OTTAWA (AFP) - Unprecedented carnage at Virginia Tech university in the United States Monday has aroused painful memories in Canada where dozens died in similar tragedies, despite this country's strict gun laws.
Newspaper headlines across Canada shouted "Bloody mayhem," "In cold blood" and "This time, 33" while editorials lamented: "It's a story with which we're all too familiar."
Since the 1970s, dozens of teachers and students have been shot at schools across Canada. The attackers included a jilted teenager and a student upset about his grades.
In April 2000, a 14-year-old boy shot two students, one fatally at WR Myers High School in Taber, Alberta, only eight days after the Columbine massacre in Littleton, Colorado.
Four students and a staff member were also wounded in a knife attack at an Ottawa area high school on the first anniversary of the Columbine massacre.
But the worst slaughter in Canada occurred in December 1989 when Marc Lepine, 25, shot dead 14 women at Montreal's Ecole polytechnique engineering school, leaving a trail of blood as he moved from one classroom to another.
Then, using the semi-automatic weapon he had purchased at a local sporting goods store, he killed himself.
Lepine claimed in a suicide note published in La Presse that he was fighting feminism, blaming the ideology for ruining his life.
Three years later, Valery Fabrikant went on a shooting rampage at Concordia University in the same Canadian metropolis, killing four colleagues and wounding one.
And in September 2006, 25-year-old Kimveer Gill opened fire at Dawson College in Montreal, killing one woman and injuring 20 people.
Dawson College councilor Peter Cooperman said he had never before experienced the anxiety and depression felt by students and teachers after the September 2006 attack.
Many reported sleeplessness and an inability to concentrate, and some students were unable to return to school, he told public broadcaster CBC.
He would be looking for more of those signs in the days to come after the shooting in Virginia, particularly for students who had not dealt with their original emotions after what happened here, he said.
"It affects you. If you're not safe at school, where are you safe?" one Dawson College student told CBC.
Andrea Barone, who barely survived the Dawson shooting, told the Ottawa Citizen: "You don't feel the same, you're always looking over your shoulder."
After the 1989 Montreal killings, the federal government passed gun control legislation, which, the Globe and Mail said, "may have helped limit the carnage" in subsequent assaults.
"Mr. Lepine used a gun that could fire 30 bullets, but the 1991 law that followed his attack limited most rifles to five rounds of ammunition and handguns to 10 rounds," the daily noted.
The newspaper said in an editorial: "Canada has had school shootings, but they have been much less common, and the outpouring of rage and disbelief has prompted the country's legislators to react."
The estimated 6.8 million guns in Canada are overwhelmingly used for hunting.
Suicidal rampages, usually motivated by revenge, occur around the globe, but some blame the relative ease of acquiring guns for their impact on US victims.
Gilles Tremblay at the University of Laval is not so sure: "We certainly have stricter gun control laws in Canada and Canadians are generally less absorbed by gun culture, which helps us, but we're not immune." _________________ kyranŠ
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