Posted by
AudiR10TDI on Wednesday, September 16, 2009 4:55:49 AM
Toronto (September 11, 2009) -- There is a line from an old movie that our family used to use as a joke: *Where were you,* we would say, *when the lights went out?* On September 11 the people who still want to remember, the people who still believe this was a signifcant, earth-shaking day, still trade stories and keep our promise that We Will Never Forget.
http://www.frugalsites.net/911/sep...
That is one of the most beautiful tributes to 9/11/01 that I have ever seen.
I was an American in Canada on that day, sitting at my desk in the basement of an old house, which is where I worked, and listening to CBC2. Casually during the first half hour came an announcement that a plane had hit the World Trade Centre, and then the show went back to interviewing a local politician. I tried to log onto a news site and found they were all jammed. I phoned my sister who was at home and asked her to tune in CNN (Fox News was forbidden in Ontario at that time -- Al-Jazeera yes, Fox News, no) and see if she could find out what happened, assuming at that point it was a private plane. She started telling me what was happening -- and it was a full 40 minutes until the CBC stopped its regular programming to join the world.
That was when I realized I was not only in a foreign land, but in a clueless foreign land.
I packed up my stuff and rushed up the stairs and told the receptionist (who was Portuguese) that I was going home because my country was at war. She asked me if I had cleared it with my boss (who was not yet in) and I told her to tell him when he arrived. For the rest of the day I sat speechless in front of the television watching the end of the world. We lived in an apartment building that was quite heavily Muslim, people right from the Old Country who dressed in burqa and native costumes and did not speak English. My sister was terrified, as she was recently moved up here from the USA -- she thought they would come after us, because they knew we were American. I told her quite the opposite was true: they knew we were Americans and they were terrified that WE would come after THEM. Within 3 days there were no burqas or native costumes to be seen in that area. The only foreign people we saw were Chinese. The Muslims went into lockdown.
There was an American Le Mans race in Georgia (where we came from) that weekend and we decided spontaneously that we had to be with our countrymen and we drove 21 hours in a small sports car, sleeping briefly by the roadside and finally collapsing into a motel in Marietta for a nights sleep before the race. At the border we met National Guardsmen who examined our papers and our car and cross-examined us on where we came from, who we were and where we were going. We embraced them and their concern. All the way to Georgia we passed a forest of flags (Canadians do not fly the flag as we do, and indeed at the Japan Olympics there was much whining about the Canadian teams flying TOO MANY flags) and the radio was filled with patriotic music. At the track, all the European teams had American Flag stickers on their cars and stood in solidarity with us -- all except one Swede, who at the Standing Silence was conspicuously disrespectful although silently -- and we fervently sang God Bless The USA before the cars took off. People at the campground huddled round fires at night and talked in low tones about the coming war, and where they were when they Heard, and about their anxiety for family and friends and their memories of New York. There was a grim resolve to seek out and crush the enemy and no doubt at all who it was.
On the way home John Ashcroft held his press conference announcing the start of the Afghan War, and many cars pulled over in the mountains of Tennessee to listen to him speak, with thankful hearts.
We crossed the Canadian border at the Ambassador Bridge in Detroit, and the bored girl in the booth barely looked up from her People Magazine to ask if we had any cigarettes, alcohol or weapons. We were two middle aged ladies in a sports car, but we stared at her, and then said politely, no. She waved us through. SHE DID NOT CARE. For her it was still September 10. And so I found it to be when I went back to work. Most of my workmates believed that the USA had it coming, and simply did not care. I soon left that job, appalled at the hostility toward my native land. Although the American Consulate was inundated with memorials of flowers and for about 3 years there was a ceremony at 8:30 and 9:04 for those who crowded into the fortified and barricaded courtyard, in Canada 9/11/01 quickly became a non-event.
This year the International Film Festival began on 9/11 and there was absolutely no commemoration at all. It was all squealing and fainting and running after celebrities. September 11, 2001 was dropped deep into the Memory Hole and flushed away. Oh, there was a small article in our paper talking about how uncomfortable the MUSLIMS in America felt every 9/11/01! That was it.
Twenty Four Canadians were killed at the World Trade Centre and in the Pentagon. They are pretty much forgotten here.
We promised we would never forget. WE PROMISED. And some of us never will. It is a different world now whether the idlers, tweeters and wireheads want to believe it or not...a world that is in the throes of tearing itself apart. And it all came out in the open on 9/11/01, eight years ago yesterday.
And the Muslims are still afraid that the Americans know where they are and in a time of our choosing, will make them pay. Because that is what Americans do.
We promised we would never forget. We promised. It is a promise I shall never break.