Travel News
Claude Elliot: Gander’s Mayor Remembers 9/11 and His Town’s Generosity and Heroism
Gander Mayor, Claude Elliott
The darkness of September 11 seemed to showcase so much of the world at its worst, but thousands of stranded airline passengers had an experience may have shown mankind at its best. Nearly 7,000 passengers and crew that were bound for places like New York, and Miami, and Boston, and Dallas suddenly found themselves in the tiny town of Gander in Eastern Canada. Peter follows up on his popular CBS News report and sits down with the Mayor of Gander, Claude Elliott, to get his perspective on the experience 10-years later.
Peter Greenberg: Mr. Mayor, why don’t you set the scene for me. It’s a beautiful morning and you get a phone call. And what was that phone call?
Claude Elliott: We got a call telling us that the airspace was going to be shut down and to expect some aircrafts to be landing in your community. As the traffic leaves Europe in the morning to come across the ocean, once it gets over half way across the closest airport is Gander. We’re the crossroads of the world. Even in the beginning we didn’t know for sure how many planes we were going to get. But we were getting prepared and as you know, as you already said, that it turned out we had 38 aircrafts and 6700 people. Little did we know, watching the early morning news of what was happening in New York, the role that this community would play in the days to follow.
PG: When you do the numbers that’s where it really amazing Mr. Mayor, because you have a town of 9,000 people, which just grew by two-thirds. I mean it went from 9,000 to 15,700. How many hotel rooms do you have in Gander?
CE: Roughly around 500.
You might think it would be a problem, but not with our townspeople people. I know that when I needed them they’d be there to take care of people that needed help. Every house in Gander was a hotel room. We could have received another 5,000 people and we would have looked after them. It was unique and what we thought might be challenging certainly wasn’t because: The greatest asset that any community can have is its people.
PG: The airport in those days, I believe, maybe had five flights a day?
CE: We usually have about four or five flights to St. John’s from Gander, and we have two a day to Halifax and we have a direct flight from Gander to Toronto that takes place in the summer months.
PG: What a job that must have been in the tower that day to be told instead of landing five flights, you’re going to land thirty-eight of them in ninety minutes.
CE: Well you know the air traffic control center in Gander looks after a lot of aircrafts. We have a big aviation center there where the controllers look after planes, so it was no problem to land them. And our airport is a massive structure; it’s a big airport. At one point it was the largest in Canada.
PG: You had bus drivers who were striking who chose to come back to work. And they provided transportation. You took a hockey rink and converted it into sort of a makeshift freezer for all the donated food because you had to feed almost 7,000 people. 
CE: We have a taxi company sufficient for our needs and the only bus service that’s here is owned by the Nova Scotia school district. And those bus drivers were on strike against their employer. They weren’t on strike against the people that landed there. They had no quarrel; they wanted to help them. So when we approached their union and said here’s the predicament, they didn’t hesitate. They dropped those picket signs. And those drivers volunteered their time for the next five days driving those people wherever they wanted to go. Because you see their complaint was with their employer not with the people that were there.
PG: Every once and a while I have friends of mine, for whatever reason, whose plane had to make a diversion to Gander or they were on a small commercial charter flight that stopped in Gander. They all came away from your town having had a great time there. We had ice cream; we had lobster; we were treated very well. I’m sure you had about 6,700 people who came away from that experience who had never been to Gander before, who had never planned to go to Gander before, coming back saying we had no idea.
CE: It was an opportunity for a lot of people to experience some of our culture, so we tried to meet everyone’s needs. There were people that would only eat certain foods. There were diabetics that needed insulin so our hospitals and pharmacies stayed open. Everybody’s needs were taken care of. If there was a child that had a birthday we put on a big birthday party. The supermarkets provided birthday cakes. We got mascots and we had musicians come in to play. So we tried to make their stay with us as comfortable as possible as they were dealing with this tragedy in their country.
PG: And some of them were dealing with tragedy in a much more personal way. One of the couples that was on an Aer Lingus flight, their son was one of the firemen who didn’t survive 9/11. He was in the tower and never came out and you guys provided tremendous comfort and help to them.
CE: There was a lady here in Gander that was a volunteer at the local legion and when she heard there that this couple had their son lost, she took them to her home and she became a pillar of strength for them over the next four or five days. We can only imagine being somewhere so far away with a loved one that had been killed, and not being able to be with your family had to be very difficult on them. This lady was certainly a Florence Nightingale to them and she certainly nurtured them through this very difficult time.
PG: The positive fall-out is the relationships that were started in the most unusual way in Gander persevere today. There are friendships, marriages, kids, relationships,even scholarship programs that were started. It is just an amazing representation of what can come out of bad event.
CE: The friendships that have been made between the people of the community and the people that stayed there has been phenomenal. And those will last forever. Just this morning I met the couple that met in Gander who ended up getting married. They came back to Gander to get married, and they came back here for this anniversary. Al Qaeda may have intended to destroy the world, but their actions brought us closer together. Our spirits are higher. I believe we are becoming better people and becoming stronger and we’re living and celebrating the lives of the people that paid the ultimate price that day.
By Peter Greenberg for Peter Greenberg Worldwide Radio
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