Toronto - Metal detectors and beefed-up evacuation plans couldn't have prevented gun-wielding Kimveer Gill from killing an 18-year-old student and wounding 20 others when he went on a rampage at Montreal's Dawson College last September, college director Richard Filion told a safe schools conference Thursday.

Unlike a fire or gas leak, Filion said school emergency plans and security guards are virtually helpless in the face of an armed assailant bent on carnage.

"We were dealing with an incredibly unpredictable force _ an unstable and armed human intent on violence,'' Filion told about 650 school officials at a Toronto conference organized by the Canadian Safe Schools Network.

"We have no idea where that person will go and what they will do. This guy came to the college with 1,500 bullets. He was planning a real massacre.''

As Gill's bullets flew over Filion's head on Sept. 13, Filion said the school's emergency plans proved useless. Students mistook the sound of gunfire for firecrackers and came out of their classes to investigate, he said.

The school's front doors _ the main exit in the college's evacuation plan _ were blocked by Gill and a rain of bullets.

"It was chaos,'' said the soft-spoken Filion, who ran to the scene as soon as he heard of the shootings. "I was angry. I would have gone up to that guy and kicked his ass out. I was just so pissed off.''

Despite the trauma of the shooting that took the life of 18-year-old Anastasia De Sousa, Filion said schools shouldn't become armed fortresses with metal detectors and armed guards. Schools have to strike the right balance between student freedom and safety, he said.

Teachers and principals need to do more to embrace alienated people like Gill before they express their anger through violence, he added. Gill held the school system responsible for his social rejection and alienation, Filion said.

"This (led) to the unleashing of violence on an unsuspecting group of young people enjoying the life he had no part of,'' he said. "As educators, we must acknowledge that this evil can and must be eradicated.''

Stopping the prevalence of bullying is a good place to start, said Stu Auty, president of the Canadian Safe Schools Network. Dawson College isn't going to be the last Canadian school that is the victim of a tragic shooting, he said.

Marginalized and bullied kids who see no recourse but to plot violent revenge now have role models from the shootings at Dawson College, Taber, Alta., and Columbine in the United States, Auty said.

"Those kids were marginalized,'' he said. "They were on the outside looking in and they had weapons to get back with. It's almost a template for tragedy.''

Schools also need to adopt to the new reality, he added. Lockdown practices should now be almost as routine as fire drills once were, Auty said.

"We're into the world of lockdown now,'' he said.

Ontario Education Minister Kathleen Wynne said zero-tolerance policies in schools aren't enough of a deterrent to keep students from lashing out or bullying fellow classmates.

"If you've got punitive measures in place and they're not working, then there is not much point in having them,'' she said. "In fact, it creates more destructive behaviour.''

The province has to find the programs that actually "make schools safer'' and help delinquent kids reintegrate back into the system, Wynne said. In the meantime, both the province and parents have to get a handle on how modern technology has complicated bullying, she said.

Much of the most brutal bullying now takes place over the Internet rather than in the schoolyard, Wynne said.

"Technology has introduced a whole new frontier,'' she said. "I don't think we've got a handle yet on how to deal with that.''