This is a revised version of a column that first appeared in the Citizen on Dec. 5, 2003:
The radio came on at 7:30 a.m. I was in fourth year of university at Carleton in Ottawa, the semester was wrapping up and final exams loomed. Being a poor student, I didn't have a television set so I hadn't tuned in to the news before going to bed the night before.
As I lay there, not wanting to start my day, the radio told me Marc Lepine had murdered 14 women at the Universit de Montral the night before, 25 years ago today.
I remember urgently pulling on a sweater, jeans and some running shoes before sprinting out the door and down an icy sidewalk to a newspaper box on the corner.
The mood on campus that morning was sombre. Montreal is only a two-hour drive from Ottawa and like the Universit de Montral, Carleton has an engineering school with a small number of female students. It was too close.
In his suicide note, Lepine blamed women for all his problems, from not being able to get a girlfriend to not being able to get into the Canadian Forces to being rejected a spot at L'Ecole Polytechnique, the engineering school at Montreal's French university. Lepine was sure there was a conspiracy of feminists taking over the world and poisoning the minds of women.
He decided it was his job to address this problem through the barrel of a gun.
Believing in conspiracies has a way of warping minds to view the world through a paranoid lens. Events are twisted to fit the conspiracy or rejected when they directly conflict. The danger is lurking around every corner and everyone is suspect.
Born under the most humble of circumstances, the angels proclaimed both Christ's mission and ours, too, in loud, clear voices: "Peace on Earth and goodwill towards all men."
Words to live by and not just at Christmas.
For Marc Lepine, that goodwill didn't extend to women. He made 14 women pay for his lack of humanity with their lives.
-- Managing editor Neil Godbout
