Despite that risk, despite U.S. President Donald Trump and his tariffs and talk about the 51st\u00a0state, and his renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America<\/a>, Kennedy says he would do it again in a heartbeat.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d do it today, I\u2019d do it tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n Without hesitation, they drove towards a disaster that was still unfolding: 19 hijackers, four planes, nearly 3,000 dead. The World Trade Center towers in New York had been reduced to rubble, a section of the Pentagon was in flames. There was a feeling that anything could happen next.\u00a0<\/p>\n Retired firefighter Scott Walker is pictured at his home in Cambridge, Ont., on Thursday. Walker was one of four Brampton firefighters who piled into a Toyota Corolla on 9\/11 to drive to New York to help look for survivors among the debris that was once the World Trade Center towers.<\/p>\n Laura Proctor for the Toronto Star<\/p>\n Why four Canadian firefighters drove south on 9\/11<\/p>\n Kennedy and his colleagues Scott Walker and Rob Morrison said they volunteered because they wanted to help their firefighter brethren, because they had family living in the U.S., or because they had travelled in the States and had always been met with kindness.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was none of this animosity that sort of exists right now,\u201d said Morrison, who was 25 the day they drove to New York, and is now three years from retirement.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cAll I knew, especially as a young guy, was that these are our neighbours. I\u2019d been there many times, never New York City, but to the U.S., many times. Everybody\u2019s always been awesome, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n On Sept. 11, 2001, the firefighters arrived at the border to find armed guards instead of the generally friendly, lemme-check-your-licence customs officials. Once the border guards learned who they were and where they were headed, they waved them through, telling them to speed up if they needed to.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s not a cop from here to New York City that will pull you over,\u201d the guards told them.<\/p>\n \u201cI said thanks for the tip,\u201d said Kennedy. \u201cSo we went about 140.\u201d<\/p>\n Just before entering New York City in the early morning of Sept. 12, they pulled over at a rest stop for a couple of hours of sleep. Two men slept in the front seats of the Corolla. Two slept on picnic tables under the stars.<\/p>\n They woke up and drove towards the black smoke in the sky.<\/p>\n Scott Walker holds a photo he took with then-president George W. Bush at Ground Zero in Manhattan, on Sept. 14, 2001.<\/p>\n Laura Proctor for the Toronto Star<\/p>\n What awaited in New York City<\/p>\n In New York, they somehow ended up with an FBI escort to the Tribeca fire station in Manhattan, less than a mile north of the site.<\/p>\n \u201cWe didn\u2019t know if we\u2019d be just staying there cooking for them and helping out there, or if we\u2019d be handing out orange juice 30 blocks from the rubble,\u201d said Walker, who is now retired.\u00a0<\/p>\n The firefighters there were rough, in mourning. Their lieutenant, Vincent G. Halloran, 43, had been killed leading evacuation efforts in the North Tower the day before.<\/p>\n Their captain told the Brampton firefighters to jump in the back of a pickup truck. They were on their way to the site by 8 a.m. on Sept. 12.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was 10 acres of total devastation,\u201d said Kennedy. \u201cThe first thing we see is a fire pumper truck upside down, cut in half. There were mountains of debris\u00a0\u2014 metal, concrete, dust, papers. There was a kind of white haze, smoke, that would come and go. There were fires burning way deep underground.\u201d<\/p>\n The Brampton firefighters are pictured upon their return from New York City. From left, Neil Kennedy, Rob Morrison, Brian Gorman and Scott Walker.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ken Faught\/Toronto Star file photo<\/p>\n Kennedy and his colleagues were part of a bucket brigade, moving debris in search of survivors.<\/p>\n \u201cI estimated there were about 2,000 of us in there like little ants among this huge, 10-acre debris field doing that same thing,\u201d said Kennedy.<\/p>\n They wore masks to protect against the smoke.<\/p>\n They worked with firefighters from around the U.S. who had also driven to New York to help\u00a0\u2014 all flights had been grounded. Kennedy, who spent some time living in the U.S. as a child, remembers working with a team from Indiana.<\/p>\n The men remember people waiting outside the roadblocks to the site, carrying pictures of their loved ones, asking firefighters for help.<\/p>\n \u201cHave you seen my son? Look for my brother, look for my wife,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n The men worked among cadaver dogs<\/a>, whose feet were being cut by the debris. The dogs had to be fitted with booties to keep working.<\/p>\n Walker was part of a team that searched the subway system for a rumoured train full of people, which turned out to be just that, a rumour.<\/p>\n \u201cI will say I have never seen rats that big.\u201d<\/p>\n All three men remember the kindnesses extended by strangers during their time there\u00a0\u2014 the reporter who loaned them a cellphone when theirs wasn\u2019t working; the FBI agents who got them to the firehouse; the Marriott hotel that put them up for free. Their brothers at the station.<\/p>\n None of them have suffered health effects as a result of working on the site. Brian Gorman, the fourth firefighter in the car that night, could not be reached by the Star.<\/p>\n Twenty-five years later, Walker points out how often Canadians routinely pitch in to help Americans.\u00a0Canadian linesmen<\/a>\u00a0travelled south to help restore power after hurricanes and ice storms. Hundreds of firefighters travelled to California in 2020 to help put out wildfires<\/a>. The residents of Gander opened their homes to more than 6,500 stranded airline passengers whose flights had been diverted to their small Newfoundland town.<\/p>\n \u201cI just kind of wish that they would respect Canada a little bit more,\u201d said Walker. \u201cWe\u2019re like a brother and sister.<\/p>\n \u201cOr appreciate that we are here, we\u2019re all human, and Canadians will do it anyway. They\u2019ll still help out because that\u2019s the way Canadians are.\u201d<\/p>\n Kennedy operates on a value system unconnected to what politicians say and what politicians do. To him, there\u2019s them and us: the people at the top, making decisions, and the people at the bottom, who live with the consequences. \u00a0<\/p>\n He will always act out of the humanity he feels for all the people like him, who live with the consequences, and that will never change, not even in retirement among the palm trees of the B.C. capital.<\/p>\n \u201cTomorrow, if someone said: \u2018We need help in Washington, we got spare bunker gear,\u2019 I wouldn\u2019t hesitate,\u201d said Kennedy.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d be over there in two hours.\u201d<\/p>\n Morrison would do it again, too, despite the political noise.<\/p>\n \u201cI wouldn\u2019t even hesitate. My view on this is your politics is your politics, that has nothing to do with the human aspect of things,\u201d Morrison said.<\/p>\n \u201cI do this because I like to help people. They\u2019re just normal people, just like me. They have kids in university, just like me. They have a wife at home who\u2019s going to be worried about them, just like me. Everybody\u2019s got bills to pay.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re all trying to just get by.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Like U.S. president George W. Bush, Brampton firefighter Neil Kennedy was in a classroom on Sept. 11, 2001,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":891761,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194339],"tags":[51759,49,48],"class_list":["post-891760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brampton","tag-brampton","tag-ca","tag-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=891760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891760\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/891761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=891760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=891760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=891760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n
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