.: Anouther Story From September 11th 2001

Friday, September 11, 2009

Anouther Story From September 11th 2001

Halifax Airport

We all know what happened in New York that halted air traffic into and out of the United States on September 11th 8 years ago today. The images are seared in our minds of the day that the towers came down, the Pentagon was attacked and a flight crashed into a farm field in Pennsylvania. As many of my readers are Americans I thought I would talk about another aspect of September 11th. This part of the story took place in Canada. As the drama unfolded on the east coast the United States made the defensive move to stop all forms of air traffic coming and going into and out of US airports. At any one point and time there are hundreds of planes in the air and headed towards US destinations. Those planes that left European starting points and could turn back did,those that couldn't landed at various Canadian airports, more specifically most of the planes (almost 60) landed at Halifax Nova Scotia. That stranded over 12,000 passengers on the ground, the is equivalent to 3.5% of the total population of Halifax. Others landed in Gander, Newfoundland (population 49,000) along with 20 or so other planes.

The town of Gander has a population of 10,400 people. Red Cross reported that they had processed about 10,500 passengers from all the airplanes that were forced into Gander. What came next was so uplifting and incredible as Gander and the surrounding small communities, within a 75-km radius, had closed all the high schools, meeting halls, lodges and any other large gathering places. They converted all these facilities to mass lodging areas. Some had cots set up, some had mats with sleeping bags and pillows set up. ALL the high school students HAD to volunteer to take care of their "GUESTS." Our 218 passengers ended up in a town called Lewisporte, about 45 km from Gander. There, they were put in a high school. If any women wanted to be in a women-only facility, that was arranged. Families were kept together. All the elderly passengers were given no choice and taken to private homes!

Stranded passengers start waking up on Thursday morning Sept. 13, 2001 in Gander, Nfld. in the gymnasium of Gander Academy, an elementary school. The town of 10,500 people was strained to the limit by the unexpected arrival of literally thousands of passengers. Many were still stranded in Gander Thursday night.

There were doctors on call, and they had both male and female nurses available who stayed with the crowd for the duration. Phone calls and e-mails to U.S. and Europe were available for everyone, once a day. During the days, the passengers were given a choice of "excursion" trips. Some people went on boat cruises of the lakes and harbors. Some went to see the local forests. Local bakeries stayed open to make fresh bread for the guests. Food was prepared by all the residents and brought to the schools for those who elected to stay put. Others were driven to the eatery of their choice and fed. They were given tokens to go to the local Laundromat to wash their clothes, since their luggage was still on the aircraft. In other words, every single need was met for those unfortunate travelers.

The airport at Gander is not an international airport the size you would expect say in New York or Toronto... It is small and barely large enough for large jumbo jets to land.. let alone multiple jets. But they did with little notice take all those planes and their passengers in... Passengers bonded to the new found communities that welcomed them in! When the world, for many, seemed to be falling apart, many Canadians, in Gander, Halifax and many other places, came together to open their houses, stores and hearts to perfect strangers. And I dare to predict that neither the Canadians nor the strangers will ever forget the experience!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: Thanks for the post, this part of that day has always fascinated me that this story has for the most part been ignored. I read somewhere that on one of the diverted flights the pilot came on and said something like "ladies and gentleman we are diverting to Canada because the United States of America is under attack and they have closed all airspace." I've often wondered what went though the passenger's minds at that moment and then how they fared in those under prepared Canadian towns for that many people. God bless Canada and God bless the USA. And thanks to the Canadian people that opened their homes and hearts. I wonder how many new friendships were made on that day of tragedy and how many still endure to this day.; 12:53 AM

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The Black male body remains an enigma despite its over representation in the public sphere. The dominance of hip hop culture globally, driven in part, but not exclusively by the innovative sounds of rap music have made Black men a standard by which Black men and other men judge themselves in contemporary culture. However, there is a paradox, because despite the prevalence of hip-hop’s popular global impact, Black men are also still some of the most despised men in Western culture. Stereotypes of criminality, disease and danger still abound and organize Black men’s lives, even within hip hop culture. Thus representations of Black men tend to be much more restricted, than open-ended. The struggle to bring Black men into complex open-ended representations has been an on-going historical struggle. One of the most potent forms of representation in the last one hundred and fifty years has been the photograph. Photography has offered the promise to represent the real in a manner that has both seduce its viewers and baffled them with its artifice. Black male photographic representations in the last half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first have promised to rescue Black men from the confines of mis-representation and stereotype. One of the most difficult and complicated circumstances of Black male representations has been in the realm of representing their sexuality. Black men’s sexuality is still over-burdened by a perceived threat and danger, especially now in the hyped-up era of the downlow. Then along comes Cushman. I first hear of Christopher Cushman’s photography from my boyfriend. He told me of a guy who was taking photographs of black nudes based upon how they wanted themselves to be seen, not how he posed them as his models. When I met Cushman he confirmed that he did indeed work from the models’ suggested posed and not impose his own. The idea is a great one because it allows the models agency in choosing what they believe to be an adequate representation of who they are. While it is now true that in contemporary culture subjects have learned to play for the camera, offering us artifice on command, this artifice can be understood as exposing inner senses of self and being. Cushman’s photography captures and reveals those inner desires. Look at me, many of the models seems to say. But look at me anew, is also what they seem to project and insist on. Cushman’s eye lavishes these Black male bodies with glimmers of light revealing their nuance personalities. While most of the men are naked their individuality comes clearly through. And yet, their eyes too reveal that they belong to a community, a family and possess desires, fantasies and needs. In these photographs, as viewers we are given new eyes to see beyond our inner voyeur. Cushman channels, Robert Mapplethorpe, Rotimi Fani-Kayode and many other artists, commercial and amateur photographers who seek to rescue the Black male body from the disastrous depths of mis-representation, and who almost always fall short. The conversations that his models create between his work and others whether unconscious or not reveal the profound influence of the image in our time. However, in Cushman’s eyes the Black male body is not being rescued, instead it stands on a self-made pedestal, not arrogantly announcing its existence but coolly (its signature) singing its own praisesong as swathes of light and behind the camera love washes over it. In each moment a small but significant revelation is made. Each revelation offers us the opportunity of an Epiphany – to think a thought about a Black man that we have not thought before. Professor Rinaldo Walcott is a cultural critic and Canada Research Chair of Social Justice and Cultural Studies at the University of Toronto. He lives and writes in Toronto.

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