Twenty-five years after 9/11, the small Canadian town of Gander is being remembered for one of aviation's kindest moments. When US airspace shut down on 11 September 2001, 38 diverted planes landed at Gander International Airport, stranding nearly 7,000 passengers in a town of about 10,000 people. Locals fed, housed and comforted the strangers for five days — a story later turned into the Broadway hit Come From Away.
But Gander's story starts long before that. Built in the late 1930s on Newfoundland's Great Circle Route — the closest point in North America to Europe — the airport handled its first landing in 1938 and was the world's largest airport by 1940. It served as a key maintenance hub for Allied aircraft during WWII, then became a glamorous refuelling stop for transatlantic flights. Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra and Fidel Castro all passed through, sipping martinis at the Big Dipper, the province's only 24-hour bar.
The jewel of that era is the 1959 International Departures Terminal, opened by Queen Elizabeth II. A Modernist showpiece, it featured Eames and Arne Jacobsen furniture, a salmon-and-jade terrazzo floor, wall clocks for London, Montreal, New York and Moscow, and Kenneth Lochhead's striking 72-foot mural. Architect Todd Saunders, who designed the Fogo Island Inn, calls it his first brush with contemporary design — "the first face of Canada."
When jets stopped needing to refuel in Gander, the terminal fell quiet. Saved from demolition, it reopened in 2022 as a museum with a small cinema, gastropub and souvenir shop, preserved largely as it was in its heyday. Quirky exhibits include a 747 full of toothpicks, a shipment of live alligators, and photos of Castro sledding in the snow in 1976. Sinatra fans might enjoy the story of him being told to wait his turn at the bar.
The airport still matters to the town: a recent study found one in five local jobs are linked to it. Travellers today mostly pass through en route to elsewhere in Newfoundland and Labrador, but aviation fans and history buffs make the trip just to see the restored terminal — some drawn by Come From Away, others by the golden-age-of-flying romance. If you're flying into Newfoundland, Gander is a detour worth an hour or two.