When she saw the bloody television images of the Dawson College shooting, Monique Lépine's thoughts turned to the mother of the gunman -- a woman with whom she shares a tragic connection.
Ms. Lépine is the mother of Marc Lépine, whose 1989 campus shooting rampage at the École Polytechnique left 14 women dead. She has remained in the shadows for 17 years, the anonymous mother of an infamous killer. But following the violence at Dawson, she agreed to speak publicly for the first time.
Ms. Lépine told the TVA network that after seeing news about the shooting, her heart started to pound and her thoughts turned to the families of the students. But she also thought about the mother of Kimveer Gill, who, like Ms. Lépine's own son, killed himself after his murderous outburst.
"I thought of the suffering she endured. I thought of the pain she endured," she said of Parvinder Sandhu. "She isn't a victim in the eyes of the law. She's the mother of a criminal."
Ms. Lépine recalled how on the night of the Polytechnique shooting, she went to a prayer meeting. The gunman's identity wasn't yet known.
"I asked to pray for the mother of that young man, without knowing it was me."
She would later learn, from his hate-laced suicide note, that her son was consumed by a hatred of "feminists," whom he blamed for all his problems. All these years later, she admits to wondering whether she was the real target of his rage.
"I asked myself if it wasn't directed at me. In the view of some people, maybe I'd be considered a feminist -- I earned a living, I had a paying job."
The Dawson College shooting hit home for other reasons. Ms. Lépine's daughter Nadia, who died of a drug overdose in 1996, had studied photography at the college, then located on another campus. Nadia went by the last name of her father, Gharbi, but was continuously exposed to classroom discussions about the Polytechnique massacre, Ms. Lépine said.
"She witnessed all these things that were being said about her brother," she said in the interview broadcast last night.
Composed and articulate, the 67-year-old retired nurse expressed love for her son -- but condemnation for his "insane" act.
Ms. Lépine shares at least one thing with Mr. Gill's mother: Both say they had no inkling what their sons were planning. Ms. Lépine described her son as a shy and secretive boy who didn't discuss his problems.
But she confirmed to interviewer Harold Gagné that her husband, from whom she separated when Marc was five years old, was a violent man.
"He was verbally and physically violent with me. And when he hit my son in the face, the marks lasted for a week. So he hit him very hard, and for something that didn't deserve it."
Although the father didn't beat his son often, he prevented the child from getting his mother's tenderness.
"From the time the kids were very young, he had this mentality that you shouldn't spoil the children. So as soon as I'd hold my children to console them, for him it was perceived as spoiling them."
She didn't draw parallels between her son and Mr. Gill, although the two shared a fascination with guns and computers and were rejects from the Canadian Forces. But she voiced concern about the growing culture of violence in which they were immersed.
"We call [the shootings]isolated acts," she said. "But I wonder how isolated they are, when you see all the marginal people, all the drugs in circulation, all the acts of terrorism that are more and more present in our world."
Ms. Lépine last saw her son alive four days before his rampage. He nervously brought her a birthday present, even though her birthday was weeks away.
"I said to myself, 'Why don't you wait?' But it's only afterward that you realize that something was going on. I didn't see it at the time."
Ms. Lépine, who now works with a community group that helps women with problems, said religious faith has helped her through her ordeal, as did the piles of letters of support from strangers in the weeks after the Polytechnique shooting. The correspondence came not just from within Quebec but from Ontario and further afield, she said.
"A lot of people prayed for me," she said. "And I think that's why I'm still here today." In turn, she asked for the forgiveness of the families of her son's 14 victims.