PUBLICATION:              Calgary Herald

DATE:                         2004.12.07

EDITION:                    Final

SECTION:                  The Editorial Page

PAGE:                         A14

SOURCE:                   Calgary Herald

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

One man, not all men

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Monday marked the 15th anniversary of the killing of 14 young women at l'Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, a horrific crime that should be remembered for its own unique tragedy, rather than as a window into the souls of men.

When Marc Lepine burst into the school on Dec. 6, 1989, armed with a semi-automatic assault rifle, ammunition and knives, he was a deranged man acting on his own.

It would be as sensible to claim Lepine's action represented the violence that lies in all men's hearts as it would be to claim that when Susan Smith drowned her two children in 1994 by driving her car into a lake, she was acting out every mother's wish.

Yet, the date of the Montreal killings has been made a National Day of Remembrance & Action on Violence Against Women and Lepine is its poster boy. No national day commemorates Smith's deed. Nor is there one to mark the anniversary of another mass murder -- the April 1999 shooting of four Ottawa Transit employees by a co-worker, Pierre Lebrun. Nobody says Lebrun typifies male violence or the evil that dwells in the hearts of all transit workers. Further proof that Lepine was representative of no pervasive male zeitgeist is the fact the Montreal massacre was a singular event. Nothing like it has happened since.

Monday, NDP MLA Raj Pannu spoke out on the need for "meaningful action to address the root causes of (violence against women)." He pleaded for more intervention programs for batterers. Yet, Lepine was not a batterer, and although he grew up with an abusive father and an emotionally remote mother, many people come from similarly grim circumstances and they don't evolve into mass murderers. 

Let's remember the Montreal massacre for the grisly tragedy it was, and not hold all men responsible simply because they are of the same gender as Lepine.