On 9/11 (11/9 to us), I was on the picket line at the Laurier Avenue door to National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa when the president of the Union of National Defence Employees got a phone call from someone who told him that "a plane" had struck one of the towers of the World Trade Centre. I didn't hear any more about it until the big parade of civil servants on strike in the Ottawa-Hull area was crossing the Chaudiere Bridge, heading for a big rally at Place du Portage. That was when the crash of the fourth aircraft was connected to the two that hit the World Trade Centre and the one at the Pentagon. The parade halted, and fell apart as word of the morning's events trickled through the crowd. The vast majority of the strikers simply went back to work. I first saw the famous video footage on a television above the bar in a cafe on the way back to the office.