Today we take a moment to remember the 14 victims who were killed at Montreal’s École Polytechnique on December 6, 1989. A lone gunman entered the school and separated the men from the women. Professing his hatred for feminists, Marc Lépine shot and killed 14 women and wounded 14 others before turning the gun on himself.
An international engineering school, Polytechnique was the setting of this senseless act of violence because Lépine disliked that women were pursuing jobs that had previously been held almost exclusively by men. Twenty-six years later, the victims continue to symbolize the progress of women’s equality and they remind us that there is still work to be done to make this a full reality.
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