4 - Sunday, July 2t, 1991 Noth Shore News Revisiting the Montreal massacre madness 1 REMEMBER thinking at the time of the Montreal Ecole Polytechnique massacre of 14 young women in 1989 how glad 1 was that | wasn't one of those guys who had been there and had done nothing to stop Mare Lepine. How could you possibly live with yourself afterwards? There was a moment in the horror story where Lepine ordered the male students out of the room. As one, they could have rushed him. Maybe one of them would have been killed, but surely the rest would have overwhelmed him, And even if several of them died, so what? Didn't they know that sometimes in life you have to take a chance on sacrificing yourself? l also remember thinking: is this some new generation of males who will meekly slink away en masse, leaving an entire roomful of women at the mercy of a madman with a gun? l tried to imagine my uncles or my Dad doing anything other than rushing the guy. And they would have put the boots to him, too. He'd be lucky to get out of there with a bone left unbroken in his miserable scum of a body. But they were a macho, chauvinistic lot, my father and uncles. I don’t mean this ina derogatory way, They were men. They understood themselves as inale animals, As men, they knew what to do. Particularly, they knew when to fight, Atthe time of the Ecole Polytechnique massacre, | wept many times. Still weep briefly thinking about it. But the pain is more controllable now — which is what grieving is all about. I didn't know any of those young women, of course, But [ could all too vividly imagine what their mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, grandparents, cousins, neighbors, and friends were feel- ing. Just because the pain of losing a loved one doesn’t show on the surface doesn't mean it isn't the worst form of pain of all, 1, of course, like to think that Bob Hunter STRICTLY PERSONAL in a similar situation, | would have rushed Marc Lepine, or at least thrown a chair, or tried to shield someone. If cach man there had stood in front of cach woman there, would Lepine have fired? 1 like to think that most of my male friends would have done the same. | know, for sure, that my brother would have, because | have seen him leap to the defense of women many times before -— as though it was an instinct. So would my male cousins... It's supposed to be an instinet, isn’t it? Of course, all this is easy to A GEORGE WALKER’S TINY TU-TH's for TWO" For 2 year aids & parents “KINDERDANCE” 3-4 year olds ADULT BALLET For tun & titness 5-8 year olds (levels) . 985-4071 | say. We weren't there, The truth is, HObDOdY knows for sure how they will react ina given crisis un- til the crisis comes. Tt imight, after all, catch you on a bad day, when you just don't happen to be up for heroics, But I did wonder if something awful hadn't happened to men’s sense of themselves in our current world, I am almost tempted to ask: Have the feminists got what they want now, which is to say passive, non-macho, certainly non-paternalistic males? Maybe it’s just because I'm a father, but the idea of leaving dozens of young women halfway between the ages of my oldest and youngest daughters to face a wacko gunman is outrageous. tt goes against every grain. I would far prefer to die, if for no other reason than to avoid a life- time of having to live with myself, sleeping at night, looking anyone in the eye, Is this the dreaded paternalism of old Europe rearing its ugly male head? Is this the drive for dominance masquerading as mar- tyrdom? Is this gorilla posturing, thumping the chest and baying? Like a lot of guys, f really try not to be a chauvinist pig. For # period starting in the late ‘60s, 1 got nervous ubout allowing women out of the elevator before me, or opening doors for them, giving them my seat on a bus — all of the things my mother taught HONDA CIVIC ‘8595 725 MARINE, N.VAN. me tu do, and which | was happy to do, The pop feminism of the time branded all these gestures of **po- liteness towards women"' (which is all { thought it was) as a male power trip, an aspect of misogyny. Given that all this might be perfectly true, ‘‘politeness’’ was also an aspect of a code of honor, a ‘proper’ behavior mode im- printed on males over the millenia to keep them from running amok, driven by hormone imbalance or sheer bullying nastiness, In a way, I think that being taught to **be polite to women"? is a way of handicapping the bigger half of the species. For boys — at least in my time and as far as my sons are concerned — such train- ing begins with the admonition: “No hitting gicls."" PRESENTS The subtest to that is: Guys who do it will get clobbered by the other guys. At least, that's what it was supposed to be. l have just finished reading an article on one of the male engineering students who had been on the scene during the Lepine rampage, and who committed suicide last summer. Now, the tragedy compounding itself, his parents have killed themselves as well, The young engineer left a note saying he ‘‘could not accept that, as a man, he had been there and hadn’t done anything about it.” As well as the families and friends of the victims, 1 pity this young man. J pity his parents. And I pity the other young men who didn’t do anything either. % FULL FINANCING ON: 4 — Oll to gas conversions - All gas pipe additions — Ranges & Dryers — Fireplace Log Sets — Barbeques & Patio Heaters * NO CHEQUES REQUIZED® * Monthly payments are added to your BC. Hydro Bill AERO GAS LTD. 1840 Lonsdale Ave. N. 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