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White ribbons mark 20th anniversary of Polytechnique massacre
By Jessica Murphy, The Canadian Press

MONTREAL - White ribbons fluttered in the breeze Sunday and several hundred Montrealers formed a human chain as they remembered the 14 women murdered in Canada's worst mass shooting.

The names of Marc Lepine's victims were read out at a downtown park and a minute of silence was held to remember them 20 years to the day since they were killed at the Universite de Montreal's Ecole polytechnique.

Many in the crowd cheered as speakers highlighted the importance of doing everything possible to eliminate violence against women.

"It's a painful, a horrible moment, but at the same time it's a moment for us to look back and see where we want to go now," Alexa Conradi, president of Quebec's main women's group, said of the Dec. 6, 1989, tragedy.

Ceremonies were expected to take place all across the country to remember the lives of the 14 women, who were gunned down after Lepine entered a classroom and ordered the men outside.

Lepine, who blamed "feminists" for ruining his life, then began mowing down the women - mostly engineering students - before he burst out of the room and began shooting in all directions.

Thirteen other people, including nine women, were injured in Lepine's 20-minute rampage.

While the massacre prompted a toughening of Canada's gun control laws, Conservatives MPs, along with a handful of Liberals and New Democrats, voted in principle last month to kill the long-gun registry.

The move sparked an emotional response in Quebec as Montreal's police chief, survivors of the massacre and a gun victim's mother urged politicians to support the registry.

The head of the Coalition for Gun Control said Sunday the fight to preserve the registry will continue.

"We're down, we're not out," Wendy Cukier said as she took part in the human-chain ceremony.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in a statement Sunday it is important for Canadians to remain committed to eliminating violence against women.

"On Dec. 6, 1989, 14 bright, talented, young women were murdered at l'Ecole polytechnique de Montreal in one of the most tragic acts of violence against women in our country's history," Harper said.

"Their deaths galvanized the need to end violence against women in the hearts and minds of Canadians.

"Today, on Canada's National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence against Women, we should all take time to remember and reaffirm our commitment to continue working to protect the lives, dignity and equality of all women."

Montreal Massacre victims
MONTREAL (CBC) - Fourteen women were murdered and 13 people were injured when a gunman stormed Montreal's École Polytechnique on Dec. 6, 1989.

The victims included the following:

Geneviève Bergeron was a second-year scholarship student in mechanical engineering. She played the clarinet and sang in a professional choir. In her spare time she played basketball and swam.

Helene Colgan was in her final year of mechanical engineering and planned to do her master's degree. She had three job offers and was leaning toward accepting one from a company based near Toronto.

Nathalie Croteau was another graduating mechanical engineer. She planned to take a two-week vacation in Cancun, Mexico, with Colgan at the end of the month.

Barbara Daigneault was expecting to graduate at the end of the year. She was a teaching assistant for her father Pierre Daigneault, a mechanical engineering professor with the city's other French-language engineering school at the Université du Québec à Montréal.

Anne-Marie Edward, a chemical engineering student, loved outdoor sports like skiing and diving, and was always surrounded by friends.

Maud Haviernick was a second-year student in metallurgical engineering, and a graduate in environmental design from the Université du Québec à Montréal.

Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz was a first-year nursing student. She arrived in Montreal from Poland with her husband in 1987.

Maryse Laganière was the only non-student killed. She worked in the engineering school's budget department. She had recently married.

Maryse Leclair was in fourth-year metallurgy, had a year to go before graduation and was one of the top students in the school. She acted in plays in junior college. She was the first victim whose name was known, and she was found by her father, Montreal police Lt. Pierre Leclair.

Anne-Marie Lemay was in fourth-year mechanical engineering.

Sonia Pelletier was the head of her class and the pride of St-Ulric, Que., her remote birthplace in the Gaspé Peninsula. She had five sisters and two brothers. She was killed the day before she was to graduate with a degree in mechanical engineering. She had a job interview lined up for the following week.

