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Twenty-five years ago, in the days following September 11, 2001, communities across Nova Scotia found themselves responding to an extraordinary situation.

With U.S. airspace closed, approximately 40 international flights carrying thousands of passengers were diverted to Halifax. Many travellers arrived with little notice, uncertain when they would be able to continue their journeys or return home.

In Lower Sackville, the community quickly came together to help.

Millwood High School and Sackville High School were among the local sites that opened their doors to stranded passengers. Schools and community facilities became temporary places of refuge, providing travellers with somewhere safe to sleep, eat, rest and connect with loved ones.

For one of those passengers, the kindness he encountered at Millwood High School has remained with him for 25 years.

Alejandro Reyes was travelling on Singapore Airlines flight SQ26, bound for New York, when the flight was diverted to Halifax on September 11. He spent two nights at Millwood High School.

“I had not intended to visit Canada at all on that journey,” Reyes recalled in a letter recently sent to the school. “Yet suddenly, under the most extraordinary circumstances, I found myself entering my own country in Halifax, a part of Canada I had never known.”

What he found was a community ready to help.

Staff, students, families, volunteers and neighbours rallied around the unexpected visitors. They brought food, found clothing and other necessities, helped passengers communicate with loved ones and looked for ways to bring some comfort and normalcy during an uncertain and frightening time.

“Millwood gave us much more than a place to sleep and refuge from the uncertainty of those days,” Reyes wrote. “The staff, students, families and members of the surrounding community showed us extraordinary concern, kindness and hospitality.”

Some of his memories are remarkably specific. He remembers lobster brought for the passengers and even being taken whale watching.

But one night at Millwood stands out above the rest.

With communications disrupted in New York City, Reyes spent hours in the school’s computer room trying to reach friends in Lower Manhattan and elsewhere. From a computer in a high school in Nova Scotia, he unexpectedly became a link between people in New York who were trying to find out whether friends and loved ones were safe.

“It was an unforgettable night,” he wrote.

Across Lower Sackville, the response extended well beyond the walls of any one school. Students, staff, families and community members stepped forward to offer food, supplies, time and companionship to people they had never met.

For the students involved, it became an unexpected lesson in compassion, service and community.

And for passengers like Reyes, those acts of kindness became an enduring memory.

“What has stayed with me most over these 25 years is the spirit in which we were received,” he wrote. “At a moment of fear, uncertainty and profound sadness, the Millwood community responded with generosity, concern and, I think it is fair to say, love for people who had arrived suddenly as complete strangers.”

Twenty-five years later, the involvement of Millwood High School, Sackville High School and the wider Sackville community remains an important part of our shared history.

As Reyes reflected in his letter, the hospitality he experienced, and the values the community demonstrated, have stayed with him ever since.

At a time remembered around the world for tragedy and fear, these school communities offered something else: safety, compassion and a reminder of what can happen when people come together to care for one another.