September 11th and the Hospitable People of Gander, Newfoundland
In the immediate aftermath of the September 11th attacks, our Canadian neighbors sprang into action to help clear American airspace of any other potentially dangerous flights. The action was known as Operation Yellow Ribbon, and in those uncertain first hours after the attacks, it was hugely helpful. The mission also made a tiny town in Newfoundland world famous for its hospitality.
Canadian authorities began diverting flights heading into the U.S. to various locations around Canada to help neutralize any lingering threats, but the task was a tricky one. It wouldn’t have made much sense to pull flights away from American airspace only to route them to Canada’s major centers, so the ideal landing spots for these planes would be relatively remote while also having a large enough airport to accommodate all the traffic.
As luck would have it, Canada had just such an airport in Gander, Newfoundland.
The tiny town only boasted 10,000 residents, but what it lacked in population size, it more than made up for in airport capacity. Gander International Airport had previously served as a refueling stop for transatlantic flights and had served as a staging point for U-boat hunting flights during World War II. Gander ended up receiving 38 flights in the wake of the September 11th attacks, second only to Halifax’s 47 diverted flights.
Landing all the planes in Gander was easy. Figuring out what to do with the 6,500-plus passengers and crewmembers who were stuck on the ground until flights resumed was quite a bit tougher. Towns of 10,000 people aren’t exactly built to accommodate sudden 66% population surges, so there wasn’t hotel and restaurant capacity to take in all these stranded flyers.
Gander’s population may have been small, but the town was also ridiculously hospitable. To say the locals bent over backwards to accommodate their unexpected guests would be a gross understatement. When flyers stepped off of their planes, Gander’s citizens met them with homemade bagged lunches. The town converted its schools and large buildings into temporary shelters, and when those lodgings filled up, citizens took strangers into their homes. Medical personnel saw patients and filled prescriptions free of charge.
When the stranded passengers finally got to fly home a few days later, they couldn’t believe how wonderful their Canadian hosts had been. On Sunday, the town will host a memorial and receive American dignitaries to help commemorate the friendly populace’s role in helping thousands of temporary transients in the wake of the attacks. As former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien told Gander’s citizens in a memorial on the first anniversary of the attacks, “You did yourselves proud, ladies and gentlemen, and you did Canada proud."
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