25 Years Later - Shawn Hooper  🔗 **Source:** [25 Years Later - Shawn Hooper](https://shawnhooper.ca/2026/09/11/25-years-later/) > [!note]+ Document Notes > --- > tags: [nine-eleven, personal-testimony, collective-memory, ottawa, oral-history, wordpress-community, flashbulb-memory] > author: Shawn Hooper > source: shawnhooper.ca > reference: https://shawnhooper.ca/2026/09/11/25-years-later/ > date created: 2026-09-11 > --- > > [!info] Generated analysis — not the author's words. Sections below are machine-written > > from the captured source. Only text inside `> [!quote]` blocks is verbatim from the author. > > Do not quote or attribute any other line to the named author. > > [!note] On reading this source > > This is a 336-word personal recollection of a mass-casualty event, published on its 25th > > anniversary. Several sections of this template — Methodology, DARVO, Fallacies — exist to > > interrogate argumentative or adversarial texts. Applying them adversarially here would be a > > category error and a discourtesy. They are filled in honestly, which mostly means recording > > that they do not apply and saying why. The analytical work that *is* appropriate to a memoir > > is source-criticism of a different kind: what a first-person account is good evidence for, > > and what it is not. > # 🏷️ Title: 25 Years Later > ## 🧭 Table of Contents > - [📝 Summary](#-summary) > - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) > - [🗒️ Notes](#️-notes) > - [📚 References](#-references) > - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#️-paraphrase) > - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) > - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) > - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) > - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) > - [❓ Questions](#-questions) > - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) > - [💡 Implications](#-implications) > - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) > - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) > - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) > - [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) > - [🛡️ DARVO Analysis](#️-darvo-analysis) > - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) > ### 🔗 References > **The post contains no outbound links.** Verified by extracting every `<a href>` from the captured HTML — the result is zero. For a personal recollection this is unremarkable rather than a defect; the piece cites nothing because it claims nothing beyond its author's own memory. Named entities that a reader might want to look up (OC Transpo route 95, the Mackenzie King Bridge, *Come From Away*, Gander) are left unlinked. > ## 📝 Summary > - **What happened.** Shawn Hooper published a short first-person recollection of 11 September 2001 on its 25th anniversary, written from Ottawa. The account runs from a phone call on a bus to a boardroom of colleagues watching two projection screens, to an unusable internet, to a photograph taken from the top of the World Trade Center three years earlier. > - **Why it matters.** It is primary-source testimony, deliberately un-analysed. The author says outright that the purpose is recording rather than arguing. Its value is as a dated, located, named account of one ordinary day from a vantage point — Canada, age 20, an office tower — that most published 9/11 writing does not occupy. > - **Key stakeholders.** The author; readers who share the generational memory; the Ottawa and WordPress communities where this will circulate; and, at one remove, the people of Gander, whose story the author is going to see staged that evening. > - **Risks and tradeoffs.** None in the ordinary sense. The reading caution is evidentiary, not ethical: a recollection 25 years after the fact is strong evidence of what the author remembers and weak evidence of exact sequence. The author flags this themselves with "to my recollection." > - **Bottom line.** A short, unadorned memory piece that does one thing deliberately and does it well. The most analytically interesting line is not about the towers at all — it is the observation that the early web collapsed under the load, which is a technical detail almost nobody recorded at the time and which dates the era precisely. > ## 📖 Main Content > The structure is a sequence of remembered images, each introduced with "I remember," and the piece makes no attempt to connect them into an argument. The movement is outward then inward: from the bus and the phone call, to the shared boardroom, to the author's own desk and a failed attempt to get online, and finally home to a photograph that made the event personal in a way the broadcast had not. > Three details do real work. The **phone call from a parent** places the author as a recipient of news rather than a witness — the ordinary position for almost everyone. The **two projection screens, one English and one French**, locate the scene unmistakably in Ottawa without the author having to explain it, and the aside "as we do here" makes the bilingualism unremarkable rather than exotic. The **unusable web** is the detail a historian would want: it records a network that could not absorb a simultaneous national demand, which is a fact about 2001 infrastructure that has no equivalent today. > The piece closes twice. First with a statement of purpose — the author wanted to write down what they recalled, and says so plainly. Then with a deliberate turn to something lighter: a note to a friend marking 25 years as a commercial pilot on the same date. That second ending is doing something specific, and it is not accidental. > ### 🗒️ Notes > - **The framing device, stated in the second line.