Nathalie Provost
Nathalie Provost is a Canadian politician, gun control advocate, and engineer who has served as a member of Parliament for Châteauguay—Les Jardins-de-Napierville since 2025. She is a member of the Liberal Party.
Provost survived being shot during the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre. She and other survivors founded the PolySeSouvient gun-control advocacy group, for which she served as a spokesperson. She has continued as an activist for gun control and to reduce violence against women. From 2017 to 2019 Provost served as vice-chair of the Government's Canadian Firearms Registry, but resigned because of belief they were not strong enough. She works as an engineering civil servant for the government of Quebec. With Provost's permission, Canadian author Louise Penny featured her as a character in her 2022 novel A World of Curiosities.
She was elected to the House of Commons in the 2025 Canadian federal election.
Biography
Provost was born in Quebec. She was a 23-year old mechanical engineering student at École Polytechnique de Montréal in 1989. On 6 December of that year, Marc Lépine, armed with a rifle, interrupted a lecture, shot the ceiling, and ordered the approximately 50 male students to leave the room. Nine female students, including Provost, remained. Lépine told the women he was there to fight feminism; Provost responded that they were students, not activists. Lépine shot the women, killing six and injuring three, including Provost. She received four gun shots to her head and leg, and cautioned her fellow injured students to play dead. The gunman continued to other floors, killing a total of 14 women, including one staff person, and wounding 14 others before committing suicide. This was the deadliest mass murder in modern Canadian history until the 2020 Nova Scotia attacks. Provost returned to her studies one month later. She completed her bachelor's degree in 1990, and earned her master's degree at the same university.Provost worked as an engineer in the civil service for the Government of Quebec. In 2022, Provost received an honorary doctorate degree from École Polytechnique. The university credited her for her “remarkable achievements, driven by uncommon determination and social values, for the example of audacity that she embodies for the new generation of engineers in Quebec, in Canada and around the world.” She has four children. She has had to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder since the attacks. In 2022, writer Louise Penny sought and obtained Provost's permission to include her as a character in her novel A World of Curiosities.
Since April 28th 2025, she has been elected as the Member of Parliament for Châteauguay—Les Jardins-de-Napierville. On May 13th, she was appointed by Mark Carney as Secretary of State.