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A Canadian Naval Reserve Vessel in the Shadow of the World Trade Center
Canadian Naval Reserve Flashback to September 11th
by Bill Clearihue 2011
On September 11th, 2011 I am having a Canadian Naval Reserve flashback ... In May, 1989 the summer Naval Reserve Training season was underway. The unification of the Canadian Armed Forces was then 21 years old, but things were looking up. Distinctive Environment Uniforms were back (navy blue uniforms for the navy), 12 new Frigates were on order as were 12 new Naval Reserve-specific MCD vessels. The venerable Gate Vessels were the primary training platform for the Naval Reserve. Onboard HMCS Porte St. Louis you could still use the World Trade Center as a steering landmark when approaching New York City. By 1995 the Gate Vessels were gone and by sunset of September 11, 2001, so was the World Trade Center. The demise of the Gate vessels is of nostalgic interest to a generation of Reservists, but the demise of the World Trade Center, will be of global significance for a long time to come.
To quote from this article please cite:
Clearihue, Bill (2011) A Canadian Naval Reserve Vessel in the Shadow of the World Trade Center. Nauticapedia.ca 2011. http://nauticapedia.ca/Articles/September11.php
Site News: April 19, 2024
The vessel database has been updated and is now holding 92,229 vessel histories (with 15,629 images and 13,195 records of ship wrecks and marine disasters). The mariner and naval biography database has also been updated and now contains 58,616 entries (with 4,013 images).
In 2023 the Nauticapedia celebrated the 50th Anniversary of it’s original inception in 1973 (initially it was on 3" x 5" file cards). It has developed, expanded, digitized and enlarged in those ensuing years to what it is now online. If it was printed out it would fill more than 300,000 pages!
My special thanks to our volunteer IT adviser, John Eyre, who (since 2021) has modernized, simplified and improved the update process for the databases into a semi–automated processes. His participation has been vital to keeping the Nauticapedia available to our netizens.
Also my special thanks to my volunteer content accuracy checker, John Spivey of Irvine CA USA, who has proofread thousands of Nauticapedia vessel histories and provided input to improve more than 11,000 entries. His attention to detail has been a huge unexpected bonus in improving and updating the vessel detail content.