September 11 - how Canada responded

Canada could have sent a bill.  Canada could have complained.  Canada didn't.  Canada wouldn't.  Canada welcomed.  

 𝐆𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫 was the most famous
 𝐕𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐯𝐞𝐫 received the most people
 𝐇𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐚𝐱 received the most aircraft

On 9/11, 𝐎𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐘𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰 𝐑𝐢𝐛𝐛𝐨𝐧 ultimately diverted as many as 238 aircraft carrying over 33,000 people to Canadian airports. 

Yes. 𝐘𝐐𝐗 𝐆𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫 was the most famous small-airport story, but it wasn't alone.

 𝟐 𝐍𝐔𝐌𝐁𝐄𝐑𝐒 𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐘 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐎𝐔𝐓.

▪︎ 𝐘𝐕𝐑 - 𝐕𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐯𝐞𝐫 received the most people: more than 8,500 passengers aboard 33 diverted flights. 

▪︎ 𝐘𝐇𝐙 - 𝐇𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐚𝐱 received the most aircraft
- NAV CANADA says 47 aircraft & 7,300 people 
- Transport Canada counts 40 flights & 8,800 guests 

Across the country, Transport Canada specifically notes that smaller airports suddenly had to accommodate aircraft and passenger volumes they were never designed to handle. 

 𝐀𝐓𝐋𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐈𝐂 𝐂𝐀𝐍𝐀𝐃𝐀
Across Newfoundland and Labrador alone, 78 diverted aircraft carrying more than 13,000 passengers and crew had landed by 5 p.m. on September 11 

▪︎ 𝐘𝐉𝐓 𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩𝐡𝐞𝐧𝐯𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞, 𝐍𝐋 welcomed 8 aircraft, and >1,700 people - to an airport that normally screened only about 37 passengers per day - almost 50 times its normal passenger volume.

▪︎ 𝐘𝐘𝐑 𝐇𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐲 𝐕𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐲-𝐆𝐨𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐁𝐚𝐲, 𝐍𝐋 was the first place NAV CANADA began directing the transatlantic aircraft that couldn't turn back. 

▪︎ 𝐘𝐃𝐅 𝐃𝐞𝐞𝐫 𝐋𝐚𝐤𝐞, 𝐍𝐋 welcomed a private aircraft that was diverted.

▪︎ 𝐘𝐐𝐌 𝐌𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐧, 𝐍𝐁 received 10 aircraft, while...

▪︎ 𝐘𝐘𝐓 𝐒𝐭. 𝐉𝐨𝐡𝐧'𝐬 welcomed 21.

𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐖𝐚𝐬 𝐇𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐚𝐱
On the afternoon of September 11 itself, 𝐇𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐚𝐱 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐟𝐢𝐞𝐥𝐝 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐀𝐢𝐫𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 was reporting 44 aircraft and an early estimate of 6,000 passengers, illustrating how the numbers evolved.

 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐍𝐎𝐑𝐓𝐇
▪︎ 𝐘𝐗𝐘 𝐖𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐬𝐞, 𝐘𝐊 received 2 aircraft
▪︎ 𝐘𝐙𝐅 𝐘𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐤𝐧𝐢𝐟𝐞 in the Northwest Territories - 1. 

 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐄𝐒𝐓
Several western Canadian airports received substantial numbers:
▪︎ 𝐘𝐕𝐑 - 𝐄𝐝𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐨𝐧 (6)
▪︎ 𝐘𝐘𝐂 - 𝐂𝐚𝐥𝐠𝐚𝐫𝐲 (13) 
▪︎ 𝐘𝐖𝐆 - 𝐖𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐩𝐞𝐠 (15)
▪︎ 𝐘𝐕𝐑 - 𝐕𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐯𝐞𝐫 - (33) 8,500 passengers 

 𝐂𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐑𝐀𝐋 𝐂𝐀𝐍𝐀𝐃𝐀
▪︎ 𝐘𝐘𝐙 𝐓𝐨𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐏𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧 (14)
▪︎ 𝐘𝐌𝐗 𝐌𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥 𝐌𝐢𝐫𝐚𝐛𝐞𝐥 (10)
▪︎ 𝐘𝐔𝐋 𝐌𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥 𝐃𝐨𝐫𝐯𝐚𝐥 (7) (𝘕𝘰𝘸 𝘛𝘳𝘶𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘶)
▪︎ 𝐘𝐇𝐌 𝐇𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐭𝐨𝐧 (4)

