Beverley Bass came back to Gander this week and found Patrick Woodford waiting for her at Gander International Airport, 25 years after the day his voice helped guide her American Airlines flight to land there. Their reunion put one face on the anniversary gathering that brought people back to the town where the events of Sept. 11, 2001, briefly changed everything.
Bass had been piloting a Boeing 777 from Paris to Dallas when officials closed U.S. airspace and Woodford, then an air traffic controller, helped steer the flight to Gander. He later handed her the keys to his truck, an offer she says she could hardly believe at the time, and the two stayed in touch over the years, visiting each other in Gander and Denton, Tex.
The reason the meeting matters now is simple: Gander is marking the 25th anniversary of 9/11 by welcoming back people who were stranded there after the attacks. On Sept. 11, 2001, 38 passenger planes carrying more than 6,600 travellers and crew were sent to the town after U.S. airspace was shut down, and the diversion sent up to 250 flights to airports across Canada. With fewer than 10,000 people living there then, Gander had to absorb a sudden population larger than its own.
What followed became the town’s defining act. Residents co-ordinated airport logistics, opened their homes, cooked mass meals and turned schools, churches and community halls into shelters. That response is why the anniversary is being remembered as a celebration of generosity. It is also why it carries a sharper edge for some of the people back in town this week, a reminder that the warmth of those days sits beside more complicated feelings about the Canada-U.S. relationship in the years since.
Woodford and Bass’s reunion also shows how long the story has lasted beyond the airport tarmac. A night that began with a diverted flight and a set of truck keys has become a friendship that crossed borders and survived a quarter-century. Friday’s gathering was meant to honour the kindness shown in 2001, and the unanswered question now is how many of the original passengers and crew came back to stand in the same place and measure what Gander gave them.
