École Polytechnique massacre

The massacre (French: '''''tuerie de l'École polytechnique''), also known as the Montreal massacre''', was an antifeminist mass shooting that occurred on December 6, 1989, at the in Montreal, Quebec. Fourteen women were murdered; another ten women and four men were injured.

The perpetrator was 25-year-old Marc Lépine, armed with a legally obtained semi-automatic rifle and a hunting knife. He started at a mechanical engineering class at the , where he separated the male and female students, ordering the men to leave. He shot all nine women in the room, killing six. For nearly 20 minutes the shooter moved through corridors on multiple floors of the building, the cafeteria, and another classroom, targeting women. He wounded more students and killed eight more women before fatally shooting himself. In total, he killed 14 women; he wounded 10 more women and four men.

The massacre is now widely regarded as an act of misogynist terrorism and representative of wider societal violence against women. The anniversary of the massacre is commemorated annually as the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. The gunman had said he was against feminism; after the attack, Canadians debated various interpretations of the events, their significance, and the shooter's motives. Some interpretations noted that the shooter had been abused as a child, or suggested that the massacre was the isolated act of a madman, unrelated to larger social issues.

The Canada legislature responded by passing more stringent gun control laws, and officials took other other actions to end violence against women. The massacre also led to policy changes in emergency services protocols to shootings; for instance, that police would intervene immediately to try to reduce casualties. These changes were credited with later minimizing casualties during incidents of shooting in Montreal and elsewhere.

This was the deadliest mass shooting in Canada until the 2020 Nova Scotia attacks more than 30 years later, which resulted in 22 deaths. Provided by Wikipedia