Revisiting the Slaughter

Our city’s history is scarred with memories of school shootings.
On Dec. 6, 1989, Marc Lépine walked into the École Polytechnique and murdered 14 engineering students. They were killed simply because they were women. In 1994, within the walls of our own school, Concordia, an academic named Valery Fabrikant slaughtered four of his colleagues. And, in most recent memory, on Sept. 13, 2006, Kimveer Gill walked into Dawson College and went on a shooting rampage that left one girl dead and several injured.
The whole world is scarred by school shootings, not just by Montreal’s own tragedies, but also by a spate of other cases like Columbine and Virginia Tech, and the many copycats they and others have spawned. We have all had to adapt to the harrowing idea that the hallowed halls of learning, places like cafeterias and libraries, where students study, chat and hang out, can be open shooting ranges for any deranged madman with access to firearms.
And every time someone hatches a fake bomb plot, like at Université de Québec