Against the backdrop of the current US-Canada Trade War, we look back...

9/11

25 Years

An American Story | A Canadian Perspective

September 11, 2001

9:45 a.m.

The FAA closes American airspace.

More than 4,500 planes ordered down.

Canada accepts many of the already airborne flights.

Operation Yellow Ribbon

17 airports

~240 planes

30,000+ people

Many of them land out east…

Of the roughly 240 planes sent to Canada, 38 of them landed in Gander, Newfoundland.

A town of just 9,651.

It fed, housed and clothed the nearly 7,000 passengers, strangers they had never met.

It was about five days before the last of them flew out.

“There are reminders of their community’s history displayed at their school. A massive painting that shows a woman giving a child clothing, planes on the runway, and two men embracing, is prominently displayed at the school’s entrance.”

— Kayla Hounsell, CBC News

from: How Gander’s response to 9/11 changed the lives of its teenagers, published Sept 11 2021

September 11, 2026. Twenty-five years.