I remember going down to the post office on the day of Canada's 1968 election. I was six, and when my sister asked me whether I preferred Stanfield or Trudeau, I chose Stanfield because I felt more comfortable with his name.
I remember hearing a lot about Nixon's election, Martin Luther King's murder and the first moon landing, but not when I first heard about them. And I remember the Apollo 13 crisis: our Grade 2 teacher took us to her house so we could see the astronauts being rescued at sea on TV.
I heard Nixon give his resignation speech on a car radio in a Cape Breton campground. And I found out that Gerald Ford had pardoned him from a voiceover during the closing credits of The Waltons.
I remember hearing about Elvis Presley's death over the radio. And when Anwar Sadat visited Jerusalem and spoke in front of the Knesset, I saw his speech on live TV. (It was a Sunday morning.) I was also watching the 1978 Emmy Awards when they were interrupted so Jimmy Carter could announce that the Camp David negotiations had resulted in a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. At first I thought it was yet another joke at Carter's expense.
I woke up early in the morning to see Charles and Diana's royal wedding on live TV in 1981. (Today I can't believe that I cared so much about the royals back then.) And when I heard about Diana's death, I'd just flown back from England and taken a long sleep to overcome my jet lag.
I remember the 9/11 attacks, which I first heard about in an internet forum. I was scheduled to fly to London that day, but got delayed two days because of all the US planes landing in Toronto. It seems a really small inconvenience compared to what people in New York went through, and especially compared to what people in the Middle East would soon be going through.
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