Tweet targeting Quebec women with reference to Marc Lépine prompts police probe

Quebec provincial police are investigating after someone tweeted a threat against women, making reference to the infamous hit list drawn up by Montreal Massacre shooter Marc Lépine.

The tweet was in response to a new book celebrating the success of women in Quebec.

The book, Les Superbes: Une Enquête sur le succes et les femmes, includes profiles of women ranging from former premier Pauline Marois and singer Marie-Mai.

In September, a Twitter user posted a photo of the book's cover and wrote, "Wow, sick. From the Beyond, Marc Lépine has updated his famous list."

It wasn't long before Léa Clermont-Dion, the book's co-author, took to Twitter to respond.

"This is violent and goes too far. Thank you for reporting this dangerous individual," she wrote in French.

"I was really shocked. I was troubled by that tweet," Clermont-Dion told CBC Montreal's Daybreak. "I didn't find it funny."

For filmmaker Francine Pelletier, the comment brought back difficult memories.

When gunman Marc Lépine killed 14 women at Montreal's École Polytechnique and took his own life 25 years ago, he left behind a list of other women he planned to kill, including Pelletier.

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"You don't bandy Lépine's name around without it raising eyebrows and much more," she told Daybreak, calling the tweet "a sorry attempt at humour."

Pelletier said the man who sent the tweet, who describes himself as a "radical patriarch" in his bio, was an "anti-feminist" whose arguments were irrational and needed to be called out.

This isn't the first time Pelletier has come across this kind of person online.

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"I am kind of used to the trolls on the internet reminding me of the existence of that man and of the Montreal Massacre because I often get pictures or references to Marc Lépine sent to me anonymously," she said.

Up to Crown to press charges

Clermont-Dion is no stranger to "cyber violence" herself. She said she received a death threat five years ago that no one reacted to — "even when I called the police, nothing was done."

This time around, the Sûreté du Québec quickly took on the case.

Investigators met with the man who sent the tweet on Tuesday, and Crown prosecutors will decide whether or not to press charges. 

According to SQ spokeswoman Andrée-Anne Bilodeau, past cases that involved uttering threats or intimidation have resulted in anything from no jail time to a five-year sentence.

Clermont-Dion said she was happy to see the SQ react so fast and to see that other men were taking a stand against the comments made against her and other women.

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Pelletier, too, said there was a "silver lining" in the midst of this ordeal because it points to women's rise in the public sphere.

"It's not for nothing that we have people calling for Hillary Clinton's assassination, either. It's because for the first time we might have a woman in the White House," she said

Pelletier said she was proud of Clermont-Dion and her co-author Marie Hélène Poitras for speaking up, saying the two women "are very much the kind of young feminist that my generation hoped to see 25 years ago."