A Commentary by Niagara At Large reporter/publisher Doug Draper
Posted September 11th, 2026 on Niagara At Large
When a second commercial jet went crashing into the Twin Towers in New York City, it was instantly clear to everyone watching that these were terrorist attacks.
Twenty-five years after what the world has simply come to know as 9/11, I still remember looking up at a screen at local diner on that morning of September 11th in 2001 and watching the Twin Towers in Manhattan being attacked and pancaking down in clouds of smoke and fire in real time.
Then there was generosity of people in communities across Niagara and our country when it came to helping our American neighbours through this horror.
Immediately after those terrorist attacks, when the U.S. government closed its airspace to any and all incoming commercial aircraft for fear that more jets, like the ones that were slammed into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon outside of Washington, D.C., might be used as weapons, Canada took a chance and allowed commercial jets to land here.
At an airport in Gander, Newfoundland alone, an estimated 38 commercial jets landed, leaving their mostly American passengers stranded until people in the community of some 10,000 invited them into their homes where they were welcome to stay for days until the ban on air travel to the U.S. was lifted.
Here in Niagara there were other acts of support.
There was the rapid response of firefighters who travelled down to New York City with the blessing of our municipal councils to help firefighters in that city in their search for bodies or for any survivors in the twisted piles of concrete and steel where the Twin Towers once stood.
I also have warm memories of a woman in my town of Thorold organizing a campaign for people to donate gloves and boots and other articles of clothing for the firefighters who had what they were wearing torn or burned while searching through the smoldering rubble at the Twin Towers site. So much was donated in Thorold alone that it filled the large trailer of a transport truck whose owner volunteered to drive it all down NYC for free.
This kind of support and generosity for our American neighbours was unfolding over and over again in countless communities across Canada.
And yet, as I look back at that as Americans prepare to observe the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that took the lives of almost 3,000 people, including a reported 24 Canadians, I can’t help but also look at the way Trump and his legions of supports are treating our country now, right up to and including their repeated overtures that a free and independent Canada should no longer exist.
I look at all of that and I also look at Canada joining the U.S. in sending military troops to Afghanistan to hunt down the 9/11 terr0rists (a mission that cost a total of 165 Canadian soldiers and civilians their lives) and I think; ‘This is the kind of thanks we get from a country we considered to be an ally and friend.’
In more recent years, Canada has supported American communities a number of time when they needed water bombers and other equipment to put out wildfires or they desperately needed more hydro crews to restore power after severe wind or ice storms.
And again I can’t help but ask; ‘Where are any reciprocal acts of friendship from Trump and his cult of millions for any of that?’
All we get in return are repeated threats to annex us and punishing tariffs designed to break us.
Yet another hostile image, featuring himself and our Prime Minister on the ground, that Trump recently posted in his social media site
Given all of that, I can’t blame many of my fellow Canadians for saying; ‘To hell with the United States. We are not going to travel down there and we are going to everything we can not to buy anything produced in the U.S.A.’
Over the past almost two years of Trump serving a second term in office, I have joined the growing movement across our Canada to cut off everything American and I have found myself losing patience with friends I have in that country who keep telling me every time I call them how sorry they are that all of this is happening.
If that is true, how come there aren’t more Americans standing up against Trump and his MAGA zealots in their war against Canada? Why aren’t we getting the same kind of support that we have given to Americans in the wake of 9/11 and other disasters?
So let Americans absorb themselves in their 25th anniversary 9/11 remembrances.
I will spend my time and energy doing what I can to stand with my fellow Canadians in support of our farmers and our businesses here at home.
At the same time, I applaud our Prime Minister, Mark Carney, for all he is continuing to do to build trading ties with other more friendly countries around the world so that our Canada is no longer this vulnerable to an economic relationship with the United States again.
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Doug Draper, Niagara At Large.
For some related news and commentary, click on the following links –
On gander, newfoundland – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyvUSnEhKJg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzfNbxUdgV0
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