On the 23rd anniversary of the 9/11 attacks this year, Niagara-on-the-Lake residents watched silently on Wednesday morning as the American flag flying over Queen’s Royal Park was lowered and raised.

This was part of the town’s annual commemoration ceremony for an event that touched of lives of many Canadians who, on Sept. 11, 2001, watched on their television screens as the Twin Towers in Manhattan fell in real time, as well as the catastrophic aftermath.

Beginning at 8:30 a.m., the ceremony featured words from Lord Mayor Gary Zalepa, MP Tony Baldinelli, MPP Wayne Gates, fire chief Jay Plato and Chamber of Commerce director Kathy Weiss. 

Ken Eden, who was in the crowd, was working as a fire chief in Tillsonburg, Ont., in 2001 when the towers fell.

“I was in a dentist chair, laying on my back watching TV and they said a plane had hit one of the Twin Towers. I had figured it was a small private plane,” he told The Lake Report. 

He then walked out to reception to see that a second plane had hit the other tower and realized it wasn’t a little plane after all, Eden said. 

In total, 2,977 people died from the attacks, which involved planes being hijacked and crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., plus one flight that didn’t reach its intended target after plane passengers revolted, but was crashed in Somerset County, Pa.

Back at the fire hall, Eden said the tragedy didn’t have an immediate or direct impact on how work was done that day, but even in the small community of Tillsonburg, people were ready to help if called. 

It’s still important to come out and commemorate the tragedy every year, Eden said. 

“It can happen again. And it’ll be the same response: the first responders will go in and some won’t come out,” he said. 

Of the 2,977 people who died, 343 were members of the New York City Fire Department and one was a New York Fire patrolman.

In the years following the attack, more firefighters and other first responders have died from 9/11-related illnesses.

Eden’s wife, Shirley, was with him at the ceremony and said the couple often walks along the nearby memorial to remember the 24 Canadians who died that day.

Coun. Erwin Wiens could relate to working in emergency services at the time the towers fell.

“I was working at the time on the tactical team in Hamilton, (my wife) was in the hospital in Toronto and I got mobilized,” Wiens said. 

The police tactical unit was in a holding pattern because of Hamilton’s international airport, he said. 

“We didn’t know what was happening so, being the tactical team, we just mobilized and waited,” Wiens said. 

Plato was in high school on 9/11, long before any experience working in emergency services. 

In the field of work that he is in, it’s a day that you forever think about, the town’s fire chief said. 

“As many people were running out, emergency services were running in with the knowledge that this might be it,” Plato said. 

“It’s heartening to think about the people who, when tragedy is striking, are trying to get in there to help others. That’s the spirit of emergency service,” he said. 

Coun. Gary Burroughs was lord mayor in 2001 and was on the way to a Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority meeting when he heard about the attacks.

“By the time I got to the conservation authority, there was nothing but televisions out. We were all watching,” he said. 

When it comes to the annual ceremony, Burroughs said it reflects NOTL’s connection to the United States. 

“There’s lots of Niagara-on-the-Lake families and people who lived in the U.S. across the border. Before 9/11 we used to travel back and forth all the time,” he said. 

Zalepa said NOTL has a fluid border with the United States. 

“Many of our families, including my own, we’re all intertwined,” he said. 

Many NOTL residents work in America, and vice versa, Zalepa said. 

“Our country was there for them at that point and so was our community,” he said.