As far as I’m concerned the New Year for many of us in and around the trucking industry really begins after the Labor Day long weekend – not on Jan. 1.

This is the beginning of the school year, it largely signals the end of summer holidays and the start of a new truck show season.

With the many staggered holidays taken by our staff here at Truck News, it isn’t until this time of year that we are able to get together as a group.

These rare gatherings of our entire clan are always to be looked forward to, and the most recent occasion was no exception. Rob Wilkins, our publisher, managed to secure a luxury box at SkyDome (it’s nice to have connections) and we were all ushered into the rarified air usually reserved for Canada’s corporate elite.

The fully catered spread, coupled with a 14-0 trouncing the Jays handed the other team, really made us unite forming a tighter, more cohesive group.

We came together thanks to that common enemy every baseball fan loves to hate – the New York Yankees.

One week later to the day, we all, as a society, witnessed the horrors committed against the people of New York City. Crashing planes, twisting metal, crumbling concrete and the slaughter of thousands of innocent people.

The sheer enormity of the attack stunned us all and for many still does. I simply can’t fathom the hate or misguided faith one must reach in order to commit such a deed. Our world has been forever changed.

More so than in any other year, September has taken on the feel of the end of one era and the beginning of another. How these changes play-out are really up to we the citizens of Mother Earth. From these ashes, we have the option to either build a world that is better or one that is much worse – certainly to recreate the one we just lost would be a fool-hearty endeavor.

Wouldn’t the best memorial to those who lost their lives on Sept. 11, be to unite globally thanks to their tragedy to eliminate not only terrorism, but more importantly the conditions which foster the terrorist mindset in the first place? n