Michèle Richard was in second-year metallurgical engineering. She was presenting a paper with Haviernick when she was killed.

Annie St-Arneault was a mechanical engineering student from La Tuque, Que., a Laurentian pulp and paper town in the upper St-Maurice river valley. She lived in a small apartment in Montreal. She was killed as she sat listening to a presentation in her last class before graduation. She had a job interview with Alcan Aluminium scheduled for the following day. She had talked about eventually getting married to the man who had been her boyfriend since she was a teenager.

Annie Turcotte was in her first year and lived with her brother in a small apartment near the university. She was described as gentle and athletic, enjoying diving and swimming. She went into metallurgical engineering so she could one day help improve the environment.

Killer Lepine did not destroy hope at Polytechnique, massacre survivors say
By Nelson Wyatt, The Canadian Press

MONTREAL - Nobody took Marc Lepine seriously at first, when he walked into a classroom at the Ecole polytechnique on Dec. 6, 1989, and interrupted an engineering student's presentation on heat transfer.

He stood there, in his threadbare parka, holding a 223-calibre Sturm-Ruger rifle. People stared, confused. One student asked him if he was playing a prank.

"Everybody thought it was just a bad joke until he fired his weapon," Rolando Rifiorati said softly as he cast his mind back 20 years to his last class of that semester.

"Then a kind of panic took over."

Rifiorati, who was a 24-year-old student at the Universite de Montreal's engineering school, was witnessing the start of what is still Canada's worst mass shooting ever, an event whose 20th anniversary will be marked in solemn ceremonies across Canada on Sunday.

Fourteen women died in Lepine's 20-minute war on "feminists" - the people he blamed for ruining his life. When he killed himself at the end of his rampage, he had 60 bullets left.

The slain were: Genevieve Bergeron, Helene Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz, Maryse Laganiere, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michele Richard, Annie St-Arneault and Annie Turcotte.

It never occurred to Rifiorati at the time that Lepine was targeting only women. He first thought he was after the men when he separated the males and females into two groups.

"He kind of rushed us out of the class because I guess he was in a hurry to do what he needed to do," Rifiorati recalled in an interview with The Canadian Press.

When Rifiorati and the other male students tumbled into the narrow corridor which led to a bank of photocopiers and a small lounge, he was stunned to see everything was normal outside the classroom. He expected more people with guns.

"The guys coming out of the class were screaming that this guy had a gun and then we started hearing gunshots." Moments later, the classroom door swung open.

"We saw him come out of the room and start shooting all over the place," said Rifiorati, recalling how he saw bullets smash into the concrete walls.

"We just ran for our lives."

Rifiorati knew six of the dead, including St-Arneault.

"She was a very jovial girl, very happy-go-lucky girl, laughing all the time," said her classmate, who became a mechanical engineer. "A very happy girl."

Thirteen people were wounded - nine women and four men. Three of the wounded were in Rifiorati's class.

The slain women have achieved iconic status in Canada. Their names are read out every year in remembrance of a horror that should never be repeated. The names are engraved into plaques that are granite reminders of promising lives cut short.

But little is known about the survivors - those who dodged bullets or who had flesh torn apart by them. Some of their names are recorded in dusty media archives and texts but most are known just to family and friends. They usually politely decline interviews.

Some of those who are publicly known have grim stories.

Some students and staff never stepped foot in the Polytechnique again. Sarto Blais, a graduate, hanged himself eight months after the massacre, saying in his suicide note he was torn apart by guilt that he didn't stop Lepine.

The following June, his parents also committed suicide, unable to cope with the loss of their only son.

Male students came in for criticism after the shootings. Some people even said they should have overpowered Lepine.

"We were engineering students," Rifiorati said. "None of us ever had military training. None of us had police training. None of us could have possibly have that kind of reaction.

"I don't think it's possible for university engineering students to have the reaction to actually jump on a guy who's shooting all over the place."

Indeed, school shootings were uncommon at that time. There had only been three in Canada at that point - one each in Ottawa and Brampton, Ont., in 1975, and another in Winnipeg in 1978.

