# \[Over\] 30 Years Ago Today, 14 Engineering Students Were Murdered in Montréal - Because They Were Women **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [December 7, 2019, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-30-years-ago-today-14-engineering-students-were-murdered-in-montreal-because-they-were-women/844499 "2019-12-07T04:08:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2019, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-30-years-ago-today-14-engineering-students-were-murdered-in-montreal-because-they-were-women/844499/1 "2019-12-07T04:08:52Z")
Thirty years ago today, a young man with a gun went into a classroom at the École polytechnique de Montréal, where an engineering class was being taught. He separated the students by gender and let the male students go. He said he was there because they were feminists. Police later found a letter amongst his effects blaming women for all the bad things in his life. Then he opened fire. Fourteen women died. Others were wounded. One of the survivors saw her friend close her eyes and knew she had just watch a friend die. She thought she would die herself. Instead he killed himself. Fourteen talented young women, cut down just as they were about to make a mark in their careers, fall in love, have a family; all the routine things of life that we cherish yet take for granted. Until a man with a gun takes them away. Each year I remember names and pictures of young women I never met, most of them a few years younger than me: Annie St-Arnault Hélène Colgan Nathalie Croteau Barbara Daigneault Anne-Marie Edward Geneviève Bergeron Maud Haviernick Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz Anne-Marie Lemay Maryse Laganière Maryse Leclair Sonia Pelletier Michèle Richard Annie Turcotte Remember them. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2019, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-30-years-ago-today-14-engineering-students-were-murdered-in-montreal-because-they-were-women/844499/2 "2019-12-07T04:19:10Z")
Links to a few stories: A gallery of the fourteen: [Remembering the women killed in the École Polytechnique massacre | Globalnews.ca](https://globalnews.ca/news/6187845/montreal-massacre-victims/) A retrospective, with clips of the tv news reports of the time: [Feminism met gunfire at École Polytechnique. It’s taken 30 years to call it what it was | Globalnews.ca](https://globalnews.ca/news/6242996/ecole-polytechnique-violence/amp/) One survivor’s update (five years ago, on the 25th anniversary): > **[Nathalie Provost, who was shot at Polytechnique, recalls tragic day |...](https://globalnews.ca/news/1710154/woman-shot-at-polytechnique-recalls-events/)** > > Nathalie Provost will never forget confronting gunman Marc Lepine just before he shot her four times during an armed assault that left 14 women dead at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique. Two women engineers, one near the end of her career, one just starting out, reflect on the killings, 30 years on: [https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/ecole-polytechnique-30-nl-1.5386744](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/ecole-polytechnique-30-nl-1.5386744) ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2019, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-30-years-ago-today-14-engineering-students-were-murdered-in-montreal-because-they-were-women/844499/3 "2019-12-07T04:52:41Z")
There were others wounded, of course. Ten additional women and four men were wounded as he prowled the building after the shooting began. They too are remembered. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2019, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-30-years-ago-today-14-engineering-students-were-murdered-in-montreal-because-they-were-women/844499/4 "2019-12-07T05:19:11Z")
That is a moving tribute, **Northern Piper**. The motto of Québec, _“je me souviens”_, is especially on point on this date. And it is so painful how across the decades it still happens, making national news in Isla Vista, or hardly a local headline in some small town. Someone decides he’s going to “punish” her/them because she/they somehow are denying him what should be his, by merely existing and seeking lives of their own… ---
**Author:** ![Die\_Capacitrix](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/die_capacitrix/32/9_2.png) [@Die\_Capacitrix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Die_Capacitrix)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2019, 9:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-30-years-ago-today-14-engineering-students-were-murdered-in-montreal-because-they-were-women/844499/5 "2019-12-07T09:35:34Z")
Thank you, **Northern Piper**. I don’t remember this at all, and I was even in college at the time. They had so much to live for and had already overcome so many obstacles. Even now the number of women in engineering is low. ---
**Author:** ![Die\_Capacitrix](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/die_capacitrix/32/9_2.png) [@Die\_Capacitrix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Die_Capacitrix)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2019, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-30-years-ago-today-14-engineering-students-were-murdered-in-montreal-because-they-were-women/844499/6 "2019-12-07T13:17:06Z")
Duplicate ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2019, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-30-years-ago-today-14-engineering-students-were-murdered-in-montreal-because-they-were-women/844499/7 "2019-12-08T16:46:45Z")
Memorial to women killed in the Polytechnique massacre defaced with”misogynistic messages”: > **[Montreal massacre victims' memorial defaced with 'misogynistic messages'](https://torontosun.com/news/local-news/montreal-massacre-victims-memorial-defaced-with-misogynistic-messages/amp)** > > A display at an adult alternative school in Scarborough honouring the female victims killed in the Montreal Massacre 30 years ago was defaced with… ---
**Author:** ![Muffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muffin/32/4341_2.png) [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2019, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-30-years-ago-today-14-engineering-students-were-murdered-in-montreal-because-they-were-women/844499/8 "2019-12-08T17:25:45Z")
> [@](#): > > Now Toronto Police are investigating what at best is a case of mischief and at worst is a hate crime That this is even a question shows that we have a long way to go. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2019, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-30-years-ago-today-14-engineering-students-were-murdered-in-montreal-because-they-were-women/844499/9 "2019-12-08T19:56:33Z")
Thanks for this Northern Piper. I was out of town when it happened, but it was a shock. I recall that the nutter felt he had been denied admission to the program because they had admitted woman. One of the first policemen on the spot had the shock of turning over the corpse of his own daughter. ---
