9/11 was 25 years ago today.
It was one of those “do you remember where you were?” events in life.
I remember being on my way to work, riding OC Transpo’s route 95 bus downtown. The bus was on the Mackenzie King Bridge in Ottawa, when my Nokia cell phone rang. It was my dad calling, telling me that an airplane at hit the World Trade Center in New York.
By the time I got up to my office on the 25th floor of a downtown office tower, everyone was packed into the big boardroom, which had two large projection screens on the wall (one in English, one in French, as we do here), both broadcasting the news.
To my recollection, I got there shortly after the second plane it the towers.
I remember the silence in the room.
I remember going to my desk at some point and trying to get updates online. The web was unusable. Everyone was trying to go online, and the still early network connections couldn’t keep up.
I remember going home that night and looking at a photograph I had taken 3 years prior, on a trip to NYC in 19988, on the top floor of those towers. Trying to grasp what had happened there that morning.
Looking back, my 20 year old brain had no way of understanding how much that day would change the world.
Tonight we’re going to see a local production of Come From Away, a story of the people of Gander, Newfoundland, who took in stranded passengers when their flights were diverted to this small town on September 11th. I imagine it’s going to feel a little more poignant tonight.
That’s all, I just wanted to write what I recalled of that day, not that I’ll ever be able to forget it.
Before I hit send – I want to add that, on a lighter note, if my friend Chris is reading this, Happy 25th anniversary, to the day, of being a commercial pilot (seriously….)