On Dec. 6, 1989, Monique Lépine, like many others across the country, went praying after a man had stormed Montreal’s École Polytechnique, murdering 14 women and injuring 14 other people.

She prayed for the mother of the gunman.

The mother of Marc Lépine.

It was only the following day she learned her son was the gunman.

“My son killed himself, but I was the one left with all the consequences,” Monique Lépine said.

On Tuesday evening, Monique Lépine told a Kwanlin Dün Cultural Centre audience about her trauma, what it took to break 17 years of silence after the massacre, the abuse she had suffered from her husband, and the importance of dealing with emotions.

She gave the keynote lecture as part of the 12 Days To End Violence Against Women campaign.

The 78-year-old woman, in a soft and calm voice, talked for an hour and a half about her experience, before taking questions from the audience.

Seven years after the massacre, Monique Lépine’s daughter killed herself in a drug overdose.

The guilt of not having had the chance to reconcile herself with her brother before his death had been eating at her. She started smoking pot, then moved on to harder drugs, Monique Lépine told the audience.

The day after her daughter’s death, Monique Lépine realized she had lost what she had dedicated her life to: her children.

“I felt like I was dying of pain and sadness,” she said.

For 17 years, Monique Lépine stayed silent.

For 17 years, she asked herself ‘Why?’

Why did her son do that?

Before methodically killing women, Marc Lépine had separated the men from the women in a classroom, telling them his hatred for feminists.

What was a feminist for him?

Did Marc Lépine consider his own mother a feminist?

After all, she had left a violent husband and raised by herself two children, while working as a nurse at a time when single mothers received little to no help from the government.

Monique Lépine would introduce herself as “Monique” or “Madame Lépine” but never her full name.

She reflected on the abuse she and her children had suffered at the hands of her former husband.

Her spouse never paid child support, and never contacted her, even after learning his son was responsible for the Montreal massacre.

She left him when her children were still young, and they suffered from that situation.

“Maybe he felt unloved, left aside,” she said about Marc Lépine.

“If you didn’t solve your emotional problems when it was the time, eventually you’re growing, you’re an adult, but emotionally, you’re still at the age of your wound.”

Monique was just starting to feel better when a deadly shooting struck Montreal’s Dawson College CEGEP in 2006.

The same pain she had experienced in 1989 resurfaced immediately.

This time around, she decided to speak up.

She went on Quebec’s TVA channel for a special show.

“Inside of me, I had this strong conviction, ‘you will be on TV this afternoon,’ ” she told the audience.

What had changed was that she decided to focus on helping other women in similar situations.

She went on to write a book To Live.

“I was surviving for 17 years,” she said. “When you survive, you’re not living.

“It took me a long time to make peace with myself because I thought I was the one responsible because everybody was saying that.”

She has since met with one of the 1989 victim’s family.

“We were just in front (of each other); we held ourselves and cried,” she said.

“We were both in pain, we both had lost somebody we loved.”

She went on to give many lectures to help women and change the situation.

She even spoke to criminology students in Montreal.

“I have to speak with whoever has an influence to change these mentalities,” she said.

She underscored the importance of talking about one’s emotions.

“All this hate we keep inside, if we don’t let it go, or ask forgiveness of the people we hurt, it will build up and lead to violent behaviour.”

Asked by the audience how to also help men, who commit the vast majority of violent acts against women, Monique Lépine said she didn’t know herself.

“I don’t have all the answers,” she said, noting that men can have more trouble talking about their emotions.

Lépine will give another talk at the Yukon College Pit at noon Thursday.

On Dec. 6, as has been the tradition since 1989, 14 roses will be laid in Montreal next to the memorial to honour the lives of Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault, Annie Turcotte, and Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz.

A ceremony to honour the 14 women killed at Polytechnique and the 39 missing and murdered women in the Yukon will be held at noon Friday at the Elijah Smith Building foyer.

For more information, visit endviolenceyukon.com