 𝐁 𝐘 𝐓 𝐇 𝐄 𝐍 𝐔 𝐌 𝐁 𝐄 𝐑 𝐒
Halifax (47)
Gander, NL (38 aircraft)
St. John's (21)
Winnipeg (15)
Calgary (13)
Moncton (10)
Happy Valley-Goose Bay, NL (5-7)
Edmonton (6)
Hamilton (4)
Whitehorse, YK (2)
Deer Lake, NL (1)
Yellowknife, NT (1)

 𝐈𝐓'𝐒 𝐀 𝐂𝐀𝐍𝐀𝐃𝐈𝐀𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆
Gander wasn't an isolated act of Canadian hospitality.

Volunteer organizations, churches, emergency services, schools, businesses, municipal governments and everyday folks across the country mobilized to look after stranded passengers from around the world.

"Why?," people asked, genuinely surprised by the overwhelming response.

𝘞𝘩𝘺?

Because 𝐰𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝.
Because 𝐰𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐧.
Because 𝐰𝐞 𝐚𝐥𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥.

 𝐈𝐭'𝐬 𝐚 𝐂𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠. 

Luba Tryszynska - an inspiring lady!

At Auschwitz, they took away her three-year-old son. A year later, she saved 44 children marked for death.

In January 1943, Luba Tryszynska arrived at the Auschwitz concentration camp alongside her husband Hersch and their little boy Isaac. 

She was a Polish Jewish woman whose whole world revolved around her family. On the cold selection platform, Nazi guards tore the toddler from her arms. 

Little Isaac was sent straight to his death. 

Shortly after, her husband was separated from her and killed.  Luba was left entirely alone in the darkness of the camp, forced to live with an agonizing question. 

Why was she still alive when everyone she loved was gone?

In late 1944, the Nazis transferred Luba to the Bergen-Belsen camp.  It was a place where starvation, freezing cold, and diseases killed hundreds of people every day. 

In December of that year, something unusual happened near her barracks. 

Dozens of abandoned children suddenly appeared. 

They were the young sons and daughters of Dutch Jewish families who had been split apart during transport.  The adults had been sent away to other camps, leaving the tiny children alone in the freezing mud without protection, food, or anyone to look after them.

Luba heard their soft crying in the dark and went outside to look.  Standing in the cold were children far too young to understand why the world had abandoned them. 

She could have easily turned away and closed her door.  In Bergen-Belsen, trying to help anyone else meant risking your own survival. 

Finding a single scrap of bread was nearly impossible, and hiding dozens of kids could mean immediate execution.

Instead, she opened the door and brought them inside.

"Come in, you are safe with me now," Luba whispered as she gathered the shivering toddlers into her arms.

With the help of a few other women in the barracks, she began searching everywhere for extra food.  She shared her own microscopic rations, washed the children whenever she found clean water, and hid them whenever the guards walked past. 

The little ones quickly learned to stay completely silent when danger was near, even when hunger was tearing at their stomachs.

Luba gave them much more than shelter and physical protection.  She gave them maternal warmth and hope. Years later, when people asked her why she risked everything for strangers, she explained her choice with a simple truth.

"I gave them my love because I had lost my own son," she said.

On April 15, 1945, British soldiers arrived and liberated Bergen-Belsen. They discovered around 60,000 survivors living in horrific conditions, alongside thousands of unburied bodies.  But inside one of the wooden barracks, they found Luba and her small army of young children. 

They were weak, thin, and exhausted, but they were breathing. Out of the 46 children Luba had taken under her wing, 44 survived until the day of liberation.

After the war ended, Luba personally accompanied several of the children back to the Netherlands before eventually moving to the United States to rebuild her life. 

For decades, she spoke very little about what happened in the camp. Then, in 1995, an incredible reunion took place in Amsterdam. Thirty-one of those saved children returned to see her again. 

