Why I Came To Canada

I had just dropped my five-year-old son off at school when I heard the first blast. I was talking with a group of moms and noted the explosion, but none of us said anything.

I got on the bus and there was a woman with a cell phone saying a plane hit the World Trade Center. We all assumed it was a small plane that had gone off course. But we looked out the windows to see a huge mushroom of smoke billowing off towards Brooklyn, like nothing anybody had ever seen.

We all looked at each other in astonishment. Distance dropped away and we all started talking, even though we were strangers. When the bus reached my stop, a panicked-looking bus driver leaned his head in and said to the driver, "You know it was an American Airlines jet that hit?"

A 767! It seemed like a wild rumour. I got off the bus. The World Trade Center was about 20 blocks from our home. I stood at the corner of Houston and West Broadway watching the first tower burn. Some people were out taking pictures.

I could only see fire on the outside of the building so couldn't grasp the proportion of the event. So I went to get coffee on Thompson Street.

When I got there, the gate was pulled down and the owner was sitting dazed on the bench. Thompson Street was full of people who had come out of their apartments. I heard some women saying that a plane had flown so low over Thompson Street they thought it was going to crash into the street.

But it was the plane that hit the World Trade Center. I went home. When I got home none of the phones were working. I turned on the TV to the BBC.