[CaptainCrunch]

I remember waking up and turning on the news and the first plane had just hit and they were talking about a horrible accident. I went and took a shower and came out just in time to see the live footage of the second plane hitting the building.

I went to work anyways, and nobody got anything done, we were pinned to our computers, and our boss lost his temper because we weren't being effective. I packed my stuff up and left for the day, if I was going to be ineffective, I'd do it at home.

My sister who's a doctor in hamilton, was in Manhatten for a conference she managed to eventually get a call out to my parents, they had called her and all of the other doctors to the emergency room at the nearest hospital. To this day she was stunned at the low number of casualties.

A classmate of mine from 10 years before was in the tower that day and never came out. Another classmate that had remained close to him phoned me up in a complete range of emotions from rage to incredible sadness.

My sister who worked downtown at Husky and her whole floor were sent home.

Then the planes started landing, and the rumors started. There were planes enroute to Vancouver and Toronto that weren't answering radio calls.

The Pentagon was hit and were were sure, then the other plane went down in the field.

Then a client phoned me up on my cellphone drunkenly trying to convince me that it was the end of the world and the American's in their rage were going to nuke all of the middle east states that supported terrorism.

I remember that night, I met my neighbours for the first time, they had lived their for years, but they saw me having a smoke outside of my house and called me over and offered me a beer.

I remember the shock, I remember the frantic worry about my sister, I remember the vivid news footage of the world trade centers going down.

I remember I said a little prayer for the victims, and a prayer for the firefighters and the cops hoping for their safety.

And I remember thinking of the line from Bull Haisley when he pulled into Pearl Harbour the day after the attack in 1941 where he stated that from this day forward the japanese language would be spoken exclusively in hell.

I didn't sleep very well that night, I had the feeling that all of mankind was tottering on the brink of darkness.

None of us can deny, that even though we all went to work the next day or school, we all shopped for groceries and worried about our bills, but the world had changed, and for a while we marvelled at how New York dealt with it, and we had a lot of sympathy for our American friends and their pain, but a new form of paranoia and mistrust started growing in us.