Every two or three years, I become nostalgic about 9/11. I spend the next day or so combing through YouTube videos, documentaries, and articles—trying to recapture and reprocess my feelings; this usually happens in the fall.
The morning of September 11, 2001 I was in my apartment near the campus of the University of Windsor. I was a business student and although I wasn’t a great student, I was consumed with the world of business. I bought one of those grind/brew coffee machines with a built-in alarm clock and I started each morning with fresh coffee and tv news; mostly financial news. My routine was pretty simple: have my breakfast watching the news, when I was done I turned it off and turned on The Howard Stern Show on the radio. I would listen while I cleaned-up, then I would head to class.
When I turned on CNN that morning it was zoomed-in on something I couldn’t make out. It was a pixelated hole maybe, and there was smoke (maybe) coming from it. I flipped to CBC Newsworld and they were broadcasting the exact same image. I went back to CNN and they were speculating, with information from early reports, that a small plane had flown into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. What a fascinating accident, I’d never heard of such a thing. The live coverage continued and the camera was zooming-in and out, panning around the New York skyline. * I have not been able to find this footage to confirm, but this is how I remember it: They got a man on the phone who was a CNN executive in his office. His office had a clear view of the area and he was very familiar with the flight patterns of the area. He didn’t understand how this could be an accident, the planes don’t fly this close to the Twin Towers, they don’t fly in that area. As he spoke his voice took on an alarming tone—and he said that he could see that there was a new plane entering the same area. That plane crashed live on tv as I sat and watched.
A screenshot of CNN’s live tv coverage of 9/11. A plane has just struck the South Tower
There was something absolutely clear to me when the second plane struck the South Tower: we are at war. I din’t know with who, looking back I still don’t know.
Three of my friends shared a house a few blocks away, I called the house and spoke with Shaun, a political science student from the city and I told him the news. I spent the next few hours flipping around and around the tv trying to gather whatever information I could; I was so stunned. From my apartment I could see the Ambassador Bridge, a large bridge that crosses the Detroit River and connects Windsor to Detroit, Canada to America. It’s almost always busy. 25% of our annual trade with the US goes over that bridge in transport trucks—like I said, it’s always busy—and I’ve never seen anyone walking on it; by the end of the day there was armed American soldiers and Humvee’s patrolling its length.
When “crazy” things happened in the world or in my life I would be gripped with the feeling of: “I have to call my Dad!” —but I lost my dad to cancer a year before. So here I was in a city I hated, with friends that I loved, but little else. I wanted to be back at home in Toronto, even though I would be alone if I went back.
One of voices that kept me company that day, and the days that followed was Howard Stern. Before I went away to school I used to live with my dad near Casa Loma, and I would drive to work everyday in Markham listening to ‘Howard’. Listening to Howard made me fall in love with New York. All the people on the show were New Yorkers, the people who called-in were New Yorkers. Sometimes when I got to work, they would be in the middle of an argument or some kind of antics and it would be impossible to get out of the car. My high school buddy Ryan and I would talk about the show all the time. Sometimes something wild would happen on-air and we would call each other. I was maybe 22 years old at that time.
I was back at school for the first time since my dad died, heartbroken. In the weeks following 9/11 Howard talked to people from all over New York, all over everywhere. The show was full of heartbreak and anger, confusion and fear; how I felt every day. These people, like me, were the lucky ones, the ones with the honour of having these thoughts.
The End.
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