When CBC (Canada) first reported on the unfolding events in NYC on 9/11/2001 the reporter stated that “a small plane has crashed into one of the Trade towers”. (CBC quickly got on track with the true extent of the emergency and its aftermath).

I first heard the news on a US Christian radio station when the announcer said “…given what’s happening in our country today”, which made me spring up off my sick bed and turn on the TV to see what was up. As I saw the constant replays of the moment the planes hit the towers and the immediate aftermath for all the people involved, my first impulse was to utter to an empty room: “There is no god”. As a Christian, that was impactful. I can’t deny that is where 9/11 brought me that day.

All I can do to always remember is to watch the anniversary ceremonies, including today. Listening to family members read out names of victims still evokes tears all ‘round.


CBC Article, Sept 11/21 (I can’t post a link; the article is quite political but these comments give an indication of how we feel still about 9/11):

"As Canadians, we watched in horror and we shared in the pain and the sorrow of our American neighbours, our American friends and, indeed, our American family."

"Twenty years gone, we need to reflect on that day. On the thousands of people lost, including 24 Canadians. On the first responders, including a number of Canadians who showed up in the days and weeks afterwards to help, who rushed into danger while others were fleeing for their lives," [Prime Minister] Trudeau said at an event in Mississauga, Ont.

"On this day, we honour the memory of the 3,000 lives we lost, including 24 Canadian lives, in these tragic attacks. And we honour the memory of the first responders, who risked their lives to save others," O'Toole [Opposition leader] said.

-----

“Come from Away” is a Canadian musical commemorating the hospitality extended by the residents of Gander, Newfoundland when planes full of stranded people from all over the world (38 planes/7000 passengers) landed in their airport as US and other air space closed down following the attacks. It may be a musical but it’s well acknowledged, obviously, that 9/11 was an utter tragedy. Here’s an article about it.


From CBS Miami, Sept 9/21

https://miami.cbslocal.com/2021/09/09/remembering-911-gander-opens-doors-hearts/

Remembering 9/11: The Day Canadian Town of Gander Opened Its Doors, Hearts to Complete Strangers:

“Roxanne Loper was among the nearly 7,000 passengers who were stranded in the small Canadian town of Gander, Newfoundland on 9/11. Loper was aboard one of the 38 planes diverted to Gander after the United States shut down its air space following the attack.

“For the better part of a week, the people in Gander – and surrounding towns such as Gambo, Appleton and Lewisporte – opened their doors to the Plane People, as the unexpected guests were called.

“We did what we had to do,” recalls Bruce MacLeod, who lived in Gander at the time and opened his home to Roxanne, her husband, Clark, and the two-year-old girl the couple had just adopted in Kazakhstan, Alexandra.

“People were in need, and we were the ones to provide it,” he added.

“They were family immediately,” Roxanne said of Bruce and his wife Susan.

“The story of what happened in Gander offered a ray of light in an otherwise dark time. Shortly after 9/11, I went to Gander and wrote a book, “The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland.”

“Since then, there have been movies, documentaries, and the Broadway musical, Come From Away, recounting this remarkable tale.

“If you got to see what I saw, you’d seen people coming up to passengers, locals and giving them that hug and telling them, you know, you’ve got nothing to worry about; you’re here in Newfoundland and Labrador, and we got you,” recounted Oz Fudge, who was the town constable in Gander in 2001.

“Fudge was one of the first people I met in Gander and twenty years later he is still mystified by all of the attention the town’s actions have garnered. But he thinks he understands it better now.

“If you look at the world today and you see on the TV and you see on your Facebook and everything, how people are getting angry at each other and they’re fighting on airplanes and they’re fighting on trains and they’re fighting in grocery stores,” he tells me. “And now people are looking at this play and reading the book and seeing the documentaries and going, ` I remember, I remember that’s what it was like when I was growing up.’ And they’re longing for that.”

“It has helped a lot of people to realize that there needs to be more of that kindness,” Loper added.

