It has been 20 years since the tragedy that has come to be known as the Montreal Massacre.

On Dec. 6, 1989, Marc Lepine walked into École Polytechnique, an engineering school affiliated with the University of Montreal, with a semi-automatic rifle. Before ending his own life, he murdered 14 women - Anne-Marie Edward, Anne-Marie Lemay, Annie St. Arneault, Annie Turcotte, Barbara Daigneault, Barbara Maria Klueznick, Genevieve Bergeron, Helen Colgan, Maud Haviernick, Maryse Laganiere, Maryse Leclair, Michele Richard, Natalie Croteau and Sonia Pelletier. He wounded 13 other people, nine of them women.

We will never understand his reason for committing such a horrible, senseless crime against innocent young women. All we have are his own words, written in the suicide note he carried, that these female engineering students represented to him something he hated – feminists. One gets the sense that he chose those female engineering students not just because they had what he wanted but could not have (he had been rejected by the engineering program), but also because they were what he wanted but could not have. As a college drop-out and loner with a bad case of acne and a worse attitude, women like them never would have given him a second glance.

Various people have tried to figure out the reason for his crime – his relationship (or lack thereof) with his abusive Algerian father, his relationship with his mother who could well be viewed as a feminist, his fondness for violent movies, poverty, insanity, brain damage, embarrassment from acne, even the ease with which he purchased a semi-automatic weapon. But it all comes back to that suicide note and the statements he made during his murderous rampage. He had a real problem with women, especially those who worked in traditionally male occupations such as law enforcement, politics and, yes, engineering.

For that reason, the Montreal Massacre has come to symbolize the abuses perpetrated against women in our society, and rightly so. This was clearly not a crime against 14 particular women, but against women in general. And as long as women are targeted by the likes of Marc Lepine, there will be men and women who gather together on Dec. 6 to remember the victims. Part of that process includes drawing attention to the need for change in our society. To paraphrase an old advertising campaign, women have indeed come a long way, but there is still a long way to go.

Canada is in Afghanistan to fight a repressive regime that, among other things, banned women from the workplace and classroom. However, how many times have we heard someone in our own community grumble that there would be no job shortage if women would just stay home? Our laws make it possible for a woman to leave an abusive spouse, but lack of affordable housing, job training programs and day care all too often force her to stay and live in fear.

This is one reason why a major focus of this year’s events honouring the victims of the Dec. 6 tragedy is poverty. While misogyny knows no economic and class boundaries, and domestic violence can occur in million dollar mansions as well as third-storey walk-ups, poverty puts a woman in special jeopardy. If Lepine had murdered 14 drug addicted sex trade workers, he might well have been able to walk away unnoticed and continued his killing spree for years, as did Robert Picton.

Even in a domestic situation, a woman without financial resources is at greater risk than her well-educated and employed sister. The latter can at least hire a good lawyer, rent a decent place to live, and pay for a babysitter. The former cannot.

On Dec. 6, men and women from many walks of life will be remembering 14 young women, each one a remarkable person in her own right, whose life was cut short by a jealous loser. There is no better way to honour those women than by celebrating who they were – well-educated and ambitious, with tremendous potential. That means striving to ensure women have opportunities for education and employment, for affordable housing and day care. No woman should be forced to risk her life to put food on the table and have a roof over her head.