Rifle fire echoing down the halls of a Montreal college on Wednesday conjured instant memories of Marc Lepine's horrific murder of 14 women at Ecole Polytechnique almost 17 years ago.

On Dec. 6, 1989, Lepine, a moody, 25-year-old loner who blamed "feminists'' for a series of failed career starts and lost jobs, gunned a bloody trail through the classrooms and cafeterias of the engineering school.

While details of the latest rampage are still being pieced together, the accounts of gunfire, of people fleeing in terror and of a methodical gunman firing over and over again were haunting reminders of Lepine.

When Lepine finally pressed the muzzle of his Sturm Ruger Mini-14, .223-calibre semi-automatic rifle against his own head and pulled the trigger, he brought the toll to 15 dead and 13 wounded, all in the space of about 20 minutes.

It was a horror that shocked the country and provoked deep soul-searching about the roots of violence against women.

The 1989 Montreal Massacre still echoes today in the White Ribbon Campaign, the annual Dec. 6 day of remembrance and especially in the tougher gun-control laws passed in the wake of the killings.

Wednesday's shooting rampage has triggered painful memories for those who lost loved ones in 1989.

"It was shock to be re-immersed in this,'' Catherine Bergeron, whose sister Genevieve was one of Lepine's victims, told Radio-Canada.

"You learn to live with the pain. But to be thrust again into this atmosphere, I immediately thought of the parents who would be waiting for information.''

Bergeron said she was a naive 19-year-old when her world was turned upside down by her sister's murder.

"You go into a trance, into a parallel world,'' she said. "You are removed a little from reality.''

After the massacre, the laws set up a registry for rifles and shotguns, required screening and licencing for gun owners, banned most military-style assault weapons and the kind of big capacity, banana-clip magazines like the one Lepine snapped to his rifle.

The rifle and shotgun registry has been a source of political controversy since it was created and the Conservative government has vowed to scrap it this fall as an ineffective and costly failure.

Lepine's massacre was a methodical march of death. He stalked hallways and classrooms, separating men and women, letting the men run and gunning down the women. He even stopped to reload his rifle to continue the slaughter.

"I want the women. I hate feminists!,'' he shouted at one point.

Lepine's death at the end of his rampage left many questions. His rambling, angry, three-page suicide note answered few of them.

In the aftermath, people learned of his abusive childhood, of his rejection by the Canadian Forces and his failure to gain admission to Ecole Polytechnique -- which he blamed on policies favouring women.

He was dismissed as a madman by some, but his testament rejected that idea:

"Even though the Mad Killer epithet will be attributed to me by the media, I consider myself a rational and erudite person that only the arrival of the Grim Reaper has forced to undertake extreme acts.''

He justified his acts with a tirade against women:

"The feminists who have ruined my life. ... The feminists always have a talent for enraging me. They want to retain the advantages of being women ... while trying to grab those of men.''

The head of Ecole Polytechnique said the Dawson shooting has been particularly upsetting because of the school's own experience with tragedy.

"We know how much these type of events are painful to experience and with all our hearts we are with the families, students and our colleagues of Dawson College,'' said Robert Papineau.

The engineering school is offering psychological support to its own students, faculty and staff who may be traumatized by the events on the other side of Mount Royal.