“MacLeod said the folks in Gander feel like the lucky ones.“We all said, we think we got more out of it as far as good feelings and whatnot, then the passengers did,” he said. "Because we felt so good being able to do it.”

“Roxanne made sure her daughter, Alexandra, who is now 22, understood what happened on that fateful day.

“I have told her about the kindness of strangers,” Loper said. “And I’ve I have tried to instill in all of my kids to continue with that kindness any time they see anyone that needs any help. We don’t know their story. We don’t know what they’re going through. We just know they need help. So help them.”


“They need help. So help them.” That seems like a great motto for life. (Whoever “they” may be).



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 09/11/2021 04:37PM by Nightingale.

With the all American missteps since 9/11, I’m thankful that we still have friends.

Thousands of Iraqis and Afghans dead
Thousands of soldiers dead
Trillions of dollars spent
Millions of people uprooted
ISIS (or Daesh) came into existence
The Taliban’s back in power
And AlQaeda number two is living his best life in Pakistan.


Ugh. RIP, the many, many innocent people.

"I’m thankful that we still have friends."

Well, we're allies. So what're we gonna do?


"RIP, the many, many innocent people."

Absolutely.

Nightingale Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> "I’m thankful that we still have friends."
>
> Well, we're allies. So what're we gonna do?

That's called "damning with faint praise."

No, I didn't mean it that way. More like of course we're going to help. Sorry if unclear.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/11/2021 10:24PM by Nightingale.

I know what you meant. I just enjoy yanking your chain.

Ha. Zoom. Made me do 2 edits to explain myself.

You're the bomb, NG.

A lovely post to remind us of the kindness shown by the people of Gander, Nightingale. In the midst of recounting the tragedies of that day, it is nice to recall that there was good to come out of an otherwise horrendous situation.

I, too, have been watching 9/11 anniversary coverage :)

Thanks cinda.

Thank’s. I was working on Broad Street in the NYC financial district when it happened. I knew some of the people who worked in the World Trade Center.

I was part of this -- the first -- response
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FGjHrJsQtjE

Before recoiling in horror, remember -- you sent us there.
This is what you wanted.

We never truly returned home because when we got back everything was different.
The country we left didn't exist anymore.

Dr. No Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Before recoiling in horror, remember -- you sent
> us there.
> This is what you wanted.

Just curious: to whom does the "you" above refer?

I doubt many of our posters/readers are in the loop for national defense command decisions.

Thank you for your kindness, Nightingale. It was a very difficult day for us. A friend who lives in NYC wrote about how apartment buildings put out lighted candles, waiting for their tenants and neighbors to come back from work (some did not,) and many children were left bereft at their daycares and schools, waiting for parents who never came to get them. I particularly remember the NYC nurses and doctors waiting expectantly with rolling cots outside of their hospital ERs for the patients who never came. I still tear up thinking about it.

I had left NYC for good before 9/11, but I made inquiries. The firefighters at my local firehouse in central Brooklyn survived, but they replaced firefighters in north Brooklyn (who being called to the twin towers on a noble, but futile rescue mission,) sadly did not.

I had nightmares about it for years afterward. I had previously been inside of the twin towers, visiting a roommate who had her office there, and memories of that haunted me. People's faces haunted me.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/11/2021 07:15PM by summer.

I'm sorry, summer. Yes, the wounds still feel raw to so many, in many countries, all your friends. That demonstrates the total trauma of it all. I remember the empty cots. Excruciating. And also not being able to rescue many people from the immediate impact area. I kept imagining that any minute the firefighters would lead out scores of survivors. Didn't happen, obviously. :(

I have the haunting movie in my mind still of the people who did get out walking down the streets, looking for shelter or just to get away.

And I still hear the emptiness, other than footsteps of the otherwise silent walkers trudging away from the site. The looks on people's faces.

The sites themselves were so very eerily silent (it seemed, not sure if that was the case in person).

Thank you so much for detailing this, Nightingale!

I knew nothing about any of this until I read your words here, right now--and I am astounded that back then, while all of this was going on in Canada, I (in Los Angeles) had absolutely no idea at all what was going on to our north!

