EDITORIAL: Amid horror of 9/11, Canada stood proud

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None of us who were old enough to understand the images on a television screen on Sept. 11, 25 years ago — 9/11 as we now know it — will ever forget what we saw.

Or the horror we felt as 19 Islamic terrorists — 15 from Saudi Arabia, two from the United Arab Emirates and one each from Egypt and Lebanon — hijacked four civilian airliners on a sunny Tuesday morning.

They slammed two into the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center and a third into the Pentagon on the outskirts of Washington, D.C.

The fourth, intended by the terrorists to hit either the U.S. Capitol or the White House, crashed into an empty field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania after the passengers courageously fought the terrorists for control of the plane.

Over 77 minutes — the duration of the attacks — almost 3,000 first responders and civilians from more than 90 countries were murdered in the deadliest terrorist attack in modern history.

It was masterminded by al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden, son of an uber-wealthy Saudi family, who was later executed by a team of U.S. Navy Seals in Pakistan in 2011.

Among those murdered on 9/11 were 24 Canadians and three others with close ties to Canada, listed here.

Michael Arczynski; Garnet "Ace" Bailey; David Michael Barkway; Kenneth G. Basnicki; Joseph Collison; Cynthia Connolly: Arron Dack; Christine Egan; Michael Egan; Albert William Elmarry; Meredith Ewart; Peter Feidelberg; Alexander Filipov; Ralph Gerhardt; Stuart Lee; Mark G. Ludvigsen; Bernard Mascarenhas; Colin R. McArthur; Michel Pelletier; Donald Arthur Robson; Ruffino Santos; Vladimir Tomasevic; Chantal Vincelli; Debbie Williams; Frank Joseph Doyle; LeRoy Homer Jr.; Jane Beatty.

Amid the horror of 9/11, Canada stood proud,

Then prime minister Jean Chretien opened Canada's skies to more than 200 U.S.-bound international flights carrying more than 33,000 passengers after the U.S. closed its airspace — allowing them to land at 17 Canadian airports.

The small town of Gander, Newfoundland and Labrador, doubled its population within hours, welcoming 7,000 stranded airline passengers and crew, their stories famously told in the hit musical Come From Away — a symbol of Canadian decency toward our American neighbours and a repudiation of the childish trolling these days by U.S. President Donald Trump.

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