One of those days we'll never forget

It’s one of those days, isn’t it?

For those of us Of A Certain Vintage there are scant few days that resonate in our lifetime, days when you absolutely remember what you were doing at the moment “it” happened.

You have Neil Armstrong landing on the moon.

You have the Kennedy assassination, both perhaps.

You have the Challenger explosion.

You might have Paul Henderson’s goal.

You likely have Ben Johnson’s 9.79 in Seoul.

And you have today.

9/11.

It’s a day that fundamentally changed all of our lives in some way, didn’t it?

It made us more aware of the world and the dangers and evil that lurk in it.

Sadly, it made some of us far less trusting of things we don’t know much about, made us more wary, more afraid, more skeptical, more a lot of things.

Remember where you were?

I was driving downtown – I believe back then I listened to all sports radio and if I’m not mistaken that was in the McCown in the morning era and I remember standing my office slack-jawed with a dozen people huddled around the TV when the towers fell and the world changed.

You?

I don’t know that the world is a lot safer now than it was then, despite the institutionalized security paranoia that runs rampant. Sure, they check our coffee at the airport and we are subjected to screening that borders, often, on the ridiculous. We take off our shoes and go through scanners at airports and sometimes arenas and stadiums and it all seems, well, it seems more for the comfort of our own minds than anything else. It is a grand inconvenience at many levels and when I hear people say “well, I’d rather be inconvenienced that the alternative” it makes me chuckle a little bit.

Most of the great security work by governments and their agencies happens so far out of our sight and out of our minds that it’s not even funny. That’s where I want my money going, to root out threats before they get too serious and legit, I want our spies given every advantage, not some hourly-wage airport or arena scanner being given a new uniforms and a new toy and power that can be abused.

The world changed forever that day 11 years ago, our lives in many small ways are different; but the work done at making the world a safer place doesn’t start at the screening area of airports, it starts on the ground far away and is done by men and women we know nothing about.

Those are the heroes of the post-9/11 era, we don’t know them but we should thank them.

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Speaking of …

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So, ready for the big game?

Whaddya mean, which one?

Canada-Panama in the football tonight, World Cup qualifying. Could be a doozy.

Not sure how many have paid much attention to the run-up to the game but it’s been hilarious.

Seems the Panama fans are going to kind of storm the Canadian team’s hotel, blaring loud music 24 hours a day and generally causing a ruckus in the hopes the Canucks can’t sleep and can’t play and can’t win.

(After all, with the way the Americans treated Panamian Strongman Manuel Noriega – and I love the phrase Panamanian Strongman, by the way – the folks down there must figure if it worked against a despot it’ll work against a bunch of footballers).

But can you imagine that happening here?

I cannot for the life of me envision a scenario when the fans of some Canadian team would gather outside a hotel to try and rankle some visiting team.

First off, they’d be arrested within minutes, I bet; no way the good citizens of the neighbouring condos and hotels would put up with it.

Second, we just don’t have that passion; never have, never will.

Too bad. I’d love to see a couple of thousand fans of any team going berserk on the street a couple of days before some big game. A sight to behold.

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Seriously, it’s all well and good that a kid wants to do well at school and the teachers want to get there early to work in the Jazz Lab and the results are really cool.

But, I tell ya, if they’d ever told me I had to be at school at 7 a.m. there would have been a revolt and if Super Grandpa had to drive me at that gawdawful hour, well, I don’t know if he would have.

After all, we used to walk 20 miles to and from school every day, uphill both ways with the sun in our eyes and the wind against us.

Now?

Now I’m trotting off to Cawthra at 6:30 in the freaking morning once week so the kid can blow the sax.

Father Of The Year?

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And so it begins.

The road.

Off to Chicago for a couple days of chats with the NBA media relations staff and the PR directors of all the teams for my PBWA gig and, I have to tell you, thinking about the various flights and hotels and nights on the road becomes less alluring with each passing year.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s fun to see some of the stuff in the cities and being around the games – that part of the job probably won’t ever be diminished and when it does, I’m done – but the extraneous stuff’s a killer.

Delays, weather, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Gets tiring.

But Not Grace Kelly and I have looked over the first couple of months of the season and it’s going to be a lot better than last year.

Where there were five games a week some weeks and four being the ordinary, we’re at weeks of three games, no back-to-back-to-backs and I don’t even see a lot four-games-in-five-nights early in the season.

Even the first west coast trip is a five-gamer and that’s a long trek but there’s only one back-to-back.

Not sure anyone but me would have scrutinized the schedule but, all told, it’s really, really good.

Time to get started.

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Comments

[Alan C.]

For days that resonate, I'd have to add the Kennedy assassination, but I was living in the States at the time.

Blogger's note: Can't believe I left that out; will put it in now

[Mike D.]

An excellent point on the unsung heroes and allocation of funds, Doug. Well said.

Your walk to school, though, sounds like sheer luxury to me. Our walk was also 20 miles and uphill both ways, but we used to have to do it through waist-high snow (year round, due to localized weather conditions that no longer exist in southwestern Ontario because of global warming), barefoot, with newly-baked potatoes stuck down our pants for warmth. If anyone had complained about something as trivial as wind direction or the sun in their eyes, they would undoubtedly have been pegged with a cooled baked potato.

