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PAM FRAMPTON: Gander, you’re a class act

Despite current trade war with U.S., Gander's 25th anniversary to mark 9/11 rising above politics

A month ago, I wrote a column about U.S. ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra, suggesting he was nothing more than President Donald Trump’s personal pit bull and that we should send him back to where he came from.

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An online petition calling on him to be formally declared a persona non grata in Canada had 30,000 signatures when I wrote that column. It now has more than 267,000.

As this column was written, Hoekstra was among the dignitaries slated to attend the Town of Gander’s 25th anniversary commemoration of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States.

Gander, as much of the world knows, hosted 6,579 stranded airline passengers for days after that terrible event, and treated them like family, taking them into their homes and offering enduring moral support.

The town’s generous spirit has been captured in a wildly popular musical, Come From Away, which has been staged thousands of times and is currently being performed in 146 separate productions around the world, including in Gander, the U.K., the........

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