The Globe and Mail
Bravo!! That's a piece of ****... I just wish canadians(ROC) are not so dumb. To read and approve this ****.
Bravo!! That's a piece of ****... I just wish canadians(ROC) are not so dumb. To read and approve this ****.
This week, Montrealers were asking: Why us? Youths elsewhere in Canada are addicted to violent video games. Youths elsewhere in Canada live in soul-less suburbs. Youths elsewhere are alienated and into Goth culture. Yet while there have been similar high-school tragedies, all three rampages at Canadian postsecondary institutions occurred here, not in Toronto, or Vancouver or Halifax or Calgary.
"A lot of people are saying: Why does this always happen in Quebec?" says Jay Bryan, a business columnist for the Montreal Gazette, the city's only English-language daily. "Three doesn't mean anything. But three out of three in Quebec means something."
What many outsiders don't realize is how alienating the decades-long linguistic struggle has been in the once-cosmopolitan city. It hasn't just taken a toll on long-time anglophones, it's affected immigrants, too. To be sure, the shootings in all three cases were carried out by mentally disturbed individuals. But what is also true is that in all three cases, the perpetrator was not pure laine, the argot for a "pure" francophone. Elsewhere, to talk of racial "purity" is repugnant. Not in Quebec.
In 1989, Marc Lepine shot and killed 14 women and wounded 13 others at the University of Montreal's École Polytechnique. He was a francophone, but in the eyes of pure laine Quebeckers, he was not one of them, and would never be. He was only half French-Canadian. He was also half Algerian, a Muslim, and his name was Gamil Gharbi. Seven years earlier, after the Canadian Armed Forces rejected his application under that name, he legally changed his name to Marc Lepine.
Valery Fabrikant, an engineering professor, was an immigrant from Russia. In 1992, he shot four colleagues and wounded one other at Concordia University's faculty of engineering after learning he would not be granted tenure.
This week's killer, Kimveer Gill, was, like Marc Lepine, Canadian-born and 25. On his blog, he described himself as of "Indian" origin. (In their press conference, however, the police repeatedly referred to Mr. Gill as of "Canadian" origin.)
It isn't known when Mr. Gill's family arrived in Canada. But he attended English elementary and high schools in Montreal. That means he wasn't a first-generation Canadian. Under the restrictions of Bill 101, the province's infamous language law, that means at least one of his parents must have been educated in English elementary or high schools in Canada.
To be sure, Mr. Lepine hated women, Mr. Fabrikant hated his engineering colleagues and Mr. Gill hated everyone. But all of them had been marginalized, in a society that valued pure laine.
Mr. Gill, by all accounts a loner, was a high-school dropout who lived in his parent's basement in suburban Laval. He was 6 foot 1 with light skin, dark hair shaved at the sides and a penchant for all-black outfits. He had no job, but he owned a car, and he bought three expensive guns, including the Beretta, which retails for about $800 (U.S.).
In an on-line journal nine months earlier, he wrote that the day he planned to seek revenge would be grey. "A light drizzle will be starting up," he wrote.
"A lot of people are saying: Why does this always happen in Quebec?" says Jay Bryan, a business columnist for the Montreal Gazette, the city's only English-language daily. "Three doesn't mean anything. But three out of three in Quebec means something."
What many outsiders don't realize is how alienating the decades-long linguistic struggle has been in the once-cosmopolitan city. It hasn't just taken a toll on long-time anglophones, it's affected immigrants, too. To be sure, the shootings in all three cases were carried out by mentally disturbed individuals. But what is also true is that in all three cases, the perpetrator was not pure laine, the argot for a "pure" francophone. Elsewhere, to talk of racial "purity" is repugnant. Not in Quebec.
In 1989, Marc Lepine shot and killed 14 women and wounded 13 others at the University of Montreal's École Polytechnique. He was a francophone, but in the eyes of pure laine Quebeckers, he was not one of them, and would never be. He was only half French-Canadian. He was also half Algerian, a Muslim, and his name was Gamil Gharbi. Seven years earlier, after the Canadian Armed Forces rejected his application under that name, he legally changed his name to Marc Lepine.
Valery Fabrikant, an engineering professor, was an immigrant from Russia. In 1992, he shot four colleagues and wounded one other at Concordia University's faculty of engineering after learning he would not be granted tenure.
This week's killer, Kimveer Gill, was, like Marc Lepine, Canadian-born and 25. On his blog, he described himself as of "Indian" origin. (In their press conference, however, the police repeatedly referred to Mr. Gill as of "Canadian" origin.)
It isn't known when Mr. Gill's family arrived in Canada. But he attended English elementary and high schools in Montreal. That means he wasn't a first-generation Canadian. Under the restrictions of Bill 101, the province's infamous language law, that means at least one of his parents must have been educated in English elementary or high schools in Canada.
To be sure, Mr. Lepine hated women, Mr. Fabrikant hated his engineering colleagues and Mr. Gill hated everyone. But all of them had been marginalized, in a society that valued pure laine.
Mr. Gill, by all accounts a loner, was a high-school dropout who lived in his parent's basement in suburban Laval. He was 6 foot 1 with light skin, dark hair shaved at the sides and a penchant for all-black outfits. He had no job, but he owned a car, and he bought three expensive guns, including the Beretta, which retails for about $800 (U.S.).
In an on-line journal nine months earlier, he wrote that the day he planned to seek revenge would be grey. "A light drizzle will be starting up," he wrote.
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