Air Show Porn - NOW Magazine

This Labour Day weekend was marked (or rather marred) by fighter jets ripping holes in the beautiful Toronto sky. Every time one of them passed overhead, making the city shake and leaving a trail of poison, I would flash back to the weeks after 9/11, when every New Yorker would stop and look nervously at the sky each time a plane appeared.

Mike Smith talks about the effects of the Labour Day Air Show on Toronto's refugee population (not to mention its environment) in his insightful article in NOW Toronto Magazine.

Sure, the whole thing’s over in days, but what if you came here to escape that ghastly circus? Over 60 per cent of refuge-seekers in Canada settle in the GTA. For them, Air Show memories may quietly take up residence with pre-existing trauma.

The term "post-traumatic stress disorder" has certainly been overused to the point of losing most of its impact; but I can't deny that witnessing the events of 9/11 first hand has left me with emotional scars that are unlikely to heal completely. And tragic and soul-crushing as it was, this was just one event, just one attack. Watching the fighter jets pollute our world with fumes and noise, I couldn't help but wonder how thousands of refugees who've found a safe haven in this peaceful city, many of whom had escaped lives full of death and explosions, felt about this rude and insensitive invasion.