They were full-grown adults now, many of them parents and grandparents. 

Some learned for the very first time that day that their childhood camp companions had also survived. The city presented Luba with a medal for her humanitarian bravery, but her real reward was sitting right in front of her.

Luba Tryszynska-Frederick passed away in 2009 at the age of 91. Her little Isaac never came back, but dozens of children walked out of Bergen-Belsen alive because a grieving mother chose to open her heart when everything else was lost.

As Luba looked around the room in Amsterdam, seeing bright smiles, warm hugs, and newborn babies held by the adults she once sheltered in the dark, she knew her love had won. 

The darkness of Bergen-Belsen could never erase the light of forty-four living legacies who grew up to fill the world with love.

Standing among the thriving families that existed only because she cared, Luba smiled through her tears and knew her tiny Isaac was never truly forgotten. Every joyful laugh from every grandchild in that room was a sweet, eternal victory of love over hatred.

>We Are Human Angels<

Authors

Awakening the Human Spirit

We are the authors of 'We Are Human Angels,' the book that has spread a new vision of the human experience and has been spontaneously translated into 14 languages by readers.

**I just checked and the book not avaliable in the Surrey Public Library**

**It was British and Canadian soldiers that liberated Bergen-Belsen.  My uncle, Bill Parker, was one of the Canadians who was part of the liberation.  According to his daughter, Dale, the sights he saw haunted him for the rest of his life. **

Nora Ephron

Nora Ephron was an American writer, playwright, journalist, and filmmaker.  Known for writing and directing romantic comedy films, she received numerous accolades including a BAFTA Award as well as nominations for three Academy Awards, a Tony Award, a Golden Globe Award, and three Writers Guild of America Awards.  I loved everything she did.  I did not know she was married to Carl Bernstein.

August 1979. Georgetown, Washington D.C.

Nora Ephron was moving slowly through her home, seven months pregnant with her second son, when she found what Carl Bernstein never intended her to find. Not just any husband.  Carl Bernstein.  The man who exposed Watergate alongside Bob Woodward.  The journalist whose reporting brought down a presidency.   A name the entire country associated with truth, accountability, and moral courage.

The woman he had been seeing was Margaret Jay, daughter of the British Prime Minister and wife of the British Ambassador to the United States. Someone who had sat at their dinner table.

Washington had been whispering for months. It always does. The wife is always the last to know.

Nora flew to New York and collapsed. "My heart is broken," she told her therapist. "I will never be the same."

Her therapist said something she never forgot.

"You were going to leave him eventually."

On August 15, 1979, Nora gave birth to their son Max. By December, the affair had become official Washington scandal. By January she had packed two babies, a nanny, and what remained of her dignity, and moved back to New York.

Most women in her position would have gone quiet. Protected their privacy. Swallowed the humiliation the way powerful men have always quietly counted on their wives to do. Nora Ephron had a different idea.  

In 1983, she published Heartburn.  One hundred and seventy-nine pages.  Barely fictionalized.  A cookbook author named Rachel.  A political journalist named Mark.  A pregnancy.  A betrayal.  Real recipes woven through the story because Nora understood that food and heartbreak live in the same neighborhood.  And at the center of it all, a Key Lime pie thrown directly into a husband's face.  With one line that stopped readers cold.  "If I tell the story, I control it. If I tell it, I can make you laugh. I would rather have you laugh at me than pity me."

Carl Bernstein was furious. His only public comment was a tight, clipped sentence: "Obviously, I wish Nora hadn't written it." There was nothing he could  do.  Heartburn became a bestseller.  He threatened legal action to block the film adaptation.  It changed nothing.  In 1986, the movie premiered with Meryl Streep playing Rachel and Jack Nicholson playing Mark.  The entire world watched. Carl despised every frame of it.  Still nothing he could do.  Because Nora had already moved on.  She was building something.

