Come From Away: How 9/11 brought the world to a tiny Newfoundland town

I sat on a low-slung leather couch that squeaked as I shifted in my seat. Beside me, shelves and cubbyholes were filled with mismatched glasses and liquor bottles – a sign hammered above them read ‘Flynn’s Whiskey Bar’. On the walls, blue-and-sunshine-yellow posters sang the words ‘Come From Away’, while photographs flashed by in sequence on a TV screen: a gymnasium filled with pull-out beds; tables laid for canteen-style dinners; and strangers with arms flung around one another like lifelong friends. 

Twenty-five years earlier, some of those people had been sitting in this very room, in the home of Derm and Dianne Flynn. Across from me, Derm punctuated the slideshow with memories from the wake of 9/11: five extraordinary days that would later inspire the hit musical Come From Away.

“Initially, on the 12th, they came as total strangers,” he recalled, gesturing towards the faces flickering across the television screen. “By day two or so, they were friends… And by the time they were ready to leave, five days later, they were like family.”

On 11 September 2001, the world watched in horror as devastating terror attacks unfolded across the US, with hijacked planes striking New York City’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon outside Washington, DC. The events sent shockwaves around the world, including to Gander, a tiny town on the Canadian island of Newfoundland.

As US airspace closed, 38 aircraft were diverted to Gander International Airport, bringing with them some 6,600 passengers and crew, and swelling the town’s 10,000-strong population by almost 70% within hours. With little warning, locals here and in the surrounding communities scrambled to find somewhere for the unexpected arrivals to sleep, food for them to eat and, eventually, ways to fill the five days that stretched before them as they waited for the skies to reopen. Striking bus drivers returned to work to ferry passengers from the airport, while Gander’s ice rink was turned into an enormous makeshift refrigerator, piled high with food to feed the thousands. Derm and Dianne Flynn, whose lounge I was now sitting in, were among the locals at the forefront of the response.

“Nobody was given any directions,” Derm, former mayor of nearby Appleton, recalled. “We just knew we had to do what we could for those people.”

The diverted passengers, meanwhile, had spent hours sitting on planes, largely unaware of what had happened in the States. They were eventually processed plane by plane, before being loaded onto buses and dispersed across Gander and the surrounding communities. In Appleton, the first busloads of “plane people” (as they came to be affectionately known, since they hailed from all over the world) didn’t arrive until around 2am.

“Nobody was asking any questions about who they were,” Derm continued. “They were just saying: ‘Come in. You with your two kids, you go over there. There’s a blanket and some pillows for you to sleep on…’” 

“They were so dead tired,” Dianne added, stirring a cup of well-brewed tea. “And we are huggers and we were giving them a hug and a handshake when they came in. And that’s probably the most important thing that they were getting because they’re so emotional, they’re so tired, they’re so confused. More than anything, we were trying to assure them that they’re safe.” 

While many of the “plane people” slept in schools and community halls, others found themselves in the homes of local residents. Derm and Dianne both offered strangers a place to stay, without realising the other had done the same.

“So we end up housing six people,” Derm said, shooting his wife a wry smile. “We only had three bedrooms.”

Over the course of the five days, musicians from the community entertained the unexpected guests with guitars and accordions, playing traditional Newfoundland music influenced by generations of settlers from across the Atlantic. Other locals took passengers for boat rides on the region’s forest-fringed lakes and rivers. 

But for Derm and Dianne, the generosity shown during those five days was nothing out of the ordinary – it’s how things have always been done in Newfoundland.

The island has a long history of small, tight-knit communities, the Flynns told me. Long inhabited by Indigenous peoples, Newfoundland saw English fishers make permanent homes in its coves and harbours from the 1600s onwards, joined in growing numbers by Irish migrants during the 1700s. Communities sprouted along the coastline, their lives tied closely to the sea and, ultimately, to one another. People here depended on their neighbours for survival: when boats failed to return, houses burned down or crops failed, the community stepped in and shared what they had.

