North Bay Police and Fire honour those who died on 9/11
A memorial was held at the North Bay Police Service on Princess Street Saturday morning to honour those who lost their lives on 9/11 twenty years ago.
CTV News spoke with local police officers and firefighters who said 9/11 still feels like it was just yesterday.
“It’s one of those days in my lifetime where I’ll never forget where I was or what I was doing, at the time I heard about it,” said North Bay Police Service Chief Scott Tod.
“But also, the effects that happened in policing shortly there after. I was with the Ontario Provincial Police at the time, and it was the response by the provincial police to support the New York State Troopers and the New York City Police Department.”
North Bay Fire Chief Jason Whiteley said he had just gotten off a night shift, when he heard about the news.
“It’s still engrained in my head, the look on those fire fighters faces. What they were going into, they knew it was a death trap, they must have,” said Whiteley.
In attendance at Saturday’s memorial was Inspector Jeff Warner from the North Bay Police Service who went to the scene of 9/11 just a few months after the attacks.
“It’s just difficult to explain,” said Warner.
“When we got down there, the actual sight had been mainly cleaned up of debris but there was still twisted metal everywhere, the adjacent buildings were still draped in black cloth.”
“What impressed me the most was just the look of determination of the people that were there cleaning the sight. There was just a look on the people who were walking through their streets at what had happened to their city.”
While an event like 9/11 is unlikely to happen in North Bay, Chief Whiteley said his team is prepared if something does occur.
“We train hard, we’re always trying to be prepared.”
“We can never let our guard down, we saw it this week with the firefighter that was attacked. You know, we have an airport, NORAD base, railways, highway, there’s a lot of key components here so we’re always training and trying to be prepared for any type of incident.”
Of the nearly 3,000 people who lost their lives on 9/11, 24 of them were Canadians.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Cargo ship had engine maintenance in port before Baltimore bridge collapse, officials say
The cargo ship that lost power and crashed into a bridge in Baltimore underwent 'routine engine maintenance' in port beforehand, the U.S. Coast Guard said Wednesday.
A Nigerian woman reviewed some tomato puree online. Now she faces jail
A Nigerian woman who wrote an online review of a can of tomato puree is facing imprisonment after its manufacturer accused her of making a “malicious allegation” that damaged its business.
Far North police 'dispatch' polar bear stalking schoolyard
Police and local hunters in an Ontario Far North First Nation community have “dispatched” a polar that was showing abnormal behaviour and treating the area as a hunting ground.
Donald Trump assails judge and his daughter after gag order in N.Y. hush-money criminal case
Donald Trump lashed out Wednesday at the New York judge who put him under a gag order that bars him from commenting publicly about witnesses, prosecutors, court staff and jurors in his upcoming hush-money criminal trial.
Families shocked after Niagara Falls hotel cancels bookings made year in advance of solar eclipse
After having the foresight to book their Niagara Falls hotel rooms more than a year in advance, several families planning to take in the solar eclipse next month were shocked to find out their reservations had been cancelled.
B.C. rescuers face 'high likelihood' of failure to reunite orphaned orca with pod
The race to reunite an orphaned orca calf that’s stuck in a shallow lagoon with a neighbouring pod has entered its fifth day, and a marine scientist says the clock is ticking.
Video shows police interrupting auto theft in progress outside Toronto home
New video footage obtained by CP24 shows the attempted theft of a vehicle in a North York driveway earlier this month that was ultimately interrupted by police.
Majority of Canadians believe in life after death: Angus Reid survey
A new survey from the Angus Reid Institute has found that a majority of Canadians believe in some form of life after death, a proportion that has held steady for decades.
MyPillow, owned by U.S. election denier Mike Lindell, formally evicted from Minnesota warehouse
A court ordered the eviction Wednesday of MyPillow from a suburban Minneapolis warehouse that it formerly used.