**Author:** ![Heracles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heracles/32/487_2.png) [@Heracles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heracles)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2019, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-30-years-ago-today-14-engineering-students-were-murdered-in-montreal-because-they-were-women/844499/10 "2019-12-08T21:35:16Z")
A former colleague of mine knew some of the victims. She had a class scheduled that night (in another room) but wasn’t able to attend. ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2019, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-30-years-ago-today-14-engineering-students-were-murdered-in-montreal-because-they-were-women/844499/11 "2019-12-08T21:43:22Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > Memorial to women killed in the Polytechnique massacre defaced with”misogynistic messages”: > > [Montreal massacre victims' memorial defaced with 'misogynistic messages' | Toronto Sun](https://torontosun.com/news/local-news/montreal-massacre-victims-memorial-defaced-with-misogynistic-messages/amp) Jesus. What the hell is wrong with people, anyway? > [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > One of the first policemen on the spot had the shock of turning over the corpse of his own daughter. And that’s the sort of real-life appallingly tragic “dramatic irony” that would get a Hollywood screenwriter or a novelist called a no-talent hack. ---
**Author:** ![IvoryTowerDenizen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ivorytowerdenizen/32/17937_2.png) [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2019, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-30-years-ago-today-14-engineering-students-were-murdered-in-montreal-because-they-were-women/844499/12 "2019-12-08T22:25:36Z")
I will never forget the day this happened. I was in the first semester if my biology PhD program, and all I could think of was those hopeful, excited women, entering into their chosen, but male dominated, fields while I was doing the same. Absolutely horrific. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2019, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-30-years-ago-today-14-engineering-students-were-murdered-in-montreal-because-they-were-women/844499/13 "2019-12-08T23:34:46Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > One of the first policemen on the spot had the shock of turning over the corpse of his own daughter. That story has always really gotten to me. He went there knowing full well that something like this might happen. That’s a true hero. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2019, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-30-years-ago-today-14-engineering-students-were-murdered-in-montreal-because-they-were-women/844499/14 "2019-12-08T23:42:11Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > Links to a few stories: > > A gallery of the fourteen: [Remembering the women killed in the École Polytechnique massacre | Globalnews.ca](https://globalnews.ca/news/6187845/montreal-massacre-victims/) > > A retrospective, with clips of the tv news reports of the time: [Feminism met gunfire at École Polytechnique. It’s taken 30 years to call it what it was | Globalnews.ca](https://globalnews.ca/news/6242996/ecole-polytechnique-violence/amp/) > > One survivor’s update (five years ago, on the 25th anniversary): > [Nathalie Provost, who was shot at Polytechnique, recalls tragic day | Globalnews.ca](https://globalnews.ca/news/1710154/woman-shot-at-polytechnique-recalls-events/) > > Two women engineers, one near the end of her career, one just starting out, reflect on the killings, 30 years on: [A generation apart, two engineers reflect on the École Polytechnique massacre | CBC News](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/ecole-polytechnique-30-nl-1.5386744) Thanks for the link to the gallery. I hadn’t known that two of the victims were not students, and were killed outside the classroom. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2019, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-30-years-ago-today-14-engineering-students-were-murdered-in-montreal-because-they-were-women/844499/15 "2019-12-09T01:23:16Z")
Yes, after he finished in the classroom he went roaming the halls and shot some more, before killing himself. ---
**Author:** ![Dorjan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dorjan/32/12440_2.png) [@Dorjan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dorjan)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2019, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-30-years-ago-today-14-engineering-students-were-murdered-in-montreal-because-they-were-women/844499/16 "2019-12-10T20:49:50Z")
What always struck me about this terrible tragedy is that there were 50 men in that classroom. Every single one of them left. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2019, 8:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-30-years-ago-today-14-engineering-students-were-murdered-in-montreal-because-they-were-women/844499/17 "2019-12-13T08:30:49Z")
> [@Dorjan](#): > > What always struck me about this terrible tragedy is that there were 50 men in that classroom. Every single one of them left. Weren’t they ordered out at gunpoint? ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2019, 8:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-30-years-ago-today-14-engineering-students-were-murdered-in-montreal-because-they-were-women/844499/18 "2019-12-13T08:36:20Z")
Murdering scum. Poor lasses. ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2019, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-30-years-ago-today-14-engineering-students-were-murdered-in-montreal-because-they-were-women/844499/19 "2019-12-13T15:40:09Z")
> [@Dorjan](#): > > What always struck me about this terrible tragedy is that there were 50 men in that classroom. Every single one of them left. What always strikes me about this terrible tragedy and the responses to it is how toxic masculinity somehow succeeds in devaluing people of both genders. The men who lived are cowards who shouldn’t have. The women are dead. Shakin’ my damn head. ---
**Author:** ![slalexan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e47c2d/32.png) [@slalexan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slalexan)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2019, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-30-years-ago-today-14-engineering-students-were-murdered-in-montreal-because-they-were-women/844499/20 "2019-12-13T15:52:11Z")
Wow. Just wow. I am 30 years old and an engineer. These women helped pave the way for women like me. And we still have a long way to go. Why does it seem that all other progress goes so fast but changing the hearts of people seems to take lifetimes? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-30-years-ago-today-14-engineering-students-were-murdered-in-montreal-because-they-were-women/844499.md?page=2)