Twenty-five years after September 11, Gander Social and Come From Away Gander (NL) are coming together for #GoodFromGander. It’s an homage to the people who opened their doors, and an effort to help the story they inspired leave a lasting legacy in Gander.
We’ll share stories from the people and community at the centre of it all, invite Canadians to share their own stories of welcome and kindness, and raise money to help keep the play Come From Away onstage in the place where the story began.
TL;DR
- We’re commemorating 25 years since September 11 with #GoodFromGander
- Share a story of welcome using #GoodFromGander to carry forward the spirit of people showing up, making room and looking out for one another → Share your story on Gander Social
- Help build a lasting legacy for the community that inspired the story by supporting the continued production of Come From Away in Gander → Donate to help keep Come From Away in Gander
The nutshell: share some good, help keep some of it in Gander… and put the kettles on.
Paying homage, paying it forward
Our first post on Gander was a line from Come From Away:
It felt like a good place to begin.
Still does.
The name Gander is, in part, an homage to Gander, Newfoundland and Labrador. A place that became known around the world for offering safe harbour to thousands of strangers during the September 11 attacks.
At a moment of extraordinary fear and uncertainty, people opened their doors because other people needed them.
That spirit of goodwill, cooperation and welcome is the heart of the community on Gander Social.
#GoodFromGander is an expression of it.
The open doors came first
While thinking far too hard about that first post from the official Gander account (as one does) we started reading through scripts of Come From Away.
We kept coming back to the way the story handles attention.
At the beginning, Janice is the new local reporter for Rogers TV, trying to make sense of what is happening in her own community. Then the story grows. The outside world calls. The cameras show up. The gaze widens from Gander to the world.
The attention came later. The open doors came first.
The people of Gander and the surrounding communities weren’t thinking about headlines, Broadway or what anyone might be saying about them 25 years later.
People needed beds. Food. Rides. Phones. Showers. Somewhere to sit. Somewhere to sleep. A warm cuppa.
Kettles went on. Barbecues were fetched and fired up. Schools, community halls and homes opened.
Nobody stopped to ask whether these strangers belonged.
People were there. They needed help. So people helped.
Kindness, in this case, wasn’t one grand gesture. It was thousands of ordinary decisions to welcome, make room and get on with what needed doing.
The rest came after.
A lasting legacy in Gander
Come From Away carried Gander’s story around the world. It moved people, inspired acts of kindness and helped people everywhere imagine a more welcoming world.
Us included.
That story has done a great deal of good. It has also created enormous cultural and commercial value.
The people and place at its centre should share more fully in what it created.
Since 2022, Come From Away has been performed each summer in Gander. The production brings the story home, draws people to the town, supports tourism and the local economy, showcases Newfoundland talent and has the potential to become a lasting cultural anchor for the region.
Keeping the production in Gander is one concrete way to ensure that what began there continues to give something back.
Legacy is about so much more than awareness and attention.
It’s making sure the people and place behind the story can carry it forward and continue to benefit from what they inspired.
A warm embrace in a chilly moment
There is, to put it mildly, a bit of a chill in the air between Canada and the United States. This, of course, is especially evident to anyone following (and how could you not be) the economic aggression directed at us by the current U.S. government.
We’re having serious conversations in this country about sovereignty, culture and what it means to look after our own. And the events of the last few days have made it all that much more poignant.
Looking after our own and caring about others aren’t mutually exclusive. It’s always been our position that sovereignty does not mean solitude. Quite the opposite in fact. We can take Canadian sovereignty seriously without closing the door behind us. And sovereignty allows us to share the best parts of Canada with the world, while learning from other people and cultures just the same.
Come From Away is a deeply Canadian story. It is also a story about what happens when people arrive from somewhere else and a community makes room for them.
Governments change. Politics change. Relationships get warmer and colder.
Through all that, we can still put the kettle on.
Jillian Keiley, artistic director of the Gander production of Come From Away, described what they’re creating there as a warm embrace.
Given the current temperature, that feels especially welcome.
#GoodFromGander
Through #GoodFromGander, we want to keep the people and place behind the story at its centre while sharing Gander as it was then and as it is today.
And we want to hear from you.
Tell us about someone who welcomed you.
A neighbour who showed up. A stranger who made room. Someone who noticed help was needed and simply got on with it.
Big things. Small things. In-between things.
Because extraordinary kindness is so often made up of ordinary choices.
Share your story in a post on Gander Social and include #GoodFromGander so it becomes part of the Tod Comes From Away feed.
Share your story on Gander Social.
Tod comes from away
We sent storyteller and relentlessly decent Canadian Tod Maffin to Gander to meet people, listen and find some of the stories that can get missed in the wider coverage.
He’s hosting the Tod Comes From Away feed, where he’ll share what he learned, vignettes from the folks he met, and stories from the community.
Help keep Come From Away in Gander
Twenty-five years ago, Gander and the surrounding communities gave what they had. Beds. Food. Rides. Time. A place to land.
What came from that generosity travelled much farther than anyone could have imagined.
Supporting Come From Away in Gander is one way to help some of what grew from that story come home and stay there.
Donate to help keep Come From Away in Gander
Stories travel.
People find themselves in them and make them their own. That’s part of being human.
This story started somewhere.
#GoodFromGander is an homage to the people who opened their doors, and an invitation to keep making that choice wherever you find youself.
Let’s make sure some of it stays in Gander.
