|I am not sure if you fictionalised your account of your cousin or | |not, but if it's not fiction, I won't tell on you to | |fanfiction.net. Since you are collecting stories, here is mine. | | | |I live in Scarborough, Ontario - an hour by bus and subway to my | |job in the big library in downtown Toronto. I remember that I | |left my apartment building at 8:30 ish, bustling because I was | |late for work. My neighbour was outside the building. He was on | |his way to his sister's funeral and other neighbours were | |expressing their sympathy. I remember thinking how sad it was | |that he was burying his sister on such a lovely sunny day. | | | |I arrived at work at approximately 9:35. | | | |One of my colleagues, who likes to be first with any news going | |around, greeted me with, "Did you hear that an airplane flew into | |the World Trade Centre?" | | | |I was, as I said, late, and I was scheduled to do the opening | |routine, so I had no time to chat. But you can't shake Ingy off | |when she has gossip. Besides, she likes to tease me - old | |sobersides Marilyn who is always the last to know. So, I waited | |impatiently, half-smiling, for the punch line. | | | |"No, I really mean it. It's on CNN," she said, excitement and | |horror mingled in her voice. She motioned me over to a computer | |screen. There was this jerking image of a plane hitting one of | |the towers. I don't know if it was then that the other plane went| |into the other tower, or if that happened and we did not realise | |it or if that happened later. I could not grasp that what I saw | |was real and not Ingy teasing me with a special effect from a | |movie. | | | |A call came through for one of the librarians. It was from her | |husband, Mike, who works for a brokerage house downtown at King | |and Bay Streets, Toronto's 'financial district'. They were | |scrambling for the latest word because their representatives were | |there in the Towers or nearby. Everyone there was either stunned | |or trying to contact New York or trying to keep calm, because the | |word was that what had happened was Not A Horrible Accident. | | | |Ten o'clock. The library's open to the public, but we're gabbling | |away. The Internet's gone into overload and we can't get updates.| |It must be an accident, was the consensus. Mike phones again, | |around 10:15 or 10:20. Not only was the crash deliberate, but a | |second plane hit the other tower and there is talk about an attack| |on the Pentagon or the White House, or was it the Capitol or all | |three. It was so confusing, but it hit home when Mike told his | |wife that every building in the 'financial district' was being | |evacuated. | | | |All I could think of was "They're downtown. We're downtown. The | |police are evacuating them. What about us?" The last panic I was| |involved in {if you don't count the big blizzard} was a 'sympathy | |race riot' here after Rodney King was beaten in Los Angeles. I | |was not looking forward to a horrible death if Toronto was also on| |the hit list. I was also not looking forward to the crush of | |people on the subway if downtown was entirely evacuated. | | | |The library remained open and we went about our business, but it | |was hardly business as usual. Facilities rigged televisions on | |the main and the second floors. Crowds gathered and stood in | |hushed silence watching the scenes repeat. There was talking, now| |I think of it, because I couldn't hear the commentator, but | |considering the number of people, it was almost silent. | | | |You mentioned Niagara in your story. I grew up on the Canadian | |side of the Falls, so when they locked down the parkways and the | |power plants, that really hit me at home. I thought 'Smart idea' | |but I was even more worried about what to do if the power fails - | |and envious that 'they get to go home but we don't'. Of course, | |being stuck in a black subway tunnel would not be a pleasing | |prospect. {The blackout last August proved the point of what a | |disaster living without power was, didn't it? I hope the powers | |on both sides of the border learned a few useful things from | |that.} | | | |We were all shaken for at least two weeks. Very little got done. | |My mother was afraid for me. We felt sick for the people of New | |York City. Saw all the pictures. People E-mailed other people, | |"Are you all right?" The Sherlock Holmes lists and other lists I | |subscribe to were full of e-mails to people in the area. We had a| |big 'Hound of the Baskervilles' conference slated for mid October;| |but would anyone from outside Toronto be able to attend? New York| |City is the home of the Baker Street Irregulars and we expected | |many members to come north to our conference. The planes were | |grounded and no one felt like flying. Besides that, the New York | |Public Library was lending us two pages of Doyle's manuscript and| |a production company in Manhattan was working on a montage of | |scenes from the various 'Hound' films. So much of the conference | |was in danger of falling through. | |[Both the NYPL and the production company came through | |marvellously. The Library made beautiful colour digital | |photocopies of the manuscript pages - no way could they entrust | |the precious originals to a public carrier after Sept 11 - bending| |and breaking their reproduction rules for us. The production | |company worked with the dust settling and all the other emergency | |problems they had on their doorstep. The Irregulars and other | |non-Canadian Sherlockians came by car and train. At least two | |Britons, a Dane and a few from the west coast crossed fingers and | |boarded airplanes. It was my first Sherlock Holmes conference and | |I enjoyed it. It hit me now that the conference helped pull us out| |of Sept 11 fear and depression.] | | | |As for the flag waving and the 'let's retaliate now' spirit, I | |found that more sickening than the terrorist attacks. Granted | |that they were heinous crimes and the perpetrators deserved | |punishment, I think we Westerners still refuse to ask "Why did | |they do it? Why do they hate us? Are we all that innocent?" Is | |it ideology? Is it a power struggle over oil? An attack on the | |'capitalists' who 'exploit' the Arab nations, or an attack by a | |sort of Arab Hitler who rouses his people to these acts to gain | |power for his corrupt regime? Is Bush, Blair, et al, clothing | |themselves in the mantles of Roosevelt and Churchill for their own| |political power? These anti-terrorist measures threaten our own | |liberties and a large number of our fellow citizens are not white | |or Christian. I'm of a pacifist church and of Dutch-German | |ancestry. My people found Canada to be a refuge from the Soviets.| |It was very hard for them to reconcile their consciences with | |their gratitude during World War II. It hurt even harder that our| |fellow Canadians were suspicious of us not only for our beliefs, | |but also for our ancestry. Many of my neighbours are Muslim or | |Hindu and they apparently feel the way my grandparents felt - they| |love this country, they love their old homeland, and they think we| |think they don't belong here. I'm no saint. I'm as angry, and | |I'll admit, as racist as any other white North American. I have | |to remind myself that the world is not mine alone at least twice a| |day. I just wish that when we remember Sept 11, we would stop | |saying 'kill the [race or country] bastards' and start saying | |'what should we do so that sensible people have no reason to | |support dictators and terrorists.'? | | | |So, there is my story and my soap box. | | | |Sincerely, | |marylinusca |