When Harry Met Sally. Sleepless in Seattle. You've Got Mail. Films that defined romantic comedy for an entire generation, written and directed by the woman Carl Bernstein had left pregnant and alone in a Georgetown townhouse. She did not just survive the betrayal. She turned it into a career that outlasted, outshone, and outran everything he thought he had taken from her.

In 1987 she married Nicholas Pileggi, journalist and screenwriter, and they remained together for the rest of her life. A real partnership. Built on solid ground. She never publicly forgave Carl Bernstein.  She did not need to.  The book had already said everything worth saying.  Meryl Streep had delivered it to the world at full volume.

On June 26, 2012, Nora Ephron died of leukemia at 71. She had kept the illness entirely private, living on her own terms until the very end, the same way she had always done everything.

Her memorial service brought together Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Mike Nichols, Steven Spielberg, and Martin Scorsese. Carl Bernstein attended too, sitting quietly among the evidence of everything she had built from the ruins of what he had done.

Her son Jacob later made a documentary about her life called Everything Is Copy, named for the belief that had guided her from the very beginning. Everything that happens to you is material. The betrayal.  The humiliation.  The collapse.  The early labor.  The loneliness of packing two babies into a car and driving away from a life you thought you were going to have.

All of it is copy.

And the copy became art.

Carl Bernstein helped expose a presidency. He had institutional power, professional prestige, and the particular indulgence that has always been extended to brilliant men who behave badly toward the people closest to them. But Nora had something he could not threaten, could not sue away, and could not silence.  Her voice.  Her story. Her name on the cover.  The most powerful investigative journalist of his generation could not stop a pregnant woman with a pen and something true to say.

The pen outlasted the betrayal. It always does.

Back to School

 

Every September, Surrey seems to take a deep breath and start again. The buses run a little earlier, crosswalks fill with small backpacks and oversized hopes, and the neighbourhood settles into a familiar rhythm we somehow forget every summer. It’s not just children returning to classrooms — it’s the whole community shifting gears.

There’s something grounding about it.

For parents, it’s the return of routines. For teachers, it’s the start of another year of shaping young minds. For seniors, it’s the reminder that the streets will be busier and the mornings noisier. Even those of us without school‑aged children feel the change — the city moves differently in September.

I’ve always thought of this time of year as a quiet reset. A chance for everyone, regardless of age, to tidy up the edges of life a little. Summer is loose and unstructured; September asks us to be just a bit more intentional.

You see it in small ways:

•  Drivers slowing down near school zones again.

• Neighbours watching out for kids walking alone.

• Crossing guards returning to their posts with that mix of authority and kindness.

• Families juggling schedules, lunches, and after‑school plans.

• Seniors timing their errands around the morning rush.

It’s a reminder that a community isn’t just a place — it’s a shared rhythm. When children go back to school, the rest of us adjust too, often without even noticing.

And maybe that’s the beauty of it.

September nudges us toward better habits: being patient in traffic, being kinder to stressed parents, being more aware of the people around us. It’s a chance to reset our own routines — organize the house, start a new project, plan autumn outings, or simply enjoy the cooler evenings.

Back to school isn’t just for students. It’s for all of us. A gentle reminder that life moves forward, seasons change, and communities thrive when we pay attention to one another.

The royal bride who stopped on her way to the altar

On 26 April 1923, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon entered Westminster Abbey to marry Prince Albert, Duke of York, the future King George VI.

Her father walked beside her. Eight bridesmaids followed. The Abbey was filled with royalty, politicians and military uniforms, while enormous crowds waited outside.

Then Elizabeth stepped away from the procession.

Before reaching the altar, she placed her bouquet of white roses on the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior. She did it in memory of her elder brother, Fergus Bowes-Lyon, who had been killed at the Battle of Loos in 1915.  His body had never been recovered.

In the middle of a royal spectacle watched by an entire country, Elizabeth had made room for one absent man.

She then returned to her father’s side and continued towards the altar without her bouquet.

The bride would one day become Queen Elizabeth, later known as the Queen Mother. But on her wedding morning, before becoming a royal duchess, she was a sister remembering the brother who had never come home.

Had you heard the real reason Elizabeth left her wedding bouquet at the tomb?

