Twenty-five years ago today, hijacked planes brought down the World Trade Center towers, struck the Pentagon and came down in a Pennsylvania field, killing close to 3,000 people from more than 90 countries. Twenty-four of them were Canadians.
The other Canadian memory of that day is on the ground. With American airspace closed, 238 international flights were turned toward Canada. Thirty-eight of them landed at Gander International Airport in Newfoundland, a town of fewer than 10,000 people that took in more than 6,500 stranded passengers and put them up in homes, schools and church halls until the skies reopened. Ottawa has since marked September 11 in Canada as a National Day of Service.
In New York, the names of the 2,983 people killed in the 2001 attacks and in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing are cut into bronze parapets around two pools that sit in the footprints of the fallen towers. The memorial’s designers called the plan Reflecting Absence. It opened on the tenth anniversary; today marks the twenty-fifth.
Source: Government of Canada, statement marking September 11.
