From a Day of Horror to a Day of Service

At a moment when relations between Canada and the United States have been strained by a bruising trade dispute, the US Consulate General in Toronto hosted a moving commemoration marking the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

I was honored to be among the speakers. In my remarks, I reflected on what our two countries endured that day and what continues to bind us together, while highlighting the extraordinary example of Maureen Basnicki. Her husband, Ken, was one of the 24 Canadians murdered on September 11. In the years since, Maureen has transformed unimaginable loss into public service — helping change Canadian law and working to ensure that September 11 would become not only a day of remembrance, but a Day of Service.

These were my remarks:

Twenty-five years ago today, almost three thousand people were murdered in the September 11 terrorist attacks. Twenty-four Canadians were among them, including Ken Basnicki, who had travelled to New York for a business meeting and never came home to his wife Maureen and their children Erica and Brennan.

To the men who flew those planes, Ken Basnicki may as well have been an American. The terrorists made no distinction, killing citizens of more than ninety countries.

And Canada made no distinction either. Everyone who needed shelter that day was treated as one of our own.

None of that was the performance of an obligation. It was the reflex of family.

Like any family, we have our arguments, and some seasons are harder than others.

But on this 25th commemoration, let us hold on to what is real between our two countries: shared values and shared dangers.

Those dangers include jihadist terrorism, violent extremism of the far right, a radical left that has made common cause with Islamist movements, young men and women radicalized online, and hostile states running campaigns of foreign interference, disinformation and intimidation inside our borders.

As for shared values, that is no better exemplified than in both Canada and the US turning the horror, pain and loss of September 11 into something meaningful and positive: a Day of Service.

My own grandparents were Holocaust survivors. My grandfather was in Auschwitz, my grandmother in Bergen-Belsen. They came to Canada having each lost their entire families.

They had every reason for rage and grief, yet they did not treat their suffering as a license to bomb a German embassy. They worked hard. They raised children. They put good into the world.

That is a choice, and not an obvious one. History is full of people who made the opposite choice, while insisting that their grievance entitled them to it.

Maureen Basnicki made the same choice my grandparents made. She took the worst day of her life and she went to work. She campaigned for a law that allows victims of terrorism to hold terrorist sponsors and perpetrators accountable in Canadian courts. The Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act is on our books today. And she led the effort to have September 11 recognized as a Day of Service, federally and in Ontario.

Think about what that means. She asked that the anniversary of her husband’s murder become a day on which Canadians look after one another.

And she chose service in part because that is what Ken did with his own life. He coached soccer, baseball and skiing, which let him be with his own children and half the neighborhood’s at the same time. He rode in Ride for Sight and was one of its highest fundraisers. The last thing he and Maureen did together was a dragon boat race, raising money for local charities.

Ken was not a saint, and Maureen did not want me to describe him as one. We are not honoring angels this evening. We are honoring real people with ordinary flaws, who chose to give of themselves.

Turning September 11 into a Day of Service is a victory of good over evil and of kindness over cruelty, and it was won by families like the Basnickis who had every reason to choose bitterness but chose service instead.

So let us do what Maureen asked of us. Let us serve, in the ordinary and beautiful ways that Ken did, and let us thank those who serve us, in uniform and out of it, in both our countries.

And finally, let us remember all those whose lives were so cruelly taken twenty-five years ago, Canadian and American alike, and honor them by holding fast to what we share and defending it together.