Yesterday was cool, with a cold wind and mostly overcast. We heard the thunderous roar of a squadron of fighter planes overhead and wondered why. Today we know why. Not fighter planes per se, though part of the CAF, but the Snowbirds, the aerial acrobatic plane formation brought out for ceremonial events. And they flew yesterday in memory of the twentieth anniversary of that difficult day of the startlingly horrible events that took place in New York City, Washington and Pennsylvania on September 11, 2021. A day no one who was aware and alarmed on that day will ever forget.

Canadian Snowbirds will fly over eastern Ontario and western Quebec in the coming days. (Colin Perkel/The Canadian Press)

We 'witness' such unbelievably atrocious events at a remove, brought to us in 'live action' through the miracle of human technological advances in communication. Whoever was aware watched the sinister drama unfold on their television screens that fateful day, and there likely wasn't one person who witnessed at such a remove the horrible events unfolding who didn't then state in fear and sadness that the world will have been changed irrevocably as a result of those events.

Humanity is resilient. Great natural and man-made upheavals have taken place throughout our time as an evolving species, and somehow we have managed to integrate those events into our group memory as we advanced into the future. Events of great and grave impact on humanity and the veneer of civilization under which we strive to overcome our less than angelic natures occur with unwholesome regularity. We never cease to be amazed at the depths of misery into which we can be plunged by the hostile, malevolent plans of other human beings.

I remember on that day twenty years ago, seeing our granddaughter off to primary school in her school bus, shaken but determined despite our fragile state of unsettled misery, making an effort to assure one another that not too much has changed after all, other than yet another instance of humanity destabilizing its already fraught existence, but life goes on. We gathered our two little dogs and made off for our usual hike through the ravine.

Our next door neighbours both of whom worked with CSIS, wanted to talk and discuss the situation with us, both in a state of nervous tension when they arrived home, just as we were returning from the ravine. In some ways there is such clarity of memory of that day's events it's startling to realize it has been two decades since it all took place.

We set out for the ravine this afternoon, as beautifully calm a late summer day as it had been twenty years earlier, and made our way through the forest trails with our current little companions, fully aware of the heartache that the families of those who perished on that day would be reliving. But nature scooped us into her mesmerizing grace and captured our attention as we made our way along, attentive to Jackie and Jillie, and the growing evidence of summer preparing to welcome fall.

Then the same thunderous roar of jets broke the serene silence of the forest as the Snowbirds returned to their mission of memorialization. This time they passed numerous times back and forth over the broad canvass of the sky filling with clouds over the sea of blue. The roar of the planes as they arrived and departed from the more immediate lofty vicinity a stark reminder that peace all too often has its rendezvous with war. 

That serenity can suddenly morph into the chaos of skyborne fighter jets streaking toward a meeting with destiny.