** The post names its own genre before doing anything else. > > [!quote] > > It was one of those “do you remember where you were?” events in life. > - **The Ottawa specifics.** OC Transpo route 95 on the Mackenzie King Bridge, heading downtown; an office on the 25th floor; a boardroom with two projection screens, one English and one French. All internally consistent with the stated location, and the bilingual detail is offered as routine rather than explained. > - **The sequence, with its own uncertainty marked.** The author writes "To my recollection, I got there shortly after the second plane it the towers" — hedging the timing rather than asserting it. That hedge is the piece's most methodologically careful moment, and it is worth noting that a memoirist flagged it unprompted. > - **The line a historian would want.** Almost no contemporaneous personal account records infrastructure failure, because at the time it read as annoyance rather than as data. > > [!quote] > > The web was unusable. Everyone was trying to go online, and the still early network connections couldn’t keep up. > - **The silence.** One sentence, standing alone as its own paragraph, doing more than the surrounding description. > > [!quote] > > I remember the silence in the room. > - **The photograph.** The author describes going home and looking at a picture they had taken from the top floor of the towers on a trip to New York three years earlier. The text reads "in 19988" — a typo for 1998, and the arithmetic confirms it: 2001 minus three years is 1998. The timeline is sound; only the character count is wrong. > > [!quote] > > on a trip to NYC in 19988, on the top floor of those towers > - **The retrospective judgment, offered without inflation.** The author does not claim to have understood the significance at the time — the opposite. > > [!quote] > > Looking back, my 20 year old brain had no way of understanding how much that day would change the world. > - **The evening ahead.** A local production of *Come From Away*, the musical about Gander, Newfoundland taking in passengers from diverted flights. The connection is left to speak for itself. > > [!quote] > > I imagine it’s going to feel a little more poignant tonight. > - **Stated purpose, in the author's own words.** This is the sentence that governs how the rest should be read. > > [!quote] > > That’s all, I just wanted to write what I recalled of that day, not that I’ll ever be able to forget it. > - **The closing turn.** A note to a friend, Chris, marking 25 years as a commercial pilot to the day. Placed deliberately after the stated ending, marked "on a lighter note," with a parenthetical "(seriously….)" acknowledging the collision of the two anniversaries. It is the only moment of levity and the author signals awareness that it sits oddly. > - **Two further typos**, noted once and not dwelt on: "an airplane at hit" and "the second plane it the towers." Neither aff  9/11 was 25 years ago today. It was one of those “do you remember where you were?” events in life. I remember being on my way to work, riding OC Transpo’s route 95 bus downtown. The bus was on the Mackenzie King Bridge in Ottawa, when my Nokia cell phone rang. It was my dad calling, telling me that an airplane at hit the World Trade Center in New York. By the time I got up to my office on the 25th floor of a downtown office tower, everyone was packed into the big boardroom, which had two large projection screens on the wall (one in English, one in French, as we do here), both broadcasting the news. To my recollection, I got there shortly after the second plane it the towers. I remember the silence in the room. I remember going to my desk at some point and trying to get updates online. The web was unusable. Everyone was trying to go online, and the still early network connections couldn’t keep up. I remember going home that night and looking at a photograph I had taken 3 years prior, on a trip to NYC in 19988, on the top floor of those towers. Trying to grasp what had happened there that morning. Looking back, my 20 year old brain had no way of understanding how much that day would change the world. Tonight we’re going to see a local production of *Come From Away*, a story of the people of Gander, Newfoundland, who took in stranded passengers when their flights were diverted to this small town on September 11th. I imagine it’s going to feel a little more poignant tonight. That’s all, I just wanted to write what I recalled of that day, not that I’ll ever be able to forget it. *Before I hit send – I want to add that, on a lighter note, if my friend Chris is reading this, Happy 25th anniversary, to the day, of being a commercial pilot (seriously….)*, 25 Years Later - Shawn Hooper, Shawn Hooper, 01m28hzsn187r8xmxg8xn77cd8.