Wikipedia:Today's featured article/July 31, 2007



The École Polytechnique massacre occurred on December 6 1989 at the École Polytechnique de Montréal in Montreal, Quebec. Twenty-five year-old Marc Lépine, armed with a legally-obtained semi-automatic rifle and a hunting knife, shot twenty-eight people, killing fourteen (all of them women) and injuring the other fourteen before killing himself. He began his attack by entering a classroom at the university, where he separated the men and women students from each other. After claiming that he was "fighting feminism", he shot all nine women in the room, killing six. He then moved through corridors, the cafeteria, and another classroom, specifically targeting women to shoot. He killed fourteen women and injured four men and ten women in just under twenty minutes before turning the gun on himself. Lépine's suicide note claimed political motives and blamed feminists for ruining his life. The note include a list of nineteen Quebec women whom Lépine considered to be feminists and apparently wished to kill. Since the attack, Canadians have debated various interpretations of the events, their significance, and Lépine's motives. The massacre is regarded by most feminists and many official perspectives as an anti-feminist attack and representative of wider societal violence against women; the anniversary of the massacre is commemorated as the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. The incident led to more stringent gun control laws in Canada, and changes in the tactical response of police to shootings, which were later credited with minimizing casualties at the Dawson College shootings. (more...)

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