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From 9/11 Fear to Four Days That Reject Silence

Day 4 · 7:58:27 · Shawn Buckley

  • 📺 On the original September 11 Buckley watched the towers fall and felt the world shift into fear-based public management.
  • 🔓 A quarter-century later he feels the Allison Inquiry marks another shift: the public beginning to reject management by fear.
  • 🗣️ He argues Canadians are storytellers again and that excluding the injured from sharing is cruel; citizens must lead, not wait on government.

September 11 parallel frames the inquiry as breaking fear-driven silence and restoring shared stories.

← Volunteers Who Sorted 1,400 Stories and Built the Room | “We Are All in This Together”: McNair and a Call to Listen →

Transcript

Shawn Buckley · 7:58:27

This is September 11th. It's kind of interesting because it's a day, you know, back the original September 11th But most of us remember where we were. I was eating breakfast at the Overlander Hotel in Williams Lake, British Columbia, rough, rough little town in northern BC, because I had court that morning. And the waitress comes up to me and hands me a phone. And the person on the other end of the phone said, you have to get to a TV right now. So I go up and I watch the plane fly into the second tower. And, and, and I think the first tower fell before I had to go to court. And as I'm watching this, I knew that my world had changed. I didn't know how it had changed, but I just had this awareness that, that things are now different going forward, that they're no longer the same.

Shawn Buckley · 7:59:30

And what I came to experience from that day forward was the public being managed in a new way with fear. It had been a weapon against us for a long time, but it, it, it went up a few degrees. The dial got turned up, the fear dial got turned up. And since then, I've, I've watched my country and the United States and the rest of the world being managed with fear. Here we are, quarter of a century later. It's hard to believe, isn't it? 25 Years later, um, that we're sitting here after four days of the Allison Inquiry LIVE, and again I feel like my world has changed. I feel that something's changed here over this last four days. And what I think has changed is, is that the public is starting to reject being managed by fear.

Shawn Buckley · 8:00:33

It's okay for us to talk, that it's okay for us to cast off this fear and division. I really feel that, that God has done something here. We have forgotten that we are storytellers, every single one of us. It's the condition of being human. We have this personal experience, and we have to share our lives with others. You know, it's why we have friendships. Remember when you're teenagers and you had those close friendships and all you just wanted to do is hang out and talk? You know, and we just want to be connected to other people. We want to share our stories. And there's really nothing more cruel and nothing more hateful than excluding people so that they cannot share their stories with us, which is what we've done.

Shawn Buckley · 8:01:35

And, you know, we, we are a nation of storytellers. We used to be so exceptionally friendly and helpful. As I was just very quickly, it was— I was being told what to share. I became mindful of my maternal great-grandparents. Like, both my father's side came from Ireland and homesteaded in Saskatchewan, sod house the whole thing. And same on my mother's side, came from Austrian-Hungary Empire. They're Ukrainians. And in Saskatchewan, there's this teeny— I can't even call it a town anymore— called Kreider, but that it's which is just a combination of a part of two names. But my great-grandfather was the DOR in Kreider. He was Theodore Lusik. And back then we had community and we had family.

Shawn Buckley · 8:02:35

Now, your barn burned down. It really wasn't a worry because, you know, 3 weeks later the community will have gotten together and gotten the lumber and spent all day Saturday and Sunday building your barn. And we shared stories and we took care of each other. And, you know, I think it was Dr. McCullough that was talking about— I mean, part of the problem is, is we, the vaccine injured, have to start taking responsibility for themselves. But I think, and that's what we're doing here, is, is MP Allison has, has gotten the citizens together to organize a hearing themselves. And some people say, well, why didn't government do it? Would you really trust government to do it? And it then kind of begs the question, why should government do it? Why shouldn't citizens take the lead?

Shawn Buckley · 8:03:35

Why shouldn't— so why shouldn't citizens take the lead? Why shouldn't we be responsible for ourselves? Why should we trust public health authorities? Why shouldn't we insist on informed consent? If we're going to— if we're going to make sure that we are a nation of storytellers again, it's going to fall on our shoulders.