On the occassion of the tenth anniversary of the massacre

in Montréal, December 6, 1989.

Ten years ago today, at l'École Polytechnique de Montréal, 14 young women were gunned down by a lunatic with a gun. They were killed because they were women, that's all. That's a terrible thing. Those bright young humans were snuffed out by another human with a defective brain. That should scare everyone. A significant portion of our species is malfunctioning. The societies we are building don't work properly.

A young man was permitted to develop the idea that the success of those women was so unjust that nothing short of killing them would sort things out. He was broken in the head and he didn't know it, because nothing in his culture worked well enough to correct his malfunction. His culture is broken too. It gave him the means, the power, to kill 14 women.

How much nicer life would be if the broken young man's culture had worked well enough that it cut off his power when he started to go wrong, and empowered the 14 women, or anyone else who is not broken, to help him to work properly again.

These are people you will never meet:

Geneviève Bergeron, 21

Hélène Colgan, 23

Nathalie Croteau, 23

Barbara Daigneault, 22

Anne-Marie Edward, 21

Maud Haviernick, 29

Barbara Maria Klueznick, 31

Maryse Laganière, 25

Maryse Leclair, 23

Anne-Marie Lemay, 27

Sonia Pelletier, 23

Michèle Richard, 21

Annie St-Arneault, 23

Annie Turcotte, 21

Sad, isn't it.