MONTREAL -- On the 18th anniversary of 9/11, some Montreal elementary school children learned about the terrorist attacks from a New York firefighter who was there on that day.
The 10 and 11-year-olds from Honore Mercier School in St-Laurent weren't alive when the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 hit, but they spent Wednesday immersed in the same images that shook the world on that day.
"I didn't know that 9/11 happened. I asked my mom what happened and she said I was too young to know, but now I learned about it so now I know what happened," said grade 5 student Ava Iadinardi.
"I don't know anyone but it's still so emotional because they lost their lives for no reason," said grade 5 student Luca Pomaski.
Local firefighters visited students to talk about the history of the attack, speaking over Skype with a New York Fire Department firefighter about what he saw.
School staff wanted kids to know how their world was changed by 9/11, from air travel security to international relations and thousands of families who are still impacted by the loss of loved ones.
The students also heard about how the attack changed the lives of first responders around the world – including in the Montreal area.
"That famous morning, I was walking on the South Shore next to Champlain College. Through the shock and all the good that came out of the events over there, everything I saw from the first responders, it convinced me to change my life, drop everything," said Francois Desbiens, a firefighter in Longueuil at station 41. "I enrolled in the fire academy the following year."
