Looking Back Ten Years On

From New York to Canada to Italy to Japan, the impact of 9/11 has no bounds.

As part of The Mark's coverage of the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, we asked some of our readers to reflect on, and provide personal anecdotes from, that fateful day.

I was in my office in mid-town Manhattan, and received a call from my boss in London. He asked me if I had any news on the small prop plane that crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers. I told him I did not, but that I would let him know when I found out what had happened. I immediately went to my computer, but the internet was frozen. Looking out the window, I saw a billowing dark cloud coming from downtown New York, and guessed that this must have been what my boss was referring to. It was certainly no small plane, but something much more ominous.

A few hours later, on that beautiful, late-summer day, I was walking, then hitchhiking, my way home to Washington Heights. Overhead, I noticed the watchful eyes of F-18s, and, further south, the growing cloud of smoke coming from what used to be the Twin Towers.

Politicians immediately started making references to Pearl Harbor, and the drums of war began to beat. Fear and sadness, however, were coupled with a sense of community and togetherness that I had never seen before. A sense of quiet and determined strength could be felt in the friendly gaze of strangers.

– Mitch Strohminger, International Market Research Analyst, ROI (Montréal).

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On Sept. 11, 2001, I was living in Japan. I turned on my TV to watch the 10 p.m. news (9 a.m. New York time), only to find an image of smoke billowing from one of the World Trade Center towers. I watched for several hours, so I saw the second plane strike and the two towers fall, all on live TV. Amid the shock and confusion, I have one clear memory: When the first tower fell to the ground, I rose from my chair, took a few steps toward the TV, and exclaimed, "That's impossible!!!"

I never told anyone about this private episode, and the memory was paved over by the relentless “news” that ensued: Osama bin Laden and his 19 terrorists; the attack on Afghanistan and the “War on Terror”; Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and the “Coalition of the Willing.” Five years later, when a friend brought to my attention the suspicious circumstances surrounding the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 and suggestions that “9/11 was an inside job,” my first reaction was “That’s crazy!” Then, memory of my visceral reaction to the first falling tower came back. So I did some checking. As it turns out, I was right: A steel-spined skyscraper cannot “collapse” to the ground at near-freefall speed.

– David McIntosh, Interpreter/Translator and 9/11 sceptic.

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I was at a company retreat on the spectacular Sechelt coast north of Vancouver. The guys stayed at the meeting facility and the gals rented a nearby cabin. The morning of Sept. 11, I remember savouring a slow walk over to the meeting along the waterfront, taking extra time to look at pebbles, starfish, the water. It was one of the few times I have truly lived in the moment.

As I approached the facility, a colleague yelled, “Linda, come quick. There has been a world disaster.” I remember thinking, “Huh?” I was in such a state of bliss that it didn’t immediately compute that something could be drastically wrong. Hurrying into the room, I saw the now-infamous footage of the first plane hitting the tower. My mind raced to my brother who worked in NYC (he was fine), and of his family living in nearby New Jersey. I was thinking about how I would get home (my flight to Toronto was scheduled for Sept. 12). But what I remember most was calling home and talking to my children, and the hysterical and haunting voice of my eight-year old daughter pleading with me not to fly home.

– Linda McKessock, Project Manager, Canadian Index of Wellbeing.

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The students in my freshman class at New York University survived not only their first year in university, but also Sept. 11, 2001. But I wasn’t there. Instead, NYU had shipped me off to its campus in Florence, Italy, for my first year of studies.

After the second tower was hit, the Italian army was called, and our school immediately went under house arrest (it was not only an American institution, but also a New York one, and, at that time, no one knew who or what was being targeted). We stayed like that for a week. I witnessed students and faculty alike crying and consoling each other as they frantically tried to reach family and friends in New York. I’ll always remember one staff member quietly sobbing to herself as she whispered, “Oh, New York,” as if she had just witnessed a family member’s death. And, in many ways, she had.

I didn’t feel the magnitude of what it was to be a New Yorker at that time, but I do now, mostly thanks to that fateful day 10 years ago, when I was thousands of miles away from an event that forever shaped a city I had longed to be apart of since childhood.

When my class graduated a few years later, our school’s president remarked on the fact that only two of the freshmen from my year had dropped out due to the attacks. Everyone else had gone on, just like New York has.

– Brianne Hogan, writer (Canadian, but forever a New Yorker).

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On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, I was teaching a three-hour humanities seminar at Humber College, which meant that by the time the class finished, both towers had been hit and had fallen, and the Pentagon had been attacked.

In the following days and weeks, I found that all my students – regardless of the course being taught – wanted to discuss the impact of the attacks on international relations, the likely prospect for unending war, and as a defining moment for their generation. As a political scientist, I noted wryly that al-Qaeda was clearly good for business.

I then did something foolhardy: I suggested to the dean that I could construct a new course on war and terrorism, and could begin teaching it by January. I literally retooled my career in the space of 10 weeks – reading books, reviewing texts, and constructing a syllabus from scratch. I also began inviting Canadian Forces veterans to my classroom, initiating a relationship with Toronto’s Canadian Forces College, my current employer.

Within five years, I completed a masters’ degree in law and landed a new job with the CFC as an associate professor, where I continue to focus on national security and terrorism law and policy. My students, mid-career officers in the Canadian Forces, do not wonder about the impact of 9/11 – they live it every day.

– Barbara Falk, Associate Professor, Canadian Forces College.

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I was not directly impacted by the events of 9/11 – I just watched them unfold on TV – but I was deeply affected. The events inspired the following poem:

SEPT 11 ELEGY

crystal blue sunny skies, and the birds fly out of the blue,crashing pain

horror inferno devastation

mind reels ignites hurtling fear slicing gashing ripping asunder a wound unimaginable

“Oh my God Oh my God!”

and then incomprehensible fury repeats

an instant becomes eternity replays endlessly

death fiery,leaping,choking,burning

praying

crashing collapsing destruction

again and again we agonize why we lament

we weep unconsolable for whom do we cry?

for the souls embarking into the crystal blue skies

floating free spirits aloft

invincible souls dwelling eternal needing no earthly towers

Do they need our tears or do they weep for us?

– Maggie Murphy, Poet and Blogger.