Dalhousie engineering prof remembers Montreal Massacre
Posted Dec 6, 2012 05:40:15 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
First-year engineering student Wendy Gentleman spent the night of the Montreal Massacre huddled and terrified in her Montreal dorm room at McGill University.
She had heard reports on the radio that a gunman was systematically shooting female engineering students at l’Ecole Polytechnique.
“At that point they didn’t know if there was only one gunman,” Gentleman told News 95.7. “They thought some had escaped and were headed over to Montreal. So, we spent a terrified evening in our dorm rooms with the doors locked answering phone calls from scared people.”
Her brother was one of those scared people. He was in the United States where the reports were even more vague and didn’t give the name of targetted university.
“He couldn’t get through to me and he had thought I had been one of the victims,” she recalled.
On Dec. 6 1989, Marc Lépine, 24, shot and killed 14 women. He injured 10 other women and four men before killing himself at l’Ecole Polytechnique.
Lépine’s suicide note blamed feminists for ruining his life and he connected the women engineering students with the feminist movement.
“The same way that people will remember where they were the day the plains hit the towers or Kennedy was assassinated, I think every woman of my generation is going to remember where they were that night,” she said.
Today, Gentleman is an associate professor in the Engineering, Mathematics and Internetworking Department at Dalhousie University and she participates in the university’s annual day of remembrance.
“I think you can learn from tragedies,” she said. “We commemorate all sorts of things. The key is the keep it relevant. Think of it as something for giving them hope and recognizing that they are the only one to limit their dreams.”
Dalhousie‘s Engineering Society has organized a purple ribbon campaign and will be holding a Remembrance Candlelight Ceremony in the Alumni Lounge at 6:30 p.m.
Other events happening to recognize the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women include a vigil inside Province House at 11 a.m. with the Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women.
The King’s Feminist Collective will be hosting an evening vigil from 8:30 to 9 p.m. at the King’s Chapel.