Thank you to all of the Canadians who responded back then to our needs, and thank you Canada (the nation and the government) who were obviously doing everything possible to help us when we really needed that help.

And thank YOU for posting this!

I am grateful and thankful for the enduring close relationship both of our nations share.

[I think maybe I didn't realize the extent of Canadian help to us because we, on the West Coast, were actively worried about "if we were next." We didn't know the full extent of what was actually going on, we (the public, anyway) didn't know who was actually behind what was going on, and we knew that--if there was a detailed, step-by-step, plan by whoever was responsible--that we were at least likely to be the next target.]

Thank you again for posting this.

It is very much appreciated.

Sure, Tevai. Friends gotta friend. Allies gotta ally.

NATO response to 9/11: Article from Atlantic Council, September 11, 2018:

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/strongerwithallies-the-day-nato-stood-with-the-united-states/

Excerpts:

“In the early hours of September 12, 2001, as the world was coming to grips with the enormity of the events of the day before, US National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice was busy working the phones. She discussed with the United States’ NATO allies the possibility of doing something never done before in the history of the Alliance: the invocation of Article 5 on collective defense.

“Daniel Fried was working at the National Security Council and in Rice’s office at the time. He recalls Rice’s conversation with her French counterpart. “We need this,” she said.

“By the evening of September 12, less than twenty-four hours after al Qaeda terrorists hijacked and crashed commercial airliners into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania, the allies invoked Article 5 in an act of solidarity with the United States. Then NATO Secretary General George Robertson informed United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan of the Alliance’s decision.

“NATO joined the United States in the war in Afghanistan after the Taliban government in Kabul refused to hand over al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Besides the historic invocation of Article 5, NATO’s participation in the war marked the first time that the Alliance had launched operations outside the Euro-Atlantic area.

“American skepticism about NATO is almost as old as the Alliance,” said Fried. “But when America was attacked on 9/11, NATO allies voted unanimously the next day to invoke NATO’s Article 5, the commitment of NATO members to come to the defense of any member under attack.”

“That was the first and so-far only Article 5 decision in NATO’s history: invoked for America’s sake,” said Fried. Having wrapping up a forty-year career in the Foreign Service, Fried now serves as a distinguished fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Future Europe Initiative and Eurasia Center.

“R. Nicholas Burns, an Atlantic Council board director, was serving as the US ambassador to NATO in 2001. “I felt the power of our alliance and will be forever grateful,” Burns tweeted recalling the invocation of Article 5.”

-----

CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) article re Canadian
first responders, September 11, 2021:

NB: Details may be (likely) distressing:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/911-first-responders-ottawa-wtc-1.6168676

Excerpts:

“By 11:30 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, roughly one hour after the North Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed in that morning's second slow-motion cascade of dust and debris, Ottawa firefighter Barry Blondin was already heading for the nearest border crossing.

“Bundled in the trunk was Blondin's bunker gear, the protective clothing firefighters wear when responding to emergencies — the same gear hundreds of New York City firefighters were wearing when they rushed into the Twin Towers after the terror attacks.

"You're watching the news and you're hearing all the reports [that] a lot of firemen are down, buildings are down. You know there's people [in] there," recalled Blondin, who is now 62. "They needed a lot of help, so I thought I could do something."

“Blondin — who retired two years ago after a 27-year career with Ottawa Fire Services — didn't stop to ask permission. He just went.

“At the Canada-U.S. border, Blondin showed the American guards his gear and they waved him through. By 7 p.m., he was approaching Manhattan from the north on the I-87. It was his first time in New York.

"It was bizarre," he said. "I'm the only one on the highway, [in a] city of 10 million people."

“While Blondin toiled on the Pile that night, police officers Mark MacGillivray and Tom Blanchard attended a solemn 9/11 vigil at a high school in Smiths Falls, Ont. Larry Hardy, the town's chief of police, was also there.

"By the end of the vigil, my partner, Tom, said to the chief, 'We need to send some folks down there,'" said MacGillivray, who now occupies the chief's job in Smiths Falls.

