Immediately following the terrorist attacks on 9/11, air-traffic controllers needed to clear the skies. They diverted 38 planes to Gander, Newfoundland, a small town with a large airport left over from the days when transatlantic flights were harder to make. As the planes sat on the runway for hours, it became clear that the 7,000 people onboard—people with all kinds of different backgrounds from all over the world—needed food and shelter for an undeterminable number of days.
The people of Gander (a town of less than 10,000 beer-drinking, cod-kissing “Newfies”) sprang into action. They clothed and fed the “plane people,” at one point transforming an ice-hockey rink into a giant refrigerator to store food for their visitors. Here’s a line from the show, given by a clerk: “Thank you for shopping at Walmart. Would you like to come back to my house for a shower?”
