We all have memories of the day and following days. These are my most vivid ones.

It was a beautiful morning. I was listening to our AM rock station, and they reported that a plane had hit one of the towers. I thought nothing of it, at the time. I thought, a small plane, The radio station went back to its morning show.

I went downstairs to my office. Did some work Then searched the net. A second plane had crashed into the other tower. What the hell? I turned on the tv. The very first image I saw was smoke flaming out of both towers. As the morning progressed, work forgotten, I realized that life would never be the same again. I went into a depression for weeks. our world had changed.

A few other things stood out in the weeks that followed. Late in September of 2001, I was flying back from Edmonton to Ottawa. We had a stopover in Winnipeg. Crew change. A stewardess opened up one of the luggage compartments near the back of the plane. She found a stack of bibles in the compartment. She cried out, “What are these doing here” She had a breakdown, right on the plane, weeping. I can’t remember if she was replaced or not.

I remember driving down to Florida, in November. Security at the border was tight. I remember we had to open up our car trunk. I remember the border officer saying “They are ok they have a kettle in the trunk”.

One last memory, amongst others, on the same drive, we heard that a plane from New York bound for the Dominican had crashed shortly after takeoff from JFK. No survivors. We immediately thought “Oh no, another terrorist attack”. As it turned out, the plane had crashed on account of wake turbulence from a plane preceding it.

That was our generation’s Pearl Harbour. Wars were started. Thousands of military lives and tens of thousands of civilian lives were lost. All I got.