Source: Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, Chapter Four, “A Royal Wedding”.

The Canadian cadet and her instructor in Vernon, BC

If you haven' heard what this picture is about, here is the sad report.  

The Canadian cadet and her instrucor singled out by U.S Secretary of War Pete Hegseth will be the ones to decide how - or even if - they will respond to a controversial social media post, says Canada's top military commander.

    

Gen. Jennie Carignan, speaking from a conference of chiefs of the defence staff currently underway in Victoria, B.C., said both members are receiving support from the Canadian military after the inflammatory post and suggested they'll be given agency to respond should they want to do so.

"We have personnel affected by various events.  We are consulting with them on how they want to go about doing this," she said.

I loved this post from a former cadet:

You can hold that head high young lady.  I was an Army Cadet for nearly 4 years with The Hastings & Prince Edward Regiment, ''THE REGIMENT'' of writer, hero Farley Mowat who was a member of their secret service arm also known as ''The Hasty P's'' since 1805.  The same regiment of Col. Angus Duffy and most decorated regiment of Canada's in WWII and finally my grandfather, already a soldier of 2 years before WWI who was KIA on the last day of the Somme, November 18, 1916.  I would have been proud to have you by my side in any conflict should it had come. PARATUS.

We will remember the day they tried to shame you, the ones that have been stuck in that grade school level of taunts and hurt that went unchecked because they think they're funny and popular just like their parents were/are.  Let them stay there.  Their level of maturity & integrity has reached it's conclusion years ago & will remain at a ''full dead stop''.  What they say doesn't hold a drop water.  Those ignorant, who are from a land & country of carbohydrates, fats and obesity with no ending.  That's what Canada deals with now as the enemy.

An interesting article

I read this online.  This is from an American citizen.  She brings up some interesting points.  I thought it was well thought out and well written.  I am changing the name of the President to D because I don't want the bots to flag me.  

I want to be completely transparent about D, because I don’t ever want there to be any question about where I stand.  

I hate this man.

And my feelings about him didn’t start when he became president.

I remember when The Apprentice came out in 2004. I watched a few episodes. I knew virtually nothing about D. To me, he was just some rich guy from New York.

And I couldn’t stand him.

I was disgusted by the way he spoke to people. The humiliation. The arrogance. The way he treated women. The way he seemed to enjoy having power over people and embarrassing them on national television.

America turned it into entertainment.

Looking back, I think The Apprentice was part of something much bigger happening in our culture. Cruelty became entertaining. Humiliation became funny. Women were objectified. People were rewarded for being outrageous, insulting and ruthless. Being rich became confused with being smart, successful and worthy of admiration.

And D became a television-created symbol of the billionaire American success story.

Then he announced he was running for president.

I genuinely thought it was a joke.

This guy?

The reality-TV star with a long history of failed businesses, casino bankruptcies, lawsuits and controversy? The man I had watched belittle people for entertainment?

There was no fucking way America would elect him president.

I was wrong.

You elected him.

And then you elected him again.

And now I watch him approach the presidency with the same mentality I saw on television more than 20 years ago: winners and losers. Loyalty and punishment. Spectacle and humiliation. Everything is a transaction. Everything is a competition.

Except this isn’t The Apprentice.

This is the real world.

Real economies.

Real families.

Real wars.

Real alliances.

Real human beings.

The rest of us aren’t contestants in D’s game show.

And this doesn’t affect only America. When the United States destabilizes alliances, economies and international relationships, the consequences travel far beyond your borders.

So yes, I hate D.

I hate what he represents. I hate the cruelty. I hate the misogyny. I hate the racism. I hate the narcissism. I hate watching one of the most powerful offices on Earth treated like another episode of reality television.

I’ve never felt this strongly about another political figure in my lifetime.

And I’m done softening my language because it makes some people uncomfortable.

If that makes you want to unfollow me, you are completely free to do that.

But I’m not going to stop talking about it.

America, you elected this man twice.

Now you have an opportunity in November to limit his power through Congress.

Show up.

Vote.

And when the next presidential election comes, choose something better.

Because the rest of the world has to live with your choices too.