I am a news junkie. I love reading about what’s going on in the world around me, and I try really hard to keep up on current events. I even enjoy reading about past events and thinking: “What was I doing at that time?”. I think a lot of people do. I spent years working with elderly people at nursing homes, listening to them tell me “I was there when …” and “I remember when this happened, I was …”.
Why do people feel the need to connect their lives to large, and often tragic, events in history? Is it a need to feel included or important? Why do we look back at our own lives and tie our experiences and events with those of history?
I really enjoy discussing this topic with friends. I like to explore why we all connect our lives to world events and I love finding out where my friends were at the time of [insert historical event here] and how they experienced or interpreted it compared to me.
So, without further ado, here are some events over the past ten years, and where I was and what I was doing at the time:
September 11, 2001 – Twin Towers Attack – My mom was driving me to school (grade nine) when we heard it live on the radio, then my class watched the news all day long with our social studies teacher. Students were allowed to go home if they were too upset or disturbed. I had to wait for my mom to finish work, so I stayed at school just watching the footage on TV.
December 12, 2003 – Paul Martin replaces Jean Cretian. I was watching TV with my mom. My dad called and we pretended to be Jean Cretian penguins on the phone with each other. It was one of the few happy moments I had with my dad in high school (we’re on excellent terms now – I was just a gigantic brat in high school and always found something to be angry at him for).
December 26, 2004 – I watch the news of the Tsumani that hit the countries along the Indian Ocean instead of going Boxing Day shopping. I mostly just flipped through all of the pictures of the disaster.
April 2, 2005 – Pope John Paul II dies. I was watching the news in my mom’s basement eating popcorn.
April 24, 2005 – Pope Benedict XVI becomes the new pope. I had dinner at Japanese Village with my dad, his wife, and my brother’s for his birthday instead of watching the news. That night we joked about how awkward it is that they appointed a former child Nazi. We made a lot of inappropriate and bad jokes about it. Ah well.
May 25, 2005 – Pete and I start dating. It’s not international news, but personal news. Just to put the years in context, I suppose.
July 20, 2005 – Pete and I are at Nick’s Summer Party, and the hot topic is how Canada has become the fourth country in the world to formally and legally recognize same-sex marriage.
August 29, 2005 – Pete and I meet halfway between our parent’s houses for a walk, and we discuss the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, which we had both watched separately on the news earlier that day.
February 6, 2006 – Steven Harper is elected Prime Minister of Canada. Pete and I watch the election, groan, and switch the channels. We clearly didn’t vote for the conservatives.
July 2006 – Pete and I watch as Italy wins the FIFA World Cup in the living room of his parent’s house. Woot!
February 19, 2007 – Pete and I switch from watching Coupling to the news after reading on Facebook (we were surfing the net while watching Coupling in Pete’s room in his parent’s basement) that Castro is stepping down as Cuba’s leader of 49 years.
April 14, 2007 – A gunman attacks Virginia Tech and 33 people are killed. I’m at NAIT visiting my mom for lunch when it happens.
July 21, 2007 – The last Harry Potter book is released. Pete and I picked up the books on the release date that we had pre-ordered, and we sat on his bed reading for hours, every once in a while looking up at each other to ask what page the other was at.
November 4, 2008 – Obama is elected. Pete and I watch the election and Obama’s victory speech while sitting on the floor (me in front, him behind with his arms around me) of his room in the basement of his parent’s house. We discuss how this must be similar to how my mom felt “Watching History Happen” when she watched the Berlin Wall fall. The same day we watched as Proposition 8 (a bill to repeal California’s decision to make same-sex marriage legal) passes, which is depressing.
December 4, 2008 - Canada’s Governor General Michaëlle Jean agrees to allow Parliament to be prorogued. This causes tons of debate with friends at get-togethers. Our friend Lee sets up a John A. MacDonald was Anti-Canadian and Undemocratic! group on Facebook, on which much hilarity ensues.
June 25, 2009 – Michael Jackson dies. I was at the Public Hearings on the City Centre Airport when a co-worker at NAITSA texted me to tell me he died. Later that day, all of our staff watched the news about it in the lobby of NAITSA’s office.
January 12, 2010 – A 7.0-magnitude earthquake hits Haiti. I watched it on the news from my office at NAITSA and watched the event unfold. It was really sad. I drank hot chocolate.
February 12, 2010 – The Vancouver Olympics open. I watched the video on the BBC of the Georgian Luger, Nodar Kumaritashvili, die as he flew off the track in a training run. Pete and I later discussed that news sites should have violence or shock warnings on videos like that, especially one so graphic. It was a pretty sad way to start the Olympics.
April 14, 2010 – Pete and I flipped through pictures on the BBC of the crazy volcano eruptions of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull that caused so many flight delays. We agree that the photographs of the lightning storms within the plumes of ash are the best.
April 20, 2010 – The BP oil drilling rig explodes and tons of crude oil is released into the Gulf of Mexico. My friend Geoff Tate and I watch the news of this sitting in his office at NAITSA with a couple of coffees. If memory serves me correctly, we then switched to watching YouTube videogame reviews.
July 2010 – Pete and I watch Italy get destroyed early in the FIFA World Cup. I then leave for a conference a few days later in Calgary, and barely watch the rest the games.
October 13, 2010 – I flip to the news immediately after picking Pete up from work to show him that the Chilean workers in the mine were finally rescued and brought to the surface after 69 days of being trapped. Everyone survived, and it was pretty incredible.
March 11, 2011 – A 9.0-magnitude earthquake strikes Japan, causing a devastating tsunami. Hundreds of aftershocks rock the country over the next week. Over 15,000 are killed and over 8000 are missing. My family stays in constant and close contact with my brother, Marc, who was (and still is) living in Japan, South-West of Tokyo.
April 29, 2011 – My mom and I go to a Royal Wedding party at 3:00 a.m. at the Chateau Louis to watch Kate Middleton marry Prince William. She gets nostalgic and tells me all about when she watched Diana marry Prince Charles. It was really fun. We ate a lot of awesome food. That morning, I stayed awake after the wedding and drove to Jasper for my last NAITSA Executive Retreat.
May 1, 2011 – Sitting around the campfire in Jasper with some NAITSA folks late at night, we find out that Bin Laden has been killed.
July 22, 2011 – Norway Twin Attacks. I’m at work at the hospital, in the early morning I go to the BBC and see that a bomb hit Oslo, Norway, and seven people have been killed. On my lunch break, I check the news again, to see about seven people have been killed at a youth camp in Utoeya Island, Norway. Later that afternoon, after picking Pete up from work and going home, I check the news again and am shocked to see that the death count at the shooting on Utoeya Island is at 85. Pete and I read about it. Later we find out that Amy Winehouse has died and discuss how drugs and booze claiming one life is sad, but how senseless violence can cause hundreds of deaths and it’s an immense tragedy that is almost difficult to comprehend.
So I’d love to know…
Where were you or what were you doing during these events?
