Rampage by Lee Mellor Read Free Book Online Page A

and eighteenth lives annihilated by Marc Lépine’s actions.
    The impact on Lépine’s own family was devastating. Twenty-two-year-old Nadia was looking forward to beginning a philosophy course at CEGEP du Vieux Montreal when the massacre occurred. Unable to cope, she became addicted to heroin and cocaine, eventually turning to prostitution to support her habits. On March 1, 1996, Nadia overdosed on cocaine and was taken to Notre-Dame Hospital, where doctors determined that she had severely damaged her cerebral cortex. After twelve hours of watching her daughter slip slowly into the abyss of death, Monique gave her approval to unplug her life support machines. The twenty-eight-year-old was buried next to her brother in a family plot at Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery.
    The unfathomable depth of Monique’s suffering is detailed in her courageous book Aftermath , in which she writes not only of losing two children, but also of recurring nightmares that her son is coming to kill her. Even the chief investigator of the massacre, André Tessier — a man who had been exposed to countless acts of barbarism during his career — would be emotionally scarred by the events of December 6, 1989. For him, not only was the scope of the murders overwhelming, but the daughter of a friend had been among the victims.
    In the end, Marc Lépine’s crude efforts to fight feminism backfired, and December 6 is now a National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women in Canada. Female enrollment in Canadian engineering programs rose from 13 to 19 percent between 1989 and 1999. The Polytechnique massacre was to be the last in his long litany of failures. One can almost hear his pitiful voice muttering a final “Ah, shit” through the gates of Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery.
    Lépine’s crimes created a dialogue surrounding the issue of misogynist violence in Canada and raised important questions regarding national firearms laws, spawning the Coalition for Gun Control. Many Canadians wondered how somebody as emotionally disturbed as Marc Lépine could gain access to such a powerful weapon. When Justice Minister Douglas Lewis promised to examine the issue, but warned, “We can’t legislate against insanity,” it seemed that the motivation for the attacks was being misinterpreted. Lépine had no known history of psychosis and had been plotting the murders in one form or another for years. Police learned that he had been spotted at the school on no less than seven occasions between October 1 and the murders. Given these facts, should we really dismiss the massacre as simply the work of a madman? There is wisdom in the words and actions of Nathalie Provost, the brave young student who had tried to reason with Lépine. A survivor of four bullet wounds, she went on to defy his plans for her by becoming a mechanical engineer. Speaking with the Globe and Mail on the twentieth anniversary of the massacre, Provost expressed her reluctance to label her attempted murderer as a monster:
That man was first a little baby, a child, a little boy who played ball, who tried to be loved by people around him; he was all kinds of things before he did what he did. I have four children and I try to love them with all my heart, but I know perfectly well that I don’t always control them. The horror was in the act he committed, which is unpardonable, horrible, and abominable. But behind the act was a human being. [23]
    In this spirit, let us now endeavour to understand Lépine’s psyche.
    A Frustrated, Furious Failure
    The suicide note retrieved from Marc Lépine’s pocket by police provides us with precious insight into the mind of a killer. As in many cases, what the murderer intends us to believe is of infinitely less value than the reality he attempts to cover up:
Forgive the mistakes. I only had 15 minutes to write this. (See also Annex)
Please note that if I commit suicide today 89/12/06 it is not for economic reasons (for I have waited until I