Human Rights A Day

Fourteen women murdered at Montreal’s l’École Polytechnique in Montréal. On December 6, 1989, Marc Lépine burst into an engineering class at École Polytechnique, an engineering school affiliated with the University of Montreal. Wielding a gun, he forced all the men to leave the room. He then proceeded to kill 14 women: Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Barbara Maria Klucznik, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault and Annie Turcotte. The brutality of the cold-blooded murders captured media attention worldwide, and focused attention on violence against women more generally. Some of the families of the murdered women became involved in lobbying the Canadian government to create much stronger gun controls. The end result was a gun registry program supported by police and the majority of the public, but plagued with political and financial problems. In 1991, the Parliament of