[Tom]

Yeah, well I used to live in a shoe box in the middle of the road, would wake up at 10 o'clock at night, two hours before I went to bed, worked 28 hours, came home and ate gravel for dinner and licked the road clean with my tongue and I liked it because work was a privilege... ;-)

[Colin K]

I was in the car in west Hamilton on my way to morning classes listening to the radio. They were interviewing a man sitting in an apartment downtown NYC watching everything unfold. In the background we heard a very loud boom, the 2nd plane hitting. Scary stuff.

I'm now living in the US. Day to day, no one seems to treat this day much different than any other. Flags are at half mast, for sure. But that happens every other week it seems, which to my mind diminishes the sentiment.

[David in Oakville]

Good Morning Doug,

Thoughtful column as always.

For me, I would have to add the night John Lennon was shot to that list as well. Back in the day, I used to fall asleep with a transistor radio under my pillow listening to Q-107... the news that night and the following morning was devastating.

I had a chance to visit the 9/11 Memorial this past March. Even against the beauty of the site, the crowds and the quiet of the pools, I found it impossible not to cry.

[David "Howard" Lang]

Great blog entry Doug...I don't think McCowan was on the FAN in the mornings in 2001, my memory is that Mike Hogan was on then

Blogger's note: I'm fuzzy on that

[Brad B.]

I was home watching on TV with my 4-month-old son when the towers fell. I had a meeting that afternoon at the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station and a contractor friend who couldn't get a hold of his daughter in Washington. We still went on with the meeting, but the next day there were police in SWAT gear carrying sub-machine guns at every entrance. That presence devolved over the next six weeks to where it was 2 guys in a cop car drinking coffee and donuts while we waited in the new security lines.

As for passion, just look at the supporters' section at any of the Toronto, Vancouver, or Montreal MLS home games and you'll see the same passion is there as what we're seeing in Panama. It's just it will take another generation before it manifests itself in Canadian Sports Culture..

[Ken B]

Doug: You nailed those special moments, I might add ... Leafs Stanley Cup in '67, the announcement of Elvis's death, and OJ's innocent verdict. Thanks as always.

[Rob.V]

Agreed. As a younger kid I worked PT at the Airport and every so often I would forget my Chubb security card. I had to sneak past security to get in to work on many occassions (it's amazing what simple work overalls can do).
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Just after 9/11 I remember friends asking me how terrorists could make it past security so easily. I believe this is where this may have started; LOL! I mean, if I could do it, there was no way they were gonna stop pilots with credentials!
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I could be wrong however aside from taking off your shoes nowadays I don't imagine it would be any more difficult to circumvent security at Pearson if one wanted to. Airport security is generally a smoke & mirrors act for the public.
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You'd be hard pressed to convince me that you could stop someone from accessing secured areas if they had a malicious intent.
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This however should in no way take away from the fine work that the governments are doing behind the scenes (I guess?). But when you have guys with detonators in their underpants on Christmas Day in Detroit (was it Detroit?) just this past year... there clearly is still a lot of work to be done.
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Thinking back now, George W. took so much heat over the wars and everything that happend post 9/11. Was he unfairly judged for his actions? What do you guys think?

[Andrew Gregg]

Hi Doug:

I think "The Looming Tower" by Lawrence Wright (Pulitzer prize winner in 2006) is required reading for the story behind 9/11. Incredible book, unforgettable real characters.

AG, Toronto

[jb]

I was writing my professional exams when 9/11 happened. I went to small town Ontario where the exam was being administered in a conference room in the hotel I was staying at. I didn't want to write my exam(4 days straight, 4hrs per day) in Toronto where a thousand people were writing it at the convention centre. It would have been annoying to hear a thousand people turn the page of the exam booklet.

Anyway when 9/11 happened, from 8:30am to 1pm, I was stuck in a room totally oblivious to the happenings of the outside world. The exam coordinators didn't tell us anything that happened even after the exam was over. So after the exam, I went across the street to a diner to grab lunch and the television was on showing planes crashing into the World Trade Centre. I asked the waitress what movie was showing on the television because I still wasn't aware of what had happened. The waitress in shocked(that I was unaware) told me everything. I quickly finished my lunch, went back to my hotel room and tried to make a couple of calls to friends living in NYC...but couldn't get through. I called a friend in Toronto(who originally was from NYC) and we just talked for a hour.

[D-Mac Ottawa]

Well writ as usual, Doug. I couldn't sleep that night before 9/11. I was stewing about a job that wasn't going as it had been advertised and laid out. So I decided to quit tossing, got up and wrote a resignation letter, just in case the morning's work developed the way I thought it might. Slept like a log after writing that letter.
Getting ready to head in, I saw the developments on The Today Show as they happened. That did it. Life is too short. I turned in that resignation.
I'm always reminded of 9/11 by this Boz Scaggs song. It's from what might be his best – and certainly most overlooked – album, Dig, which was very coincidentally released on September 11, 2001 (this isn't even one of the best ones on the album – they're all great): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScsRJJ6Zssg
Cheers. Keep on keeping on. Go Raps!

