"We are not feminists."

A young, incredulous Nathalie Provost said those words to Marc Lépine 20 years ago Sunday. It was a bid to save her and her fellow students' lives – the women Lépine had isolated in a university classroom before opening fire on them with a semi-automatic hunting rifle.

Provost was one of the lucky four who survived. "At the time, I thought to be a feminist meant you had to be militant," says Provost, who today is overworked and feeling skittish as the anniversary approaches. She was the young woman who, from her hospital bed a couple days later, urged Canadian girls to not be frightened by the event and to pursue engineering careers. She was also my introduction to feminism in life, not just theory. And to the concept that the personal is political.

"I realized many years later that in my life and actions, of course I was a feminist. I was a woman studying engineering and I held my head up."

They are older, the survivors of Dec. 6. Lines leak from their eyes. They find grey hairs. And many, like Provost, have children of their own. Daughters.

"They know. They've always known that when she was young, Maman was injured by a gun," says Provost, 43, over the phone from her office in Montreal. After the shooting, she finished her degree in mechanical engineering – even stayed an extra year to do her master's. She's now the director of a strategic planning department in the Quebec government. She's the boss. She's also the mother of four children – two boys, two girls, ages 7 to 14. She's a busy woman.

"They've built the story as they grew, more and more. Maybe some time they will ask me to explain why (Lépine did it). I will be ready and they will be ready."

Columbine. Dawson College. Virginia Tech. There've been so many school massacres since Dec. 6, 1989, we've grown disturbingly used to them. The Montreal Massacre was different. Lépine had a specific target: women.

He blamed them for his own failures. His suicide note listed other women he'd set in his sights: a politician, a union leader, Quebec's first female firefighter and police captain, among others. He'd settled for easier targets – the young women at Université de Montréal's engineering school, who had the audacity to study for careers that still today are the domain of men.

In 20 minutes, he shot or stabbed 27 people, mostly women, before shooting himself. Fourteen of his victims died. All of them were women.

It was an event that changed the lives of students at school, and women around the country. We all had posters of those women on our walls. We went to commemorations. We walked the streets in Take Back the Night marches. We felt exposed to a hatred many of us hadn't realized was festering – over the fact that we could work too, that we could study men's subjects, that we could be good at it.

If you are one of those young women who says you aren't a feminist, you haven't heard this story. Or you have forgotten. We've all grown complacent.

Even back then, when there were only 18 women to every 100 men at the "Poly" (École Polytechnique), the women felt they'd won the fight.

"The atmosphere at school was totally egalitarian. It was a wonderful place for women. It was easy for people to think feminism was passé. Problem solved," says Heidi Rathjen. Remember her? She was the student who organized the memorial and helped launch the petition for gun control. The group gathered 560,000 signatures by fax and letter. A year later, when she saw Parliament wasn't going to change the law, she left her civil engineering job and got an office at the funeral home where most of her dead classmates had been put into caskets. The female funeral home owner also gave her a hefty bursary to continue the campaign.

She has a 5-year-old daughter now – too young to learn about what happened, she says. "She's going to have a role model. Someone who will not take things sitting down. I dedicated a good part of my life to fight back, to trying to have something good come out of such a horrible tragedy. I suspect that's what I'll tell her. `You have to fight back and try to make the world a better place.'"

You might think of them next time your kids want to play with toy guns. "They are not allowed in my house," says Alain Perreault, the former student council president who spoke at the funeral for nine of the women. He's now the father of two boys. "Violent video games aren't allowed because of what happened to me. There's no way I can accept this."

After graduating, Perreault moved to Europe. But he was drawn back to the Poly nine years ago. He works there helping researchers find markets for their inventions. Most days, Perreault walks by the dark stone memorial to the 14 women Lépine killed, down the halls where he stalked them, the cafeteria, the two classrooms ...

"It's very useful to see life in the school, a lot of enthusiasm. People are building their lives here," says Perreault, who again will speak at a memorial in Montreal on Sunday. "It's hopeful to work in the environment, to see life after this tragedy."

Much has changed. Little has changed. Twenty years ago, 18 per cent of the student population were women. Today, they make up 21.4 per cent.

Kim Campbell, then a minister of state, went on to become – very briefly – the country's first woman Prime Minister. Today, women make up a paltry fifth of the House of Commons. The Harper government slashed funding for women's rights groups.

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We still make less than men, for working the same jobs.

Other than in Quebec, we still don't have universal daycare.

And the gun control law Rathjen and Ryerson professor Wendy Cukier worked six years to see introduced is now being dismantled. Last month, Parliament voted to shut down the gun registry. (The bill still has to pass third reading.) So while Lépine might not have gotten a licence today, he could have picked up an unregistered gun from a friend. Without the registry, it would likely never be tracked back to the original owner.

Most women who are murdered are killed by their husbands, lovers or exes. Many are killed in rages – there is a fight; the man finds his hunting gun. Since the registry was created, the number of women killed with shotguns has fallen every year. This too is a feminist issue.

Provost doesn't worry about the safety of her little girls, any more than you or I do. One of her daughters, she thinks, will work with people. The younger one is into gymnastics. She tells them they can be whatever they want to be. Doctors, lawyers, teachers.

"Whatever makes them happy, that allows them to express their plus beaux talents (most beautiful talents)," she says. "But if they like science, solving problems and working in teams, they should go into engineering."

These things shouldn't be taken for granted either. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, journalists, social workers. Tomorrow, I'll remind my daughter that she can be anything she wants to be. Even an engineer.

You should, too.

There's a candlelight vigil Sunday at 6 p.m. on the University of Toronto's Philosopher's Walk. Bring a candle and a rose. For more information, see www.womenwontforget.org.

Catherine Porter's column appears on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. She can be reached at cporter@thestar.ca.

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