TORONTO STAR

Sun Sept 16, 2001
Crisis team helps heal trauma- Canadian counsellors arrive on scene
by Andrew Chung - STAFF REPORTER

PARSIPPANY, N.J. - Wayne Briggs finally got an idea of what he and the fellow members of his Canadian trauma team will be up against in the coming days.

After hearing a colleague express the challenge facing them in biblical terms - "I feel a bit like David," a petite family therapist from North Bay offered, "and we're up against Goliath" - Briggs grasped the challenge ahead.

"Yeah," said Briggs, a church minister from Brockville, and the only clergy member in the group. "But David won."

The exchange came as 22 Canadian crisis counsellors, still bleary-eyed after a 14-hour ride from Toronto on a bus with a broken speedometer, downed cup after cup of hotel coffee in this suburban bedroom community half an hour's drive north-west of New York City as they prepared for the gruelling task facing them.

The mood was sombre, especially after they heard from a New York colleague about the devastation facing dozens of companies whose clients were housed in the twin towers of the World Trade Center, blasted out of existence Tuesday by the worst terrorist attack in American history.
They heard of the thousands missing. They heard stories of firefighters whose fingers were amputated after digging and clawing through debris with their bare hands. Read More