Thirty-Eight Planes

On the morning of September 11, 2001, American airspace closed with hundreds of aircraft still in the air over the Atlantic. They had to land somewhere.

Thirty-eight of them landed at Gander, Newfoundland, a town of about ten thousand people.

Roughly sixty-seven hundred passengers came off those planes, nearly doubling the population of the town in a single afternoon. Gander took them in. Schools, church halls, private homes. Residents cooked for them, did their laundry, filled prescriptions, walked their pets, opened their houses to strangers from a country that had just been attacked and did not yet know how badly.

They did this for days. They refused payment.

The following day, NATO invoked Article Five, the mutual defense clause, the single promise that the entire alliance exists to keep. It was the first time in the organization's history. It has not happened since. Seventy-seven years, one invocation, and it was on behalf of the United States.

One hundred and fifty-eight Canadian soldiers died in Afghanistan.

This week, Canada is fighting eight hundred and ninety-six active wildfires. Eighty-one are burning out of control in Ontario alone. It is their third consecutive catastrophic season, and the smoke has reached roughly a hundred million Americans.

The president of the United States responded by announcing that America is being "invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air," and that the cost will be added to the tariffs Canada already pays. A sitting U.S. senator announced legislation to sanction Canada and Canadian officials for what he called an atrocity.

An atrocity. For fire.

That same week, according to the U.S. Forest Service, two American wildfires burning in Minnesota crossed the border into Canada.

They took in our people when we were burning.

We are threatening to sanction them because they are.