Let hate go, mother of Polytechnique shooter says
Twenty-six years after her son murdered 14 women in the Montreal massacre at École Polytechnique, Monique Lepine still doesn’t know why.
“Maybe he felt unloved, left aside,” she said of her son Marc Lepine, while speaking this week at the 12 Days To End Violence Against Women campaign in Whitehorse.
During her 90-minute, keynote talk at the Kwanlin Dun Cultural Centre, the 78-year-old woman reflected in a soft and calm voice on the abuse she and her children had suffered at the hands of her former husband.
“If you didn’t solve your emotional problems when it was the time, eventually you’re growing, you’re an adult, but emotionally, you’re still at the age of your wound.”
On Dec. 6, 1989, Marc Lepine, 25, armed with a 223-calibre SturmRuger rifle, separated the men from the women in a classroom at Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique.
He spoke about his hatred for feminists and went on a shooting rampage, killing 14 women and wounding nine others. He then shot himself. Monique Lepine relived that day, repeating for the crowd a story about how she prayed when she heard about the shootings, only to find out the gunman was her son.
“My son killed himself, but I was the one left with all the consequences,” she said.
Seven years after the massacre, her 29-year-old daughter killed herself in a drug overdose, she said, noting her daughter suffered guilt about not having the chance to reconcile with her brother.
Lepine said the following day she realized she had lost what she had dedicated her life to: her children.
“I felt like I was dying of pain and sadness,” she said.
“It took me a long time to make peace with myself because I thought I was the one responsible because everybody was saying that,” she said.
She has since met and cried with a family of one of her son’s victims.
“All this hate we keep inside, if we don’t let it go, or ask forgiveness of the people we hurt, it will build up and lead to violent behaviour.”