This is my brief September 11 story.
10 years ago, I was working at the Columbia Icefield, in the middle of the Canadian Rockies. It’s 100km from Jasper and 150km from Lake Louise. My roommate had just had satellite TV installed a couple days before and he woke up my girlfriend and I saying, “You have to come check this out! A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center in New York!”
He left for work and we sat there for the next 2 hours and watched events unfold. I watched the 2nd plane hit and then watched both towers fall. Then I had to go to work.
My job was to drive a SnoCoach (pictured) and take tourists out onto the Athabasca Glacier.
My first tour of the day on September 11 was with a tour group that were all from New York. As I always did, I asked where everyone was from. They said, “New York!!” I said, “Have you seen the news today?” They said “No, we’re on vacation.”
Holy crap! What am I going to do, I thought. Do I tell them now, or do I wait?
I considered my options and since we were 2000m up in the Rocky Mountains, on the edge of the Athabasca Glacier, I decided to take them out on the glacier for their 1hr tour and to tell them on the way back. They didn’t really have the option to return to the Icefield Centre because there wasn’t a bus available to take them down for another hour.
I said, “let’s go enjoy the glacier for a bit and then we’ll talk about news.”
We drove out on the Athabasca Glacier, and I gave them the same tour that I gave thousands of other tourists that summer, including all the cheezy jokes, and “is that a glacier bear over there?”
When we were returning to the loading bays (where everyone gets off the SnoCoach and onto the shuttle bus that takes them back to the Icefield Centre), I thanked them for coming out for the trip and told them that I had some bad news.
I broke the news to them that there had been a terrorist attack on New York and that they’d used planes to take down both towers of the World Trade Centre. They were as shocked as anyone else who found out the first time that day and I said, “I hope your family and friends are OK.” I let them know that there was a TV in the building, and that they really should go watch to see it for themselves. I also told them where to find the pay phones once they got back to the Icefield Centre.
We said our goodbyes and the New York group left. I didn’t have any time to digest what had just happened because my next tour group was arriving. Thankfully, they were from Japan and had their own guide, so all I had to do was drive and pose for pictures.