“Hardy made a phone call, and within an hour, MacGillivray and Blanchard were packing a Smiths Falls Police Service cruiser for their trip to Manhattan. Before they hit the road, they called up a friend and former colleague, Roy Lalonde, by then a police constable in Ottawa.

"First thing I said was, 'This is something that I want to do and I gotta do,'" said Lalonde, 51, who retired from the Ottawa Police Service in June and now trains police officers for international peacekeeping roles.

“With New York's own police force stretched thin, the Canadians were assigned to the 17th precinct in midtown Manhattan, where they were given radios and maps and sent out on patrol — sometimes in an NYPD car, sometimes in their own.

"It was quite an experience to go from a town the size of Smiths Falls to all of a sudden doing patrols in Lower Manhattan," MacGillivray said.

“They guarded various "hard assets," including an immigration centre and the NYPD's bomb squad headquarters, and ferried grieving FDNY members around the growing number of vigils taking place at firehalls across the city.

“Everywhere they went, New Yorkers expressed their gratitude.

"They thanked you, they shook your hand, they hugged you," said MacGillivray.

"People were always asking how you were, what you needed, what can we do for you," said Lalonde. "And I thought, in the situation that's unfolding right now, you're concerned about me? And I was always bewildered by that."

“…an NYPD officer on the bucket brigade stooped to pick up a framed photograph of a little girl from the debris. She was four or five years old, someone's daughter or granddaughter.

"He picked it up and started crying. Well, then the whole line started crying. We were all trying to comfort each other," Lalonde said. "That's what stuck with me. That picture will always, forever, be ingrained with me."

“Most of the men have returned to Manhattan in the two decades since 9/11 to attend memorial ceremonies. Lalonde recalls one quiet afternoon spent at the square pools that now mark the original footprint of the Twin Towers.

"I still think back to all the individuals that were lost," he said. "I think of those individuals that were running in when everyone [else] is running out, and that to me is the epitome of their ultimate sacrifice."

-----

A memorial ceremony was held today near where I live, in a large shopping mall near the water, with the obligatory bagpipes as well as first responders, among others, in attendance.

I heard a TV interview today with an airline captain who had been flying a passenger plane on September 11, 2001. She had to announce to the passengers that “there is a major crisis in America today and all airspace is shut down”. I can’t even imagine how terrifying those words would be. I was shocked and terrified myself and I was safe at home, feet on the ground.

Of course it was a major wound to the USA and her people, in countless ways, but allies and friends were with you, in spirit and in deed. I’ve always hoped that Americans know that.

Still are.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/11/2021 09:47PM by Nightingale.

This is a beautiful story and I don't understand why it hasn't, long ago, been made into a MOW ("Movie of the Week," which means: a film made for television)--either by American OR by Canadian filmmakers.

[Of course, maybe it HAS been made, and I just don't know about it. ;) ]

Thank you, Nightingale.

We Americans have some really great neighbors.

Yes I think there's a movie. At least about the Gander folks. I agree re the Cdn first responders. Poignant in the extreme. That article choked me up today. Still.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/11/2021 10:15PM by Nightingale.

There is also an agreement between US, Canada and AU for fire fighting. It's nice to know you have friends :)

Oh yes. We had the most welcome assistance this fierce wildfire summer from Australia and Mexico. Friends indeed.

Nightingale, something else that I remember from that day is how you couldn't get cell phone service. If you had a loved one who was traveling, there may have been no way to contact that person. I still have a landline at home, and the reason is 9/11.

My brother was on a business trip and was stranded in Boston. He got a rental car to get back to Maryland, but I think he somehow had to find his way down to Rhode Island to get a rental. People just desperately wanted to call their loved ones, and they wanted to be home. And both were a struggle.

The board helped people connect too. We were able to make phone calls for some. We also waited with others till their people were able to get home or in touch. That day, it was wonderful to see how we all pulled together. Day three people were so tired and upset the fighting got so bad Eric had to turn off the board. I have dreaded 9/11 since I was a kid, now even more.