Columnists
9/11
And then it happened. Fifteen years later, the headline story in the Toronto Star for September 11 wasn’t a harkening back to that day in September of 2001. Nope,the Star editors chose to run, as their headliner, a story about TIFF. Yup, the Toronto International Film Festival is headline news today, Sunday September 11, as I write this. Don’t get me wrong, I know that TIFF is an important event that generates millions of dollars for the city and city businesses, but deep in my heart I don’t know how I feel about TIFF being the top news story, on 9/11. A very real 9/11 story was relegated to the lower right hand corner of the front page of the paper. In the truest sense of the word “news”, TIFF isn’t really news and the actual 9/11 story is no longer “news”. While 9/11 is, and always will be, an important event, it is an event that took place 15 years ago. However, it is a story that needs to be retold and revisited every year, the way I see it. The new “news” stories that have emerged, and are emerging because of 9/11 deserve headline space. TIFF is lightweight by comparison. And does the Star not have an Entertainment section, I ask you?
And so to the lower right hand corner of the Sunday Star this year’s 9/11 news story was sent. Readers aren’t likely to remember the headliner “Kidman Leans in on the Red Carpet”. Indeed, 15 years from now we’ll likely have trouble remembering who “Kidman” was. Maybe TIFF will have run its course. But I do believe people will always remember what they were doing on September 11 of 2001. It was the day the whole world stopped and watched and listened. It was the day everything changed. For me, personally, it was the day I realized my problem du jour was not even a little bit important by comparison. What we saw, that day, was pressed into our collective consciousness. Indeed, it was the first time I truly understood the words “collective consciousness”. On that beautiful Tuesday morning, people were going to work, sending children to school, pouring a cup of coffee, heading to a meeting, some were coming home from work, others vacuuming, shopping, eating or pressing the snooze button. But at 8:30 a.m., in New York City, an American Airlines Boeing 767 crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Centre. As the occupants of the north tower began evacuating, the second plane hit the south tower. Millions of people watched in horror from their homes, their office windows, their televisions and some even watched from the towers. Our “great, big, strong neighbour”, the US, was being attacked. Just after 10:30 in the morning, both towers had collapsed. Thousands of people were dead or dying. Thousands of people were fleeing for their lives and wondering what the hell had happened. Will anyone feel that way about the film festival, even if Nicole Kidman leaned across the red carpet?
On Sunday, September 11, 2016 in the lower right hand corner of the Sunday Star the story about “The saviour and the saved” began and was continued on page A2. This was a new-to-us news story of 9/11 brought to light on September 11, 2016. Two men spoke about their experience on that fatefilled day and how their lives changed forever. Stanley Praimnath and Brian Clark became brothers. Praimnath and Clark didn’t have a red carpet that day. Instead, they descended the 1,620 steps and exited the south tower minutes before it collapsed. Fifteen years later, they still consider themselves brothers and close friends. They are two people who would have passed by each other without a word—but 9/11 put them together.
I remember what I was doing on September 11, 2001. I remember like it was yesterday.
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