Widow of Canadian killed in 9/11 wants to ‘redefine’ the day

Maureen Basnicki stands in the dining room of the Albany Club in downtown Toronto on the eve of 9/11, proud of the dinner she has helped organize.

The “Service Day” dinner, she explains, is to show gratitude to service men and women — those who fought for Canada in Afghanistan, supported Canadians after 9/11, and those who continue serve our communities on a day-to-day basis.

Twenty-five years ago, her husband Ken Basnicki, 48, was killed when Al Qaeda terrorists highjacked planes and flew them into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre.

Maureen Basnicki, a flight attendant at the time, says she woke up that morning in a small town just outside of Frankfurt where her crew was on a layover.

She says she turned on her television and saw the second plane fly into the south tower.

“You can only imagine my shock and horror knowing Ken was there. I didn’t know which tower he was in, but I knew he was in New York and the rest is history,” she explains.

Because she didn’t have a cellphone at the time and was desperate to speak to Ken, Basnicki says she went down to the lobby of the hotel and asked the concierge if he could call Ken, who did have a cellphone.

There was no response so she begged the concierge to call back and leave him her number at the hotel.

“In any event, my mother-in-law received a call from Ken because he knew I was in Germany and didn’t have a cell phone. I can only repeat his last words to anybody, to his mother. He said ‘Mom, something horrible has happened. The room is full of smoke, the roof is blocked and I don’t know how I’m going to get out. I’m on the 106th floor of the World Trade Centre.’ That’s how definite I was about his whereabouts on that day,” Basnicki says.

The skies were shut down as a result of the terrorist attack so Basnicki was stuck in Germany for three days, far from New York and the couple’s two children, aged 16 and 21, who were back in Toronto.

“I still get emotional when I think of it. Thankfully, I had a great crew. I got support from other crew members at the hotel, from the German people. People couldn’t do enough for me, but of course, I wanted to be home with my children,” she explains.

Basnicki says their family played the waiting game hoping that Ken would be a survivor.

“I knew when I was trapped in Germany that Ken was never going to come home,” she explains.

In the years since then, Basnicki has worked hard advocating for survivors of terrorism and to change the dialogue on 9/11.