jars (F)
guarda (I)
ganso (S)
ganter (G)
ganso (P)
newfoundland, canada
There is an old saying: What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. It literally means what’s good for the female goose is equally good for the male gander (that’s what a gander is: a male goose) or what is good for one person should be good for another person. Your host thinks the saying is an older version of “happy wife, happy life”: in other words, if it works for the goose, then the gander should make it work as well. And ganders probably do make it work; as geese are monogamous, staying together until one of them dies.
Geese aren’t shy around humans and in some ways, their behavior with humans resembles that of dogs. They often form bonds with individual humans or other animals and become protective of their people and territory. (Take it from your host, who once had to fend off an angry goose by squeezing its neck! It was Thanksgiving Day so perhaps the goose was a bit sensitive!) And of course, geese travel in flocks (think of those geese on your local golf course) so they are very social.
So, with our Place being Newfoundland, you might think we’re going to discuss the Canada goose (if you want to annoy a serious birder, call it a Canadian goose) or those expensive Canada Goose parkas? No, our topic is Gander International Airport in Gander, Newfoundland.
First, you need to know where Gander is. It’s smack in the middle of Newfoundland, Canada, which is a big island on the north-east coast of Canada. Newfoundland is north of Nova Scotia and Maine and east of Quebec. In fact, it’s so far east, it has its own time zone, half an hour earlier than the rest of North America. Remember the post on the word north which talked about how it was faster for ships to sail through the Northwest Passage because the earth isn’t as wide at the North (and South) Poles as it is at the equator. Well, the same is true for airplanes. An airplane leaving New York City and flying to Paris will fly less distance by flying north-east toward Newfoundland and Greenland and then south-east over Ireland into Paris then flying straight across the Atlantic to Paris. That concept is something called the Great Circle route. And it’s the reason Gander Airport exists.
Newfoundland was on the aviation map after Amelia Earhart became the first women, and the second person (after Charles Lindbergh), to fly across the Atlantic. Amelia left Harbor Grace, Newfoundland on May 20, 1932, and traveled 2,447 miles to Culmore, Londonderry, Ireland. Because Newfoundland is so far north and east, it’s a perfect launching point to fly across the Atlantic. The Canadians began building an airport in Gander in 1936 and several years later, the airfield had four paved runways – the largest airport in the world at the time. But keep in mind that in the two decades before World War II, only 100 planes had crossed the Atlantic — 50 others had tried and failed and 40 people had died in various attempts.
Planes at this time needed lots of fuel and couldn’t make a trans-Atlantic flight without refueling. During World War II, Gander airport became a major staging point for the movement of Allied aircraft to Europe. Allied aircraft used Gander airport for refueling and for maintenance. The first group of planes left Gander in November 1940 and more than 20,000 North American-built fighters and heavy bombers would stop at Gander on their way to the European theatre during World War II. Most of them had a bladder inside the plane, serving as a spare fuel tank, giving the pilots enough fuel to make it across the Atlantic.
After World War II ended, commercial aviation boomed. By the end of 1945, Pan-American World Airways, Trans-World Airline, Trans Canada Airlines (later Air Canada), and British Overseas Airway Corporation (later British Airways) all began regular Atlantic air service through Gander. Since planes still couldn’t cross the Atlantic from say, London to New York, without stopping to refuel, Gander became the stopping point, garnering it the nickname “The Crossroads of the World”. Lots of VIP’s and celebrities landed at Gander airport, including Frank Sinatra and Albert Einstein. At its peak, the airport hosted 13,000 aircraft and a quarter million passengers annually. Given all the celebrities, Gander airport needed a new terminal to replace the decrepit old military buildings from World War II, and in June 1959, Queen Elizabeth II opened up a chic new terminal. By the 1950s, Gander airport was one of the busiest international airports in the world. The Beatles’ first stop in North America wasn’t New York, it was Gander, Newfoundland.
But once the jet age arrived and jets were able to fly across the Atlantic without stopping to refuel, Gander airport lost a lot of those aircraft stops. It was no longer the Crossroads of the World. The airplanes that did keep stopping to refuel were those from Russia and Eastern Europe, heading to Cuba, who couldn’t refuel in the United States. Gander airport became a base for Communist Europe. The stop in Canada was not unnoticed by political refugees and some requested political asylum when their flights stopped at Gander airport. Gander airport continued to be a maintenance stop and, even today, an important stop for the corporate/private jet market, who still do need to refuel to get across the Atlantic.
On September 11, 2001, Gander airport was back in the spotlight. After planes were flown into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, all American air space was closed to flights. Flights heading to the United States from all over the world were diverted and lots landed at airports in Canada. The diversion of commercial aircraft to Canada during 9/11 was dubbed Operation Yellow Ribbon.
Thirty-eight planes, most of them coming from Europe to the East Coast of the United States, carrying almost 7000 passengers and crew, landed in Gander. They sat on the runways for a long time as things were sorted and passengers and crew were eventually allowed to deplane. There was some concern that additional terrorists were onboard these planes so passengers weren’t allowed to claim their luggage. As the planes were landing, the mayor and townspeople of Gander started to prepare to feed and house almost 7000 people, who, as it turned out, stayed for three days. The population of Gander doubled during that time. Gander only had 500 hotel rooms so many of the population took passengers into their homes. Some formed lifelong friendships. It was a positive story in a very difficult time. The story is the subject of a play, Come From Away, which ran on Broadway from 2017 to 2022.
Meanwhile, Mayor Elliott and the people of Gander began to frantically prepare food, shelter and hospitality for the displaced people about to descend on their town.
The diversion of commercial aircraft to Canada during 9/11 was dubbed Operation Yellow Ribbon. Aircraft also ended up in military and civilian airports across Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and British Columbia.
“What was unique [about Gander] was the proportion of the people that live there to the number of temporary refugees that they’d taken in,” said Tuerff.
The population of the town almost doubled over the several days.
“So from my perspective, it appeared that there wasn’t a single person in this town that wasn’t helping out,” added Tuerff. “So that’s what makes this particularly area of Central Newfoundland unique.”
Come from Away is a musical, with book, music and lyrics by Irene Sankoff and David Hein. It is based on the events in the Newfoundland town of Gander during the week following the September 11 attacks, when 38 planes, carrying approximately 7,000 passengers, were ordered to land unexpectedly at Gander International Airport. The characters in the musical are based on actual Gander residents and stranded travelers they housed and fed. Audiences and critics have received the musical as a cathartic reminder of the capacity for human kindness in even the darkest of times[1] and the triumph of humanity over hate.[2]