As the Vancouver Olympics winded down, NBC’s Tom Brokaw recorded a documentary on how neighborly Canadians came to the aid of stranded US travelers in the grim days after September 11, 2001. Here is a similar story our pastor, from eastern Canada, filed for our Canadian magazine “Northern Light” in November, 2001. It will do your heart good.
“Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good ” (Romans 12:21).
By Neil Earle
Atlantic Canadians have known for years that they inhabit a place apart, enjoying a very special lifestyle. Down there in the quiet corner of North America, friendliness and hospitality are a way of life – for various reasons, dangerous weather one of them, they have to be!
Not that it matters to Maritimers, but it’s nice to know that now The Wall Street Journal feels the same way. The November 7, 2001 issue ran a report by Clare Ansberry titled “Diverted on Sept. 11, Stranded Fliers Made Enduring Connections.” The subtitle? “Of some 200 Planes Rerouted, Many Got to Newfoundland, Army Cots and Fast Friends.”
The reference was, of course, to the tens of thousands of international passengers – mostly Americans – forced to land across Canada when terrorist attacks led to the unprecedented shutting down of all commercial aircraft those few tense days last September. The Journal reported the case of Lynn Nemser, a Pittsburg management consultant, who was stranded at the Camp of the Silver Birches, a Salvation Army retreat on a lake in Newfoundland. Her USAir Jet was forced to land at Stephenville – ironically an abandoned US Air Force base – on September 11. Stephenville had to welcome 13 flights and about 1200 people, increasing the local population by more than 10%.
The results? Major Ross Bunjay, the Salvation Army commander at Silver Birches, now receives binders full of mail from Nemser and others of the 256 passengers of Flight 741. According to Ansberry, the reception in Stephenville-Corner Brook was nothing short of spectacular: “A store owner donated new sheets valued at $3000. The cable company installed a dish outside the Craft Building, gratis, to supplement the news…[T]he Salvation Army and the RCMP cooked and served scrambled eggs, bacon and toast one morning…”
There was even free entertainment. “The Sharecroppers, a trio of full-time teachers, part-time musicians came by to sing about cod fishing and lumber. A politician gave a speech and handed out pins and maps of Canada, which helped because many of them didn’t know where Newfoundland was.”
In St. John’s, Newfoundland’s capital, passengers from some 30 flights slept in churches, and in Diane Breen’s first-grade classroom, on army cots at the Lion’s Hall and on pallets inside St. John’s new civic centre.
But it was in the little city of Gander, where the biggest crowds had to be fed, assisted, and housed during the crisis. Gander once the “crossroads of the world” before the days of jet travel was a prominent staging point for World War II bomber squadrons. It gets special mention near the end of the 1942 Cagney movie “Captains of the Clouds.” Now, fact triumphed over fiction. Very early on September 11 Gander’s huge air-strip had already accommodated more than 30 planes and 6500 passengers – this in a town with a population of 6500 people!
At nearby Lewisporte, the mayor, Bill Hooper, played host to several and served up such local delicacies as partridgeberry jam on toast. “Locals donated cribs, diapers and Pokemon backpacks for young children, and after-shave lotion for men, “ the Journal said, “Bus drivers on strike at the time, set down their picket signs to transport passengers. Townspeople organized hikes in the woods and trips to the Bye the Bay museum and to see whales migrate.”
According to an anonymous Internet report by a staffer from Delta Airlines, Gander eventually ended up with 53 airplanes and 10,500 passengers to serve. She and the passengers were struck with the order and hospitality of the Gander-Lewisporte officials and townsfolk. As she wrote:
“We were told that each and every plane was to be offloaded with the foreign carriers given the priority. We were No. 14 in the US category [with] a tentative time to deplane at 6 p.m.…True to their word, at 6 p.m., Gander airport told us that our turn to deplane would come at 11 a.m. next morning. About 10:30 the next morning…a convoy of buses showed up at the side of the airplane and the passengers were taken to the terminal for ‘processing.’ We found out the total scope of the terror back home only after getting to our hotel and turning on the TV, 24 hours after it all started.
“Meanwhile, we enjoyed ourselves going around town discovering things and enjoying the hospitality. The people were so friendly and they just knew that we were the ‘plane people.’ We got the call 2 days later on the 14th at 7 a.m. and left for Atlanta at 12:30 p.m.”
“But that’s not what I wanted to tell you. What passengers told us was so uplifting and so incredible and the timing couldn’t have been better.”
What did she mean?
“We found out that Gander and the surrounding small communities within a 75 kilometer radius, had closed all the high schools, meeting halls, lodges and converted all these facilities to a mass lodging area.” According to this Delta attendant, the care and sensitivity exhibited was remarkable: “If any women wanted to be in a women-only facility, that was arranged. Families were kept together. All the elderly were taken to private homes. A young pregnant lady was put up in a private home right across the street from a 24 hour Urgent Care facility. They had both male and female nurses available and stayed with the crowd for the duration. Phone calls and e-mails to US and Europe were available for every one once a day…Local bakeries stayed open to make fresh bread. Food was prepared by local residents. Others were driven to the eatery of their choice. They were given tokens to the local laundromat to wash their clothes.”
Astonishingly, in the words of the Delta crewmember, every single need was met for the passengers of Delta Flight 15. They were delivered to the local airport right on time without anyone missing or late. It gets better: “When passengers came on board it was like they had been on a cruise. Everybody knew everybody else. They were swapping stories of their stay, impressing each other with who had the better time.”
The Bible has said it for centuries: Good is always more powerful than evil (Proverbs 10:7). As Delta 15 winged home to Atlanta, a Virginia doctor stood up to match Canadian hospitality with American generosity. He announced he was setting up a scholarship fund to help young people from Lewisporte get to college. The collection amounted to US$14,500 dollars. (Tom Brokaw mentioned on 2/27/10 that another scholarship fund from the US has now reached $900,000 – Ed.) ”And all of this,” concluded the Delta attendant, because “some people in far away places were kind to some strangers who happened to literally drop in among them.” The story becomes a win/win situation. President Kennedy once said of the United States and Canada: “Geography has made us neighbors, History has made us friends.” This usually proves more true than not.
We have seen it proven once again: Good often comes out of the most nightmarish tragedies. In the long run, good is much stronger than evil. Evil, said Saint Augustine is craven and parasitic and cowardly and can only feed off the good. The Saga of the Plane People offers evidence that this is true.