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When the Skies Closed: Canada’s 9/11 Story

Season 5/Episode 1 – English Transcript

On September 11, 2001, coordinated terrorist attacks in the United States killed nearly 3,000 people and brought North American air travel to a halt. Hundreds of planes bound for the U.S. were suddenly redirected to Canada.

Twenty five years later, Season 5 of Canadian Time Machine begins with Kathy Fox, who was helping oversee Canada’s air traffic system as those aircraft were brought safely to the ground. Now a Member of the Order of Canada and inductee into Canada’s Aviation Hall of Fame, she looks back on the decisions made that day. National security expert Stephanie Carvin then traces what followed: a transformed border, new terrorism laws, and a country forced to rethink what security meant.

The planes landed within hours. The consequences lasted much longer.

Listen to the episode:

Archival recording [00:00:00] Are you hearing anything about what kind of a plane it was or how many were on board?

Angela Misri September 11, 2001.

Archival recording [00:00:07] In my memory, I don’t really remember it hitting the second building, I just saw a plane there, I saw it hanging there.

Angela Misri [00:00:13] For many people, the images are immediate.

Archival recording [00:00:16] And I thought a thousand different things in the second before it hit.

Angela Misri [00:00:24] The Twin Towers, smoke over Manhattan, nearly 3,000 lives lost.

Archival recording [00:00:29] And then there was just a huge, huge orange explosion.

Angela Misri [00:00:39] But in Canada, there’s another story. Within hours of the attacks, American airspace closed.

Speaker 3 [00:00:44] This is the most drastic measures that the FAA has implemented in its history.

Angela Misri [00:00:50] Hundreds of aircraft suddenly had nowhere to go, and more than 200 international flights carrying roughly 33,000 passengers were diverted to Canadian airports in what would later become known as Operation Yellow Ribbon. 47 of those flights landed in Halifax, 34 in Vancouver, and 37 touched down in Gander, Newfoundland, a small town whose welcoming response to thousands of stranded travellers inspired the hit musical, Come From Away. But before communities could welcome passengers, someone had to answer a different question. Where would all those planes land?

Welcome to Canadian Time Machine. I’m Angela Misri. This podcast receives funding from the Government of Canada and is produced by The Walrus Lab. This episode explores the 25th anniversary of Canada’s response to September 11, how a country cleared its skies, welcomed strangers, and how one day changed Canada for decades to come.

To really understand how Canada responded to that day, we have to start with someone who was there.

Kathy Fox [00:02:00] My name is Kathy Fox and my whole professional career has been in aviation and transportation. I shortened my career by saying I started by jumping out of aeroplanes, then controlling aeroplanes, flying aeroplanes and at the end of my career I was investigating aeroplane crashes along with other transportation accidents. So I’ve seen it from all sides.

Angela Misri [00:02:22] Kathy Fox knows aviation from just about every angle. She’s a pilot, a parachutist, air traffic controller, and transportation safety investigator. She would go on to become chair of the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, be appointed a member to the Order of Canada and be inducted into Canada’s Aviation Hall of Fame. But on September 11, 2001, she was Assistant Vice President of Air Traffic Services at NAV Canada, the organisation responsible for managing civil air traffic across all of Canada.

Kathy Fox [00:02:58] I really had direct responsibility for the day-to-day running of the air traffic control system from the East Coast to the West Coast to The Arctic to make sure that things were running and operating smoothly. And on that particular day, we just happened to be having our semi-annual management meeting in person in Cornwall at the training facility, which was also a conference centre. And that turned out to be a bit of a blessing that we were all together when things went the way they did.

Angela Misri [00:03:30] The meeting that morning wasn’t about aviation at all. It was about human resources. And when Kathy’s phone started buzzing, she didn’t pick up.

Kathy Fox [00:03:40] And 2001, it was back in the days of the old flip phone. And I had my phone in my pocket on vibrate and it started to vibrate and I ignored it because I was in a meeting. But within over about a five minute period, it rang three times. So I figured something’s up, I better go find out what it was.

Angela Misri [00:04:00] A colleague back in Ottawa was homesick that day, and he had seen the news unfold live on TV.

Archival recording [00:04:06] These are live shots we are just getting right now from some American networks sending these up. A plane that appeared flying with some distress at a very low altitude that just collided as you can see. These estimate around the 80th or 85th floor of one of the World Trade towers there.

Kathy Fox [00:04:23] So I said, well, that’s unusual, but it’s in the United States, it’s in New York and, uh, you know, thanks for letting me know. And I went back into the meeting room and then not long after my phone buzzed again in my pocket. So I went out a second time and it was this director again saying, well, a second aircraft has gone into the other World Trade Centre.

Archival recording [00:04:44] Oh my goodness, there’s another one. This seems to be on purpose. Oh my goodness.

Angela Misri [00:04:50] By the time a third hijacked plane had crashed into the Pentagon at 9.37am, it had become clear to the world that these weren’t accidents or coincidences.

Kathy Fox [00:05:00] I went back into the managers meeting and I stopped it and I said, without going into detail in that group, I said we have to stop and I need all of the operational managers in another room. I shared with them what I knew at that time and I asked them to get on the phone with their respective operational facilities across the country so that they could both get and give information.

Angela Misri [00:05:28] Within minutes, the United States had closed its airspace. Just after 11 a.m., Canada followed. It was Kathy’s job to make sure that every aircraft in the sky had somewhere to land, and that every aircraft still on the ground stayed there. And on a clear-skied Tuesday morning, that’s not easy to do.

Kathy Fox [00:05:48] We had… I don’t remember the exact number, but it was in the 240 to 260 range of aircraft that were coming across the North Atlantic Ocean. Normal traffic flows for a September day en route to either Canada or places in the U.S. Some of them had to turn around and go back to Europe. Those that were already past the halfway point, the point of no return, had to continue. The government didn’t really want them to fly for any longer than absolutely necessary because nobody knew if there were other hijackers who might attack other buildings.

Angela Misri [00:06:21] History was unfolding on the news, but for Kathy and her team, there wasn’t much time to watch it.

Kathy Fox [00:06:27] We saw when the towers collapsed. We saw, when the aircraft was crashed in Pennsylvania. We saw the horrible, you know, impact of what was going on in New York, but we had to suspend that and focus on our job, which was to get, keep everybody on the ground or get aircraft on the ground safely and basically drain the skies. And we all worked collaboratively together and with the........

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