‘That was Canada at its best’
As day of historic decisions unfolded, former prime minister Jean Chrétien remained cool, close advisers say
Drought relief and provincial infrastructure were on the breakfast agenda as Jean Chrétien, his political adviser Eddie Goldenberg and Saskatchewan Premier Lorne Calvert huddled at 24 Sussex Drive that morning 20 years ago.
Like everything else that morning, it was punted into irrelevance in a heartbeat.
The first signal that life was about to change came from the kitchen where the chef at the prime minister’s residence spotted some alarming images on the TV. He called Chrétien’s executive assistant, Bruce Hartley to come see what was unfolding.
Hartley told Chrétien that New York’s twin towers had been hit.
Chrétien and Goldenberg turned on the TV and watched in shock.
Before the day was out, decisions that turned history were made.
American planes were allowed to land in Canada, leading to a historic gesture of hospitality in Gander, N.L., but the prime minister would also have to decide whether to authorize the shooting down of a New York-bound passenger jet feared hijacked and headed to Vancouver. He would refuse to allow the Parliament buildings to be evacuated because the sergeant-at-arms had spotted an illegally parked car, with a package in the front seat, on the grounds. He would rightly tell his ambassador to Washington, Michael Kergin, that the world would be changed forever, offer condolences to George W. Bush and quietly donate blood.
Within days, Chrétien would call a three-minute silence at a Parliament Hill memorial attended by 1,000, the most “moving moment of my political life.” But he would have to deal with a perceived snub from Bush, an erroneous report that hijackers had transited through Canada and a crisis at our border.
In the months and years that followed, decisions that would lead to the death of 158 Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan were made but a refusal to join Bush’s folly in Iraq would go down as a watershed moment for Canadian sovereignty.
But first Chrétien and others would have to deal with the immediate chaos and fog of an unprecedented attack on a neighbour and wonder whether we might too be in the crosshairs The skies had brought terror. Other key players vividly remember that morning.
The clerk of the Privy Council, Mel Cappe, was meeting with Jim Carr, now a Manitoba MP, then the president of the Manitoba Business Council. Cappe’s executive assistant Ariel Delouya came bursting into the room without knocking: “You better come see this.”
Transport minister David Collenette was delivering a speech at an aviation conference in Montreal when he was handed a note asking him to wind up his speech: “There’s been a tragedy.”
External affairs minister John Manley was returning to Canada after a European trip. He could finally kick back and relax. He was watching a movie — “Enemy at the Gates” — when he and his travelling companion, Scarborough-Guildwood MP John McKay, were asked to come to the flight deck.
The Commons was not sitting that week. There wasn’t a single cabinet minister in Ottawa. But Cappe, Collenette and Manley would play crucial roles, that day and beyond.
In the immediate moments, security sought to rush Chrétien out of 24 Sussex Drive, but he refused. The residence was an easy target on the river. His wife, Aline, also refused to be moved to the Harrington Lake retreat, demanding to stay with her husband.
Cappe advised Chrétien to proceed with a planned trip to Halifax, but Chrétien told him they were facing “a very big deal” and he would stay in Ottawa.
Would Ottawa or a major Canadian city come under attack? It was a concern for Chrétien and everyone else that day, but Chrétien said he believed the hijackers had limited manpower and resources and he felt in the unlikely event another strike was coming, it would more likely be directed to a European capital, not Canada.
He called Canadian ambassador Michael Kergin following the attack on the Pentagon. “The world will not be the same anymore,” he told the ambassador.
He wouldn’t have a substantive talk with Bush until days later when Goldenberg recalls the U.S. president telling Chrétien:
“I have to manage the blood lust of the American people.”
In Montreal, Collenette left the podium and immediately learned the U.S. had closed its airspace, and he had to make split-second decisions about flights bound for Canada. Some 250 had been ordered to make U-turns and head back to Europe, but another 224 were headed to North America — and barred from the U.S. The decision was made to allow them to land in Atlantic Canada, along with a handful in Vancouver, but these were decisions made by the minister and his deputy in minutes, hurtling along Highway 417 in a van back to Ottawa with phones running low on battery power. When he talked to Chrétien later in the day, the prime minister asked if the planes could be flying again that evening. Collenette explained the long-term disruption they were facing.
He also had to get Manley back. He gave specific instructions that his flight should be allowed to proceed to Toronto and Manley remembers the eeriness of an empty Pearson International Airport as he and his fellow passengers disembarked.
Manley had listened to the BBC with the pilots over the Atlantic.
“We landed to reports of a bomb outside the U.S. State Department in Washington, the mystery of the plane crashing in Pennsylvania and the Pentagon being hit.”
But there was another crisis heaped atop this one that had Manley’s stomach churning.
There were erroneous reports that the hijackers had come in through Canada.
It was a report that refused to die, no matter how many times Manley and others denied it. One denial was followed by another retelling of the lie, this coming on the heels of the Millennium Bomber who was arrested in Washington state after crossing from Canada with bomb components he planned to use to blow up the Los Angeles airport.
Senior American political leaders from both parties spread the disinformation, including New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, who didn’t apologize to Manley and Canadians when she was told she was wrong. Instead, she told the Canadian minister that, well, even if they hadn’t come from Canada, they could have.
There was the crisis of a suddenly closed border and a U.S. call for a security perimeter wrapping all of North America in a protective bubble.
Cappe kept the lines of communication open that day and that included three or four calls with Chrétien.
“This guy was about as calm as anyone I ever dealt with,” Cappe recalled. “I had to decide whether to go to
24 or not or just deal with him on the phone.
If I saw he was going to be jittery and overreacting I would have to go there ... but as the day progressed I saw him getting calmer.”
But there was a gut-wrenching moment.
Thirty minutes after the second tower went down, KAL Flight 85 from Seoul to New York had reported being hijacked as it steamed toward North American airspace and a refuelling stop in Alaska. American F-15s were shadowing the plane and it was told it could not land in Anchorage but there was suddenly a real fear it could divert to Vancouver and perhaps replicate the earlier attacks in New York and Washington.
The Americans needed Canadian permission to down the flight with 211 passengers aboard.
“They asked me, ‘should we shoot down the plane?’ ” Chrétien recalled.
“I said ‘yes, get ready to shoot the plane down. But don’t do it before calling me back.’ And they didn’t have to call me back.” It landed without incident in Whitehorse, the entire drama chalked up to a communications failure, but it stayed with Chrétien.
“You know that people will die. But you don’t want to have a city in flames. It is the type of decision that you are confronted with. Of course, you think ‘Oh my God.’ But it’s your job. You just try to make the right decision.”
Manley was tapped to solve every crisis and his stature grew. Within months of 9/ 11 he had become deputy prime minister and was tapped to head Canada’s homeland security. His career trajectory was radically altered on 9/11, but it didn’t end the way he hoped.
“It gave me the confidence that if I had the opportunity, I could do the top job,” Manley recalled. “I felt calm and resolved like I could manage all this.” But it was not to be. Manley dropped out of the Liberal leader race in 2003 when Paul Martin bulldozed his way to victory.
On reflection, Chrétien said he was most proud everyone that day kept calm and did their jobs.
“We let the planes land in Canada and I was very proud of the people of Gander. That will be remembered forever.
“That was Canada at its best.”
“This guy was about as calm as anyone I ever dealt with ... as the day progressed I saw him getting calmer.”
MEL CAPPE FORMER CLERK OF THE PRIVY COUNCIL, ON JEAN CHRÉTIEN