“Helping each other has been weaved into the fabric [of New Foundland] for centuries,” Derm said. “And when disaster happened, our community was quite ready and willing to open their doors to people.” 

The story had already travelled far beyond Newfoundland by the time I arrived. In 2017, Come From Away opened on Broadway, turning the events of those five days, and the locals and “plane people” caught up in them, into a musical that would go on to be performed around the world. With it came a new wave of visitors to Gander, curious to see the places and meet the people behind the story for themselves.

For years after 9/11, Derm said, there was little in the way of organised tours for those who made their way to Gander – so he and Dianne began welcoming visitors themselves. Meet The Flynns, a bookable experience that sees Derm and Dianne invite travelling guests into their home for tea and storytelling, also began in 2017. 

Derm and Dianne had planned to welcome visitors just a couple of days per week, but demand quickly grew: people were planning trips six months ahead of time and asking to visit at weekends and evenings, they told me. Other experiences followed, including tours and interpretation connected with the airport and local aviation museum, while Come From Away itself eventually returned to Gander as a professional production.

“It’s gone well beyond our expectations of telling the world our story to now welcoming the world…” Derm said, as Dianne nodded in agreement.

In fact, Gander has a long history of welcoming the world, as my guide Patricia Hooper explained when I joined her on a tour of Gander International Airport.

“It’s the airport that built a town,” she said, gesturing around the 1959 International Lounge, which felt caught in the golden age of air travel, its glittering terrazzo floor and angular mid-century furniture still evoking the airport’s heyday. 

She meant it literally, too. The airport arrived first, built in the rugged Newfoundland wilderness in the 1930s, more than a decade before the province became part of Canada, and long before a town existed here. Within a few years, it had become the largest airport in the world. Its position on the far eastern edge of North America made Gander a vital stop for aircraft crossing the Atlantic during the Second World War and in the decades that followed, it was also an important refuelling point for transatlantic flights.

“Gander became known as the ‘Crossroads of the World’,” Patricia explained, as we moved through displays depicting the famous faces who passed through. “Everybody who was anybody was here,” she added, gesturing towards black and white photographs of Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe.

But as aircraft became capable of flying further without refuelling, Gander’s role diminished. Yet the airport still remained large enough to accommodate the sudden influx of aircraft diverted here on 11 September 2001.

Patricia’s tour explored the events of 9/11 too. She guided me around the town’s North Atlantic Aviation Museum, where letters of thanks sent to Gander residents fill the displays and a film recounts the events of those five days. Outside City Hall, we stopped beside a piece of steel recovered from the World Trade Center, now part of a memorial to those who lost their lives. Beside it, a child’s drawing taped to a mailbox shows two hands clasped across the Twin Towers, the flags of Newfoundland and Labrador and the US emblazoned on either arm, alongside the words ‘We Have Your Back’. Finally, she pointed out the Joseph R Smallwood Arts and Culture Centre, where I’d later settle in to watch the Come From Away musical.

Twenty-five years after the events that inspired it, Come From Away was back in Gander for a fourth season. And by now, I knew many of the real stories that unfolded here before the actors even stepped onto the stage – from Nick and Diane Marson, who met and fell in love during those five extraordinary days and later married, to Hannah O’Rourke, who desperately waited for news of her firefighter son, Kevin, who tragically lost his life while responding to the attacks.

There was a crackle of excitement as the stage lit up and the cast burst into “Welcome to the Rock”, a comic opening song that gently pokes fun at Newfoundland’s remoteness and its endlessly changeable weather. But for all the laughter, I noticed that there were already a few glistening eyes around the theatre. 

Twenty-five years on, this story has travelled far beyond this small corner of Newfoundland. But here, in the town that found room for thousands of strangers when the world was at its darkest, it feels particularly powerful. 

The author travelled with support from Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism and Atlantic Canada.