YORKTON, Sask. — As the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks is marked, Yorkton aviation operator Don Ingham remembers the day Saskatchewan's Living Skies fell silent as airspace across Canada was shut down in the hours after 9/11.
For a province where contrails regularly streak overhead and aircraft chatter fills radio frequencies, the sudden quiet was unlike anything Ingham had experienced before.
"It seemed very real, but then very pretend," recalled Ingham, owner-operator of Leading Edge Aviation at Yorkton Regional Airport. "We had a hard time believing that this was happening."
Ingham was leaving his home on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when a local radio report broke news that an aircraft had struck one of New York City's Twin Towers. Moments later came reports that a second plane had hit the other tower.
By the time he arrived at the airport, television coverage was showing the unfolding attacks and federal authorities were moving quickly to shut down Canadian airspace.
"We were relying on fax machines an awful lot, not emails," he said. "My fax machine was ringing constantly with faxes coming in from the federal government or Transport Canada telling us that all Canadian airspace is closed and we are not to fly under any circumstances."
The closure brought aviation activity to a standstill.
Ingham, whose company provides flight training and fuel services, said scheduled flights were cancelled and aircraft remained on the ground.
"There was no activity on the radio," he said. "We monitor several frequencies here in our office and there was very little discussion at all in the sky."
What struck him most was looking upward.
"Every day when you look up, you'll see condensation trails from jet airliners that fly over our area because it's a major flight path from one side of the country to the other," he said. "That all stopped."
The quiet skies over Yorkton mirrored what aviation officials were experiencing across the country.
Doug Mein, then Transport Canada's director of air navigation services and airspace, was attending a conference in Edmonton when he learned of the attacks. Returning to Ottawa aboard a small jet later that day, he listened to air traffic control frequencies that had fallen largely silent, according to a Transport Canada account published years later.
Mein described hearing almost nothing over the radio as the aircraft crossed Canada.
Then, while flying over Yorkton, Mein heard something he never expected to hear outside a military exercise: an Emergency Security Control of Air Traffic, or ESCAT, call.
The Emergency Security Control of Air Traffic plan, known as ESCAT, is a joint Department of National Defence and Transport Canada framework used during air defence emergencies. Military authorities, including NORAD's Canadian region commander, determine what restrictions are needed, while civilian air traffic controllers implement them through NAV CANADA.
According to NAV CANADA, Saskatchewan, including the airspace over Yorkton, falls within the plan's Winnipeg zone, which is managed through the Winnipeg Area Control Centre.
The Transport Canada account says hearing the ESCAT call confirmed to Mein and those travelling with him that NORAD had moved to emergency operations following the attacks.
"I had trained and practised in my field to issue these calls in the event of war, but never really expected to deliver or even hear the real thing," Mein later recalled in the Transport Canada account.
On Sept. 11, Transport Canada ordered the closure of Canadian airspace, while NAV CANADA controllers safely guided aircraft already in the air, including international flights diverted from the United States to airports across the country.
Many of those diversions landed at larger centres in Eastern Canada, including Gander, N.L., where residents famously opened their community to thousands of stranded travellers.
Ingham remembers watching that response unfold.
"I don't think the U.S. realized at the time how much Canada stepped in to give them a hand," he said.
For those in aviation, the empty radios and grounded aircraft underscored the enormity of what was happening.
"It was a feeling that, boy, this is pretty close," Ingham said. "We hear about these sorts of things on the news, but now we're watching it almost live on television and not too terribly far away. 'Who's next?' is what we were wondering."
The business interruption lasted days, and the federal government later offered compensation for losses suffered during the shutdown. Ingham said his company chose not to pursue it.
"Our take on that was, you know what, we're still here," he said. "People have been much more affected by this than we ever were."
Twenty-five years later, Ingham believes the attacks changed aviation permanently. Security measures increased, cross-border travel became more regulated and the industry's approach to safety evolved.
Yet the memory that lingers most is not the restrictions or the disruption to business.
It is the silence.
The contrails were gone, radio frequencies had fallen quiet and the steady stream of aircraft crossing Saskatchewan had disappeared. In the Land of Living Skies, Sept. 11 was the day the skies went quiet.
