Come From Away: The real Newfoundlanders who inspired the hit musical visited Ottawa

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Come From Away

Produced by David and Hannah Mirvish and NAC English Theatre

To Sept. 1, Babs Asper Theatre, National Arts Centre

Tickets and times: nac-cna.ca

The first thing that Claude Elliott, the former mayor of Gander, N.L., wants people to know about being one of the folks whose stories helped shape the hit musical Come From Away is that it was pure luck to be portrayed in the show. 

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“It was like a lottery,” Elliott said during an interview backstage at the National Arts Centre, where he’s joined in a spacious dressing room by eight of the others whose experiences in Newfoundland after 9/11 made it to the storyline. For more than an hour, they regaled this reporter with memories, anecdotes and quips, eliciting laughter as well as a few tears along the way. 

“The stories you hear are a very small portion of what happened,” Elliott added, noting that co-writers David Hein and Irene Sankoff conducted “hundreds and hundreds” of interviews during their creative process, winnowing the stories they heard down to 22 songs and a quick-paced 100-minute performance, which is being staged at the NAC’s Babs Asper theatre this month before returning to Toronto.

Hein and Sankoff, who are a married couple, created a musical that tells the uplifting story of how the town of Gander responded when 7,000 air passengers were, as one resident put it, “dropped out of the sky onto our doorstep in the cover of darkness” after airspace over North America was shut down in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 9/11. 

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Spoiler alert if you haven’t seen the show, but the Newfoundlanders responded by bringing vast amounts of soup, sandwiches, bedding, extra clothes, toilet paper and anything else needed to make the guests feel welcome. 

In other words, the residents told me, they took them into their homes, fattened them up, screeched them in and gave them hugs. The visitors stayed less than a week, but friendships were forged that have lasted through the decades. 

As depicted on stage, there was even a romance between two of the plane passengers. Texan Diane Marson (formerly Kirschke) and Britain’s Nick Marson met and fell in love while stranded together in Gambo, a town outside Gander, in the days after 9/11.  They married within a year and returned to Newfoundland for their honeymoon before settling down together in Houston. 

Along with Elliott, the Marsons are also part of the group known as the Reals, short for real people, in Ottawa this week for the opening of a new production of the wildly popular Canadian musical, co-produced by the Mirvishes and the NAC English Theatre department. 

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It’s not the first time members of this group have travelled to an opening of the show. Since its premiere in 2016, it has been hot ticket on several continents and they’re often invited to attend and give interviews. They have fun with it, but take the responsibility seriously, feeling a lot like ambassadors for the province. 

“It’s a story that’s gone well beyond anything that we would have expected,” said Derm Flynn, who was mayor of Appleton, N.L., at the time, “and we feel a responsibility to represent as best we can all the volunteers who were there almost 24 years ago. There were 9,900 others back home who were very active as volunteers, and some a lot more than us, so we try to mention every community in the area.”

In addition to Gander, home of the airport, and Flynn’s town of Appleton, other communities that pitched in to the relief effort included Lewisport, Gambo, Glenwood and Norris Arm. “That’s the Newfoundland way,” Elliott said. “You don’t carry this burden alone. Everybody is there to help.”

International travel is one of the unexpected perks to come out of having inspired a part of a once-in-a-generation piece of popular culture. 

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For the residents of the Gander area, there’s also been a significant economic impact at home, driven by a steady stream of tourists who have seen the show and are curious about the region. 

“There is such an opportunity for people to be doing things,” said Diane Davis, a teacher who started a tour company, “and it’s not to take advantage of the situation, it’s to accommodate the demand.”

Legion volunteer Beulah Cooper, former police chief Oz Fudge and reporter Brian Mosher still do the screech-in ritual for tourists at the Legion, and it sounds like they get called to meet visitors any time of the day. 

“Everybody we meet at the musicals says they’re coming to see what happened,” Flynn said. “We are not set up to do anything but receive people. We didn’t expect this musical to be so successful. People have been coming to spend time at our houses, people from Australia or England or all over North America. They want to hear the story as best we can tell it 23 years later.” 

Flynn is also still close to Tom McKeon, the New Yorker who stayed with him in 2001 and went from fearing a scam to loving all Canadians. “Canada became such a friend who helped in a time of need,” said McKeon, who’s on his first visit to Ottawa. “When I meet someone from Canada now, I’m like ‘bring it in,’” and he spreads his arms out for a hug.

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As for Elliott, he has embarked on a post-mayoral career as a public speaker, receiving invitations from all over the world to tell his stories. His goal is to underscore the musical’s message of kindness and compassion.

“I think the biggest lesson I learned in all of what happened is, with a little bit of compassion it can be a better world,” he said. “As we look around our world today, it’s in turmoil but we had people from 95 countries who slept together, laughed together, cried together, ate together. They did it all. We proved we can do it, and that’s what the world needs today.

“I think this musical will do it a little at a time.”

lsaxberg@postmedia.com

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