Operation Yellow Ribbon: when Canada welcomed thousands of stranded passengers after the terror attack on the US on September 11
September 16, 2026
Today, this newsletter is going to be a bit different than most. It’s a journal style article that I wrote last Friday as I pondered the significance of that day in 2001 and how part of that day (called Operation Yellow Ribbon) played out in Canadian communities, including mine, as we welcomed thousands of unexpected guests.
Today marked a day that changed the world. It was a day of great sorrow, fear, and uncertainty. It was, of course, 9/11. A date that holds so much in three little numbers.
While the United States dealt with a terror attack, Canada prepared to welcome thousands of stranded travellers. US airspace had been closed. Canada would also close their airspace to flights that could safely turn around and return to where they had taken off from.
But there were many flights that had passed the point of no return. If they were turned away, they wouldn’t make it back to the place from which they had departed. They needed a safe place to land.
Canada was that place. Operation Yellow Ribbon was the solution.
I remember that day. My youngest son was a newborn. My eldest was a preschooler. I had gone to visit a friend so our preschoolers could play together while we chatted.
She lives quite close to the Halifax airport. An airport that I had driven past on the way to her house and would drive past on the way back home. An airport that, as part of Operation Yellow Ribbon, would land 47 airplanes, carrying more than 7,000 passengers.
It was the most planes that would land at any Canadian airport that day, but only a fraction of the 224 flights and 33,000 passengers that ended up in Canadian airports.
Each and every one of those planes would need to be searched and the passengers screened before they would need to be housed. It would take hours and hours for all that to be done. It meant a full day or more of sitting on a tarmac in some cases.
Halifax is a city, with a six digit population (even back then). Sure, we felt the influx of 7,000+ people in need.
I was talking to my friend when we went out for lunch recently about that day, and she remembers meeting a couple of stranded travellers when they came with one of the parents to pick up children from the school where she works (and where both my husband and I used to work).
For many where I live this event wasn’t just a news report. It was personal.
But for a city like Halifax, the housing of all those people was relatively easy compared to what happened in Gander, Newfoundland.
Gander is a town of less than 10,000 people with an international airport. On 9/11 their small airport landed 38 planes and the community in and around Gander sheltered 6,700 people. That’s like doubling the population in a matter of hours! There weren’t enough shelter cots or hotels, but there was a population of caring and welcoming people willing to help.
Historica Canada just made a Heritage Minute about Gander’s role in caring for stranded 9/11 passengers to mark the 25th anniversary of the event. However, instead of sharing that Heritage Minute, I thought I’d share the behind the scenes of making that Heritage Minute video. Because that way you get to hear some of the stories behind the events from people who were actually there that day. It’s about 6.5 minutes long.
There’s a comment made by a lady at the end of the video that I want to highlight. She said,
I think it’s super important for people to understand, like twenty years or thirty years down the road, that what Gander did, what the surrounding communities did, and how kindness and compassion will always outweigh evil, which is something that we need to know every day.
I couldn’t agree more.
So, while we remember the victims, the heroes, the first responders and other helpers, the people who lost loved ones, and a world that has never been the same, I wanted to focus this article of remembrance on that thought:
… kindness and compassion WILL always outweigh evil…
We know it does. We have a Savior and a God who proves it to be true. May we pause to remember the tragedy, then rise up to carry kindness and compassion into the world.
I have no new book news for you this month, but I do want to let you know that next month, I will be taking part in a large multi-author free book day. So, be watching for that.
<3 Annilee