Rifiorati coped with his feelings about the Polytechnique tragedy by talking to people. He noted there is a strong sense of community among students at the school, which sits on the top of a mountain like an "oasis" on the Universite de Montreal campus.

"You talk about it when you can. It's easier to talk about it with people who actually went through it.

"You have to talk about it," he said, noting he had already dealt with devastating tragedy in his life, the loss of his older brother in a car accident a few years before. "You can't just keep it inside."

Those Polytechnique survivors who do talk in public are firm in their message: Do not weep for us. Never forget what happened on Dec. 6, 1989, but always remember what has happened since - the fine work of the school and the eager graduates who went on to stand tall in their community and professions.

Diane Riopel was teaching engineering in 1989. She missed crossing paths with Lepine by a whisker, deciding to wrap up her day shortly after 5 p.m. and head home.

"When I look at the chronology of events, I went this way," she says, tracing a line on the desk in front of her with her finger.

"And he passed behind me," she says drawing a line behind what would have been her back.

"I was spared."

Riopel, who didn't personally know the slain students, remembers the palpable sadness that swirled around the school - indeed the country - after the shootings. Professors grappled with what to tell their students.

"I'll always remember the student who called me and said, 'I'm not coming back.' He only had one semester to go before he became an engineer."

She says it's rare when someone learns she works at the Polytechnique that she isn't asked, "Were you there?"

But Riopel, who has worked tirelessly to attract more women engineers into the field, is firm that the tragedy doesn't define the school.

The massacre "is part of our history but it is not our only history," she said. "Now we talk about what we've done."

The school is a major player among engineering schools, she points out, and one of the best in the country. Thousands have graduated in the last two decades.

"It's an institution to be proud of," she says. "It has marked the history of our country."

The number of women enrolled in engineering has gone up slightly, but, like in other similar schools, not dramatically.

In the fall of 1989, there were 622 women in the Polytechnique's bachelor's program. Twenty years later, there were 804. Riopel, who has even addressed elementary schoolchildren on the benefits of a career in engineering, says there has been progress but acknowledges work still has to be done.

Heidi Rathjen feels the same way but this day she's not talking about engineering.

Rathjen, who went from being an engineering student to a tenacious advocate for the reform of Canada's gun laws, is rolling up her sleeves again to protect the controversial federal gun registry.

"I'm going to keep fighting," she said in an interview, insisting that gun registry costs are under control and it saves lives.

Twenty years ago, Rathjen was studying in a Polytechnique lounge when a pale-faced student burst in and yelled there was a man with a gun outside. She didn't understand what he was babbling about and she wasn't afraid - until she heard shots.

There were more shots. Screams.

Rathjen and other students huddled in the room and tried to hide, turning off the lights. Only a fragile door with a flimsy lock stood between them and Lepine, whose weapon blasts sounded like "planks of wood hitting the floor."

Forty minutes later, police showed up and took Rathjen and the others to safety.

Looking back, Rathjen smiles slightly as she remembers one of her friends, who was among the 14 killed.

"We were in the same clubs, we went to classes and organized the student yearbook and things like that together," she said of Lemay. "She was a wonderful girl, a total sweetheart."

Rathjen, who now works for an anti-tobacco organization, says her advocacy helped her deal with the tragedy.

"One of the things I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to do is to help out at the school and to work on something that I believed in that would help prevent similar tragedies.

"My involvement in gun control stems from the tragedy - it's a normal reaction - but I came to absolutely believe in it," said Rathjen, who now has a daughter.

"In fighting back in whichever way we can, we can't bring the victims back but we can work to make the system safer, to make it harder for an angry individual to commit the same kind of horrible crime. It was too easy for Marc Lepine to get his gun."

Riopel would like to see one other change as the world moves on 20 years after the Montreal Massacre.

She would like to never hear Lepine's name again.

"We have given him enough publicity. Out of respect for the victims, the killer should be completely anonymous."