have decided to put an end to those Viragoes. Now, Varago is a French term. I think it means women who are very very, re-domineering and are aggressive. That's not a word I've heard in a very long time. Yeah, we don't really use that here. I tried in my youth to enter the forces as an officer cadet, which would have allowed me to possibly get into the arsenal and proceed Denise Lorty in a raid.

They refused me because I am asocial. I therefore had to wait until this day to execute my plans. In between, I continued my studies in a haphazard way, for they never really interested me, knowing in advance what my fate was, which did not prevent me from obtaining very good marks despite my theory of not handing in work and the lack of studying before exams. 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. For why persevere to exist if it is only to please the government? Being rather back to

looking by nature except for science, the feminists have always enraged me. They want to keep the advantages of women, through cheaper insurance, extended maternity leave, preceded by a preventative leave, etc., while seizing for themselves, those of men. Thus, it is an obvious truth that if the Olympic Games remove the men-women distinction, there would be women only in the graceful events. So the feminists are not fighting to remove that barrier. They are so opportunistic they do not neglect to profit from the knowledge accumulated by men through the ages. They always try to misrepresent them every time they can. Thus, the other day, I heard they were honoring the Canadian men and women who fought at the front line during the World Wars. How can you explain that since women were not

authorized to go to the front line? Will we hear of Caesar's female legions and female galley slaves, who of course took up 50% of the ranks of history, though they never existed? A real Cassus belly, I'm sure I mispronounce, but it's basically Latin that translates directly to an occasion for war. Sorry for this too brief letter signed Mark Lippen. The letter is followed by the list of 19 names with a note at the bottom. I don't have the 19 names. I could not find them.

The note at the bottom says, quote, nearly died today. The lack of time because I started too late has allowed these radical feminists to survive. Alea Acta S. and I sure I did not say that right. It is a Latin phrase that translates to the die has been cast. There is significance in this phrase.

This was said by Julius Caesar allegedly before he crossed the Rubicon. Crossing the Rubicon is also a figure of speech, but where it comes from is the Rubicon is a river in northern Italy. This was also, from what I understand, I'm doing this kind of from memory, but this river was a border between his kingdom and Pompeii. I believe and the optimates. I can't remember. But with doing this, he entered that part of Italy to defy the Senate and begin civil war.

And he knew upon crossing the Rubicon with his army, there was no turning back. So basically what crossing the Rubicon means or that whole phrase, the die has been cast. It's like a point of no return. Yes. So him saying that phrase, I think he just basically meant he can't go back. this is his point of no return. So Nathalie provost, who survived being shot and wounded by Lepin, publicly stated that she felt that nothing could have been done to prevent the tragedy and that her fellow students should

not feel guilty. Good on her for saying that. Right. Critics say that Lepin was a lone gunman who does not represent men, nor, you know, should he. They felt feminist memorializing is socially divisive on the basis of gender and therefore harmful by bestowing guilt on all men, irrespective of the individual. Some openly view the massacre as an extreme expression of men's frustrations. I should also mention that I don't believe there was a single survivor of the shooting that blamed any of the men.

It truly was a narrative that came from the media. I want to make that very clear that I did not say that earlier. Further, some anti-feminist view Le Pen as a hero and glorify his actions such as Jean-Claude Roche for. I hope I said that right. He was arrested for openly inciting violence against women. And he was arrested for this, I believe, when he was 75. This was within the past 10 years. Did some sort of incitement against women on his blog.

I couldn't find a whole lot about it. In 2019, the signage at the Memorial in Montreal was updated to reflect that Ecole Polytechnic Massacre was an anti-feminist attack. And the former previously stating that is a tragic attack did not mention the number of women killed. The massacre was a major spur for the Canadian gun control movement. Heidi Rathgen, a student who was in one of the classrooms, Lepen, did not enter during the shooting, organized the coalition for gun control. The parents of one of the victims, Anne-Marie Edward, were also deeply involved. Their activities, along with others, led to the passage of the Firearms Act in 1995.

These brought about a ton of new regulations, some of which are still on the books, but I believe some have been overturned in the past 10 years. I couldn't get a clear answer on that. I know that when Stephen Harper was still in office, they overturned a gun registry database and were able to purge that. But I'm not exactly clear on what gun regulations are like in Canada right now. Police response to the shootings was heavily criticized.

The first police officers to arrive at the scene established a perimeter around the building and waited before entering the building. We see that quite a bit. Yeah. During this period, several women were killed. Due to this, Consequent changes to emergency response protocols were made and credited to the handling and prompt intervention of the Dawson College shooting in 2006, in which one woman was killed by a shooter.

