Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Montreal Massacre

A friend who attends McGill University asked me to blog about The Montreal Massacre, which happened on this date in 1989.

I had never heard of the event until he told me about it, but basically a man who felt that "the feminists" were responsible for him not getting into engineering school went to a local university and systematically gunned down all the female students he could find. In all, 14 women died before he took his own life.

There is obviously little to say about events such as this, except to remind ourselves of the risks we take when we cavalierly deny the humanity of other people. The same mentalities of hatred and extremism motivate these sort of mass killings, whether on relatively small-scales (like here) or large (like in Darfur, Rwanda, or Germany). It is almost trite to say that we must "oppose" these acts or opinions--who doesn't oppose atrocities? Except, of course, the perpetrators. Trite as it may be, a constant and omnipresent aura opposed to senseless violence, to mutilation and murder in all its forms, is the best way we can honor the memories of the victims.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You can hardly be blamed for not knowing about it - when it happened you were, what, in kindergarten? First grade?

However, I'd just entered high school and it was scary. Remember, this is before the late-90s school shooting thing became almost normal. Also, this happened in Canada, which was supposed to be that quiet, peaceful place up north.

It should be noted that this gunman deliberately targeted female engineering students. That's what he objected to. Women in hard science fields. Don't tell me feminism "won" by the end of the 70s...

Sue McPherson said...

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