Bass and her husband at the Give Back
Breakfast (Beverley Bass/American Airlines)But she and her husband headed off to Gander, along with (unbeknown to Bass) most of the other
passengers. “I didn’t know what was going on. But when we got there, there’s an envelope at the front desk,
and it detailed one event after the next.”
The first event was the Give Back Breakfast, in the hockey rink. The passengers assembled, and were
invited to serve breakfast to the Ganderites, to be on the other side. The whole community, and the
thousands of honorary Newfoundlanders, celebrated the lifelong bonds that had been forged. “It was just
one beautiful event,” says Bass. “But that is normal for them. That’s how they live their life. They don’t find
it unusual.”
It wasn’t all the come-from-awayers gave back. The passengers raised millions of dollars in scholarship
money for Gander. Two years ago, Bass flew back with her husband and children, and personally went and
thanked the mayor of each community mentioned in the show. That was set up by Pat Woodford, the man
who had so blithely lent her his truck keys.
Bass explains it: “They commemorate 9/11. We memorialise it; Gander commemorates it, because for them,
it was about all the good that happened.”
Pilots talk about a “lost decade” after 9/11, says Bass. Every airline felt bankruptcy or nearly went out of
business. Pilots took enormous pay cuts, flight schools went out of business, and a huge trickle-down effect
was felt in the airports: cab drivers, kiosks and restaurants and workers.
“It literally took 10 years for the airlines to start a recovery process from the events of 9/11,” says Bass.
“American didn’t hire a single pilot for 10 years.”
But one of the first pilots they did hire was Tom McGuinness Jr. He was the son Tom McGuiness Sr, the
co-pilot on American Airlines 11, who was killed when his plane hit the north tower. As Claude sings in the
Finale of the show: “Tonight, we honour what was lost/ But we also commemorate what we found.”
Over the next four years, the show was workshopped in Sheridan’s Canadian Musical Theatre Project with
students as a cast. The full production, directed by Brian Hill, was selected by the National Alliance for
Musical Theatre in New York in 2013. In the summer of 2015, Bass got a call from the producers inviting
her to the world premiere opening of Come from Away.
“Tom and I went to the show, not knowing anything about it. I did not know how prominent my role was. I
did not know that a song called ‘Me and the Sky’ had been written. And I just couldn’t believe it. The song
literally chronicles my life in four minutes and 19 seconds. I was so shocked, I probably missed 25 per cent
of the first show. It’s a good thing we’ve seen it 138 times.”