École Polytechnique massacre
1989 mass shooting in Montréal, Canada
The École Polytechnique massacre (French: tuerie de l'École polytechnique), also known as the Montreal massacre, was a mass shooting that occurred on December 6, 1989, at the École Polytechnique de Montréal in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Fourteen women were murdered in the misogynistic, antifeminist attack; another ten women and four men were injured. Among the injured was eventual gun control advocate and politician Nathalie Provost.
On December 6, 1989, Marc Lépine, armed with a legally-obtained semi-automatic rifle and a hunting knife, entered a mechanical engineering class at the École Polytechnique. He ordered the women to one side of the classroom, and instructed the men to leave. After claiming that he was "fighting feminism," he shot all nine women in the room, killing six. The shooter then moved through corridors, the cafeteria, and another classroom, specifically targeting women to shoot for just under 20 minutes. He killed a further eight women before shooting and killing himself with his rifle. It was the deadliest mass shooting in Canada until the 2020 Nova Scotia attacks.
After the attack, Canadians debated various interpretations of the events, their significance, and the shooter’s motives.
The public source identifies “École Polytechnique massacre” as 1989 mass shooting in Montréal, Canada. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around École, Polytechnique and massacre.
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This entry incorporates text from “École Polytechnique massacre” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.