What’s the point of commemorating the first anniversary of September 11? Not to remind people it happened; no need for that. Nor to honour those who died, since that has never stopped. It can serve, though, to try to gain some insights unavailable right afterward. A year — the rotation of the seasons — is a traditional interval for starting to gain such perspective.

Let me digress. Many Torontonians recently expressed shock and a surprisingly emotional response to the fact that Varsity Stadium on Bloor Street — bear with me — had vanished, almost overnight. You might not have noticed it, but you noticed its sudden absence, partly because it wasn’t a building but a stadium, right in the middle of downtown. They also said they were surprised at their deep, warm memories and the loss they felt. And no one told them it was coming.

You don’t have to point out that Varsity Stadium is no comparison with the World Trade Center. Yet even it moved people deeply, the mere absence of a familiar place. The destruction of September 11 — the WTC, the Pentagon, the planes — was probably the most dramatic event of our times, perhaps all time.

I’m talking about sheer drama, suddenness, violence and symbolism. It wasn’t just that it was transmitted live; even without that, it would have stood as unique, beyond any comparable event.

That’s on the one hand. Now here’s the other: Unique as September 11 was as historical drama, it was utterly typical in its elements of human tragedy, pain and loss. Nothing distinguishes it in those respects from other man-made horrors. It was not more hideous, nor less.

The losses were high, but not so high as the preventable deaths from HIV-AIDS in Africa or the Iraqi kids who die each day due to sanctions. There are the pointless deaths of kids and civilians in Palestine, and from suicide bombings in Israel. There are ongoing massacres by militaries and paramilitaries in Colombia or Guatemala, doggedly reported by Amnesty International and others.

You could even include some of the tolls from flood or earthquake in the developing world, partly attributable to graft, negligence or just lousy priorities. Even if you see September 11 as an example of crazed, criminal hatred, twisted and convoluted by ideology or religion as such things often are, it remains normal, part of a genre.

For this reason, it seems to me, the event ought to have created among Americans a sense of their unity with others and the shared tragedy of preventable human loss.

Instead, for the most part, their sense of loss was exceptionalized, as if these losses were unlike all others and unique to America, a case of pure evil uniquely directed against pure good and so forth.

They have, in other words, confused the uniqueness of the event with the ordinariness of the agony.

I have nothing against The New York Times obituaries on all those who died; but everyone who dies a tragic, unnecessary death deserves as much. I’m not surprised the CBC will devote a full day to it next Wednesday; yet many other events deserve a full day, and never get a mention.

It’s true, disaster must be allowed time to have its immediate impact on those involved, and it was insensitive for some, especially on the left, to swiftly say there was nothing unique in September 11 because others have suffered, too. But after a year, you can start trying to put such events in perspective, and you should.

Otherwise, you miss an opportunity to deepen your insight and extend your humanity.

I am writing these thoughts on the same day I received news from Montreal of the death of a long-time friend, Francine Tardif, from cancer at forty-seven. Francine was an engaged, ample soul. She was an early Quebec separatist but drew away from the movement when it turned less socially radical and devoted her great energies to the causes of Third World people, especially Haitians.

She worked with the satirical magazine Croc, then for fifth-teen years with the Jesuit-sponsored journal of social thought, Relations. She initially beat back her breast cancer and the doctors said her survival was so unlikely she was simply off the charts, statistically.

When we sat on her sunny balcony last fall, she took great joy from some of the good things that had happened in my life. That was her way of avoiding victimhood until the end, rather than gritting her teeth, and I’ve seen others in the same situation do it.

You can say she’s just one person and what has she to do with great historical disasters. But everyone who died September 11 was just one person. You can say she died of natural causes, but who knows, really, about cancer’s environmental component, and so many young women dying of it?

I find myself reaching for clichés like Donne’s, “If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were,” along with, “Ask not for whom the bell tolls etc.” They’re clichés for a reason you know: They hit the spot, strike a chord, stand the test of time.

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.