Manitoba victim of 9/11 attacks 'a continuing presence' in life of partner, 25 years after she died

Manitoba victim of 9/11 attacks 'a continuing presence' in life of partner, 25 years after she died

Firefighter-paramedics mark anniversary at International Peace Gardens, police lower flag to half-mast

Christine Egan was an epidemiologist who spent years helping people in Canada's North as a nurse, before she died in the 9/11 attacks in the U.S.

To her partner, Ellen Judd, she was much more — a gardener, reader, pianist and music lover who, along with Judd, cherished the 1970 Simon and Garfunkel track Bridge Over Troubled Water.

"She had a great love of life and not just for work.… She was a very vital, active, joyful person and great to be around, and she had a wonderful and caring social world that was then there for me, too, afterwards," Judd said from Vancouver, where she moved from Winnipeg after retiring a couple of years ago.

"Our lives were very much entangled.… She's a continuing presence in my life."

As Manitobans commemorate the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Judd is reflecting on the precious time she and "Chris" shared before that fateful day terrorists crashed planes into the twin towers.

Nearly 3,000 people died on Sept. 11, 2001, in the al-Qaeda attacks on Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C., and New York. Christine and her brother Michael Egan were among 24 Canadians who perished.

Christine, 55, was visiting Michael at work on the 105th floor of the south tower of the World Trade Center when it was hit by a second plane hijacked early in the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.

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Judd has spent the ensuing 25 years trying to keep Christine's memory and contributions to science alive, including through the Dr. Christine Egan Memorial Scholarship.

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The scholarship, created in 2004 thanks to Judd, friends and family, is awarded to nursing students in Nunavut in honour of the many years Egan spent as a nurse in the North before completing her PhD in community health sciences.

A selection committee, including friends of Egan and Judd, meets each fall to sift through nominees and decide who's most deserving of the award.

"We feel that we're doing something that Chris would've wanted us to do," Judd said.

Judd feels the scholarship and a plaque dedicated to Egan at the University of Manitoba campus are fitting tributes to her life as a helper.

So far as Judd knows, Egan's helper instincts kicked in the day she died.

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That morning, after the plane struck the south tower, family was in touch with Egan's brother, who said he had sent Egan to safety while he stayed back to help with evacuations from the 105th floor.

There was an impromptu first aid station set up in the lobby of the south tower that Judd imagines Christine may have stopped at to help first responders, because "it's what she would've done."

"One of the things that we sometimes maybe don't see as much in all the tragedy of that day is how much is positive around what people were doing on that day and the way people responded," Judd said.

"We're in darker times now, and it's good to remember that people can respond in that way in the midst of all the darkness."

Winnipeg first responders are marking the 25th anniversary their own way.

The Winnipeg Police Service planned to lower the flag at their headquarters to half-mast.

"The vast majority of our members were not officers at the time of 9/11," said Winnipeg police Deputy Chief George Labossière.

"I think the importance of that is … ensuring that our members are aware that sadly these situations may occur again, and we want to learn from our past and we certainly want to honour those that we said we would."

Members of the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service, members of the United Fire Fighters of Winnipeg's honour guard and provincial politicians planned to travel to the International Peace Gardens in southwestern Manitoba for a joint commemorative ceremony with their U.S. counterparts Friday.

Nick Kasper, president of the UFFW union, said though 343 New York City Fire Department members died that day, the incalculable scale of loss still continues to climb.

"As thousands of people were descending the staircase, trying to exit the building, they were climbing up, and of course, climbing up to their deaths," Kasper said.

"The sacrifice didn't end when the towers fell. There have been more than 400 FDNY members who have since died from World Trade Center-related illnesses, meaning more firefighters have died from the long-term effects of 9/11 than were were killed on Sept. 11."

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Judd has kept Egan's memory alive in a variety of ways, from attending a 9/11 memorial in New York in 2011 to travelling to Guantanamo Bay for pretrial hearings for five men accused of orchestrating the terrorist attack.

She looks back at 9/11 as a "terrible intrusion of what we thought were relatively safe lives" and feels there is a lasting lesson to consider on the 25th anniversary — and it involves channelling the same kind of caring spirit her partner Egan embodied.

"We can and we have and we know how to respond in really good and caring ways when these terrible things happen," Judd said.

"Certainly these days we need to think even more about finding that kind of way forward, or we face still more days like [9/11]. And in the world right now, somewhere, today is just like that day for other people."

Bryce Hoye is a multi-platform journalist with a background in wildlife biology. He has worked for CBC Manitoba for over a decade with stints producing at CBC's Quirks & Quarks and Front Burner. He was a 2024-25 Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. He is also Prairie rep for outCBC. He has won a national Radio Television Digital News Association award for a 2017 feature on the history of the fur trade, and a 2023 Prairie region award for an audio documentary about a Chinese-Canadian father passing down his love for hockey to the next generation of Asian Canadians.