CarolC: No you didn't kill the thread. It's just that I wasn't awake to see it when you posted it!

Not only in the US, but also in the UK, that bag would have been treated as a serious threat. In fact, the UK became vigilant about such things before the US did. At first, the US worried about hijackings but not bombs. I think the opposite was true in the UK: bombs came first, then hijackings, or the threat of them. In airports and subway stations, you still hear recorded warnings about unattended luggage.

Actually, it's nice to know that people in Canada are not troubled by such things (or weren't until now). It's kind of like visiting a town where people don't lock their doors.

I remember, years ago, having a friend who grew up on a farm. He told me how shocked he had been when, as a kid, he visited the city and learned about such things as bike locks. "Why would anybody want to lock up their bike?" he thought.

Every time a new kind of precaution becomes commonplace, we lose a little bit of freedom, and we hardly notice it.