And I'm from Montreal, so...

Some people just "go" with the places they're from. You know, people and places like John Crosbie and St. John's, Paolo Momesso and St. Raymond, Stompin' Tom and P.E.I. ... and, who could forget Theresa Sokyrka of Moose Jaw? But Toronto, more than Montreal, might be the first conglomeration to enter your mind whenever Naomi Klein's name pops up -- despite the fact that this economist/mega-bestselling writer was born here back in 1970.
Montreal still figures high when Klein talks about what lit her activist wick in her University of Toronto days.
"There was a moment where I became involved in politics as a university student. . . It was a moment that I think Americans won’t remember, but Canadians do, which is known as the 'Montreal Massacre.'

"It was a school shooting, but it was a very political school shooting. It happened at the University of Montreal, and I’m from Montreal so it affected me a lot. And I was in first year university, and it was a shooting at an engineering school by a man named Mark Lepine who had tried to get into this school but he hadn’t gotten in.

"And he decided it was because there was affirmative action for women, so he went into the engineering department and he separated the men from the women and said, 'You’re all a bunch of fucking feminists,' and killed 14 women . . . just gunned them down.

"So this was an amazing political awakening for a lot of women because the politics were just so clear, and we felt really vulnerable as women in universities at that point. So up until then I had really decided, you know, I didn’t wanna be involved in activism and I didn’t want to follow in my family’s footsteps. But that was like a wake-up call."