Since 1991, the anniversary of the massacre has been designated the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women, intended as a call to action against discrimination against women. The, and I'm going to butcher this, PLOS due 6 December, 1989 in the Cote-Denage Notre Dame de Grasse borough of Montreal, was created as a memorial to the victims of the massacre. It is the site of annual commemorations on December 6. In 2013, a new science building at John Abbott College was named in honor of Anne-Marie Edward,

a victim of the massacre who attended the college before going on to university. For the commemorative ceremony on the 25th anniversary of the massacre, in 2014, 14 searchlights representing the 14 victims of the massacre were installed on the summit of Mount Royal, 2,500 feet east of the school and turned skyward at the exact time when the attack had started 25 years earlier. So I think a lot of people would listen to a story like this and start trying to tie it into the phenomena of the in-cell community that we see today. For one, I'm really just not with that. I think that you,

can be a misogynist, you can have psychopathic tendencies and have a lone gunman type of situation and not have it as this wide hatred amongst a huge group against women. I think there was this idea that people who are in cells are extreme misogynist. And I mean, I used to use that term for a while meaning that, but I think there is subgroups of that now. And in fact, there's a group called fem cells of all fiends. female incels. And while the extreme bunch of them don't really seem to turn their resentment towards men, they tend to turn their resentment towards themselves, which kind of mirrors what I said earlier. You know, men take their rage and turn it outward, women turn it inward. Or just blanket society.

Right. I think it's important to bring this up. And this is obviously a very delicate topic that requires a lot of nuance and speaking about this. But I think it's very easy for people to call Le Pen an insel or a men's rights activist. And true, he had a tough time getting girlfriends, but something that I read, and I only found one source of this, is that he just personally didn't seek out girlfriends. In fact, there was this one thing I read,

and again, it was only one source. That's why I didn't include it in the notes, of this girl that was very much interested in him in college, and he just completely rejected her advances. It's hard for me to call him an incal. I think this is somebody who, at a, young age just so deeply damaged and taught these just horribly skewed views of women and combined that he just grew this overall resentment he could never express his emotions and there's probably

some underlying mental health issues too it seemed like in my opinion at least his father suffered from some sort of mental illness i just think these things together you had this awful awful person become of this and he embraced these twisted viewpoints of what feminism is and embraced misogyny. Are all men capable of this? Are all misogynist capable of this? No. And I think what somebody would add to what I'm saying is that, well, obviously, misogyny doesn't all lead to mass shootings, but we need to identify it in these smaller scales and remove it that way. And I would agree with that. I also think that reading this, it surprises me just how much things have changed between 1989 and 2020, because back then, it seems like the talking point was, well, should women be entering STEM field? Should women be having jobs? This seems a little extreme. Whereas now, it's not just the norm. It's necessity given economy. It's very hard to be a stay-at-home mother now.

You really can't do it. You really can. Even if you want to, you really can't. Yeah, I mean, you've mentioned this before on previous podcasts about how, you know, there's quite a few women that wish they could stay at home, but they just can't give in inflation, wages not rising with it properly and cost of living just being so high compared to how they were decades ago. Yeah, I very much subscribe to the idea of feminism about choices. And if you choose to stay home and take care of your children or take care of the home, and that doesn't mean just women. And if one partner wants to stay home to do all these things and one maybe has a better job, there shouldn't be any shame for that. But now it's like impossible to do.

And that's not the fault of feminism, I think. I think it's the fault of how awful our economy is right now because people can't have choices. And I also think it deserves to be mentioned that feminism isn't just about furthering the advancement of women. It's about equality between men and women. and therefore when you attack men over not being manly and defending women, that's not feminism at all. That actually goes against feminism 100%. This is a separate conversation from Mark Lepin since we're over.

I want to be clear, Mark Lepin is just nuts. He is not the fault of society. He is the fault of extreme abuse, a horrid upbringing, a very skewed look on reality. I mean, he was taught misogyny from a very young age. And he was more than likely mentally ill. An awful, awful combination. This is not society's fault at all.

If I had to blame a person other than Mark Lepen who might consider evil, I would blame his father. I would blame his father. There's people that blame his mother. I just can't do that. I just can't place any blame on the mother, though. A lot of interviews with her and friends. French. So if anyone wants to shed light more on her as a person, please do so in the comment

sections. I mean, I also don't want this to be a male only narrative here. Right. I mean, I'll throw some stuff in, but you know, I don't believe Mark Lepen is a product of society. I think this came off the fact that Mark Lepen is categorized as an in-cell. And I know it's going to come up in the comments. Which I don't believe he's an in-cell. And then therefore, that deserves a clarification that all people who are in cells are women hating, like want to kill women, just misogynist. And I don't believe that's true either. Those some definitely are. And those people should be just stomped out, in my opinion. But a lot of in cells are people who are struggling that don't know how to fix their lives, fix themselves or where to go. I don't want people to take this the wrong way that we're like bringing this up because, you know,

Mark Lepin's victim of society. No, Mark Lepin is an evil, an evil person. If people find sympathy with him, I think the extent of that should be drawn towards the abuse he suffered as a child. And that's it. He was still a grown man that made his own choices. And for that, he is a monster. So with that out of the way, thank you to our patrons.

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