August 2026
It’s been 25-years since that horrible day. It was a sunny September morning in 2001 when a group of al-Qaeda operatives hijacked three passenger jets, crashing two of them into the World Trade Center Towers in New York City, with the third crashing into a field in Pennsylvania after the passengers apparently tried to re-take the jet, killing 2996 innocent civilians.
Since that day, more than 2,000 first responders, emergency workers and residents of New York city have died of illnesses related to exposure to the air that was contaminated with substances such as pulverized building materials, microscopic shards of glass and asbestos during the attack and the months after the attack during the clean-up; everything from respiratory illnesses to cancer.
Monuments have been dedicated to the memory of those who died that horrible day all across America and Canada, including two in the small southern Ontario town of Meaford. Located 100 miles north-west of Toronto, on the shores of Georgian Bay, the town of just under 12, 000 residents was one of the many municipalities that sent emergency services workers to help with the search for survivors and recovery of the remains of those who died that day. In gratitude, a 20 foot, one tonne section of a twisted steel structural beam that was recovered from Ground Zero was given to the Meaford Fire Department for use as a memorial display outside their fire hall.
Meaford was just one of six fire departments in Canada given structural beams as a thank you for their help and devotion that horrible day. A special dedication ceremony was held outside the fire hall on 11 September 2012.
This is the second artifact from Ground Zero to be given to Meaford for monument purposes. On 11 May 2002, A cross cut form a beam from the WTC was presented to the Town of Meaford by Inspector Gene Ceccarelly of the NY-NJ Port Authority Police and incorporated into a monument in nearby Beautiful Joe Park.
The monument in Beautiful Joe Park, a park dedicated to our four-legged companions, is dedicated to the canine members of the search and rescue teams that searched through the ruins for survivors and those lost for weeks in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on New York City. Two special plaques are dedicated to the memory of Sirius, the canine partner of Officer David Lim, and to Bretange, the last known canine searcher at Ground Zero at the time of dedication in 2002.
The complete list of names of those lost on 11 September 2001 can be found here: https://www.911memorial.org/names-memorial-0.
Sources: Meaford Fire Department to Host September 11th Memorial Service | The Meaford Independent, 9/11 Memorial Unveiled | Bayshore Broadcasting News Centre.