[jb]

I forgot to add.

A month after 9/11, I went to Toledo, Ohio to write my US professional exams. I figure it would be a nightmare crossing the border so I rented a hotel room just before the border crossing and woke up bright and early to cross the border. Security was pretty tight, they searched my car and had what I assume was bomb sniffing dogs circle my car.

To get into my exams, I needed 3 pieces of ID, there was security everywhere doing searches. People weren't allowed to bring backpacks, just a clear ziploc bag with pencils, pens and a calculator and yet security was still frisking everyone.

BTW- I was writing the exam at the Toledo Mud Hen's stadium(totally thought about Klinger from MASH) and the fire alarm went off during the middle of the exam. They wouldn't let us leave or stop the exam, for 2 hrs of the 6hr exam the fire alarm was going.

I suppose these were the security measures after 9/11.

[S.R.]

Hi Doug/ Irregulars...

Going to Boston for the first time. I'll be stopping by at the Basketball HOF on the way there. Any suggestions for things I have to do there?

Also, the wife loves seafood. Any recommendations for a nice (non touristy) seafood joint? So far it looks like Boston Chowda is the place to go. Any others?

I will check out Durgin Park for its famous prime rib!

Thanks.

Blogger's note: Have at it, folks; I'm about to get on a plane

[Andrew Gregg]

Hi Again:

Here is an intriguing, little known 9/11 story, captured in a film made by a friend of mine:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2011/04/25/korean-air-flight-911-mystery.html

Unbelievably the terror that day spread to the Yukon--and Whitehorse was the only city on 9/11 to be evacuated.

AG, Toronto

[511]

Lived in Long Island for a spell as a kid, visited NYC regularly after. Took my daughter to NYC a few months before the attack, took a pic of her on high deck of the Empire State Building w the WTC in background. A few weeks after the attack, revisited NYC w my wife; had to see Ground Zero for myself. Parked many blocks up from it and walked down towards it with smoke from GZ blowing in our faces the whole way. Both my wife and I were sick w terrible poisoned-like headaches for days afterward. What pics on TV didn’t capture was the size of the mountain of debris. I counted stories on the nearest building to it. That smoking mass of destruction and death was approx 40 stories high. Seeing it up close was nightmarishly horrible and terrible beyond what I could ever describe.

[marc in panama]

Hola Doug,

Ya think soccer is serious down here? It might as well be '72 and my name is Ivan.... I have friends that won't talk to me today.

Go Canada!!!!

marc in panama

[doug]

@ Rob V forget Bush and his role post 9/11 pre-911 is where he blew it, the dude really was in over his head (see end link)...Doug your b-ball travels may get better in a year or 2 or 3...as i see Seattle is getting a new arena, team must soon to follow, i'd still like to see a dual Vancouver/Seattle team it'd be neat to see....was a classy thing Farrell did with Vizquel the thing I find amazing is that Vizquel is 3 hits behind Babe Ruth...would be kewl if he got exactly 3 more and tied Ruth and no more...he could always say the Babe and I are tied all-time with hits, ...see Andy Rautins is on a invite to OKC camp, might be a good fit for him there...oh Chicago i am envious hell of a town Chicago is, funny though they had 423 or some odd homicides last year we had 45 but if you listen to the media and pundits we are the a violent city and Chicago is who people want to emulate...interesting...ok cheers

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/opinion/the-bush-white-house-was-deaf-to-9-11-warnings.html?_r=1

[grits]

Having just seen the movie "The Impossible" on the weekend at TIFF, how about that Indian Ocean Tsunami? I know we were a bit detached over here in the Western world, but over 200,000 people lost their lives. The images on the TV were just as striking.

[james]

Rob.V: "Thinking back now, George W. took so much heat over the wars and everything that happend post 9/11. Was he unfairly judged for his actions? What do you guys think?"
The Peter Principle in action, he wasn't judged harshly enough.

[Lorie]

Hello Doug,
I recall being unable to comprehend the enormity of the horror that day and instead needing to personalize it: wanting to hold my children close, to have them by my side. And to never let them go. One child was in Europe, another in the US and the third was hundreds of kilometers away in Ottawa. Their safety seemed precarious and for a few hours that day I kept wondering "What's next? Where will they target next? And please let it not be anywhere near to where my children are." And then I remember watching the news non-stop for what seemed like days. And the images of people who were looking for loved ones - posting their images on walls, carrying their photographs, asking strangers if they'd seen them...seeing hope turn to despair. And I felt ashamed for my own selfishness. I don't think I've known another day like it. JFK, RFK, MLK were days I recall, but those tragic events happened when I was too young to understand the depth of the pain of losing a loved one. Shalom.
And we'd heard this song a thousand times, but when Paul sang it at The Concert For New York City in October 2001, it resonated on an entirely different level.
http://youtu.be/KilRqvAEPYA

[M]

" wanting to hold my children close, to have them by my side."
I wonder how many mothers have had that feeling many times during the last 50/60 years in places like the West Bank?