Amid the sombre ceremonies to mark the anniversary of the tragedies, the Johnsons will celebrate their first wedding anniversary at home in London, England, thousands of kilometres from Halifax where they were married last Sept. 16 in a hastily arranged ceremony put on by their Nova Scotia hosts.

They will make long-distance phone calls to the families of Leah Cameron and Donna Popowich in Lower Sackville, N.S., and marvel at the circumstances that have forged links of compassion and caring out of the fear and anger that surrounded the events of Sept. 11.

The British couple are among hundreds around the world who exchange e-mails, gifts and phone calls with the Canadians who took thousands of passengers into their homes after hundreds of planes were stranded when U.S. air space was closed after the terrorist attacks.

In a recent interview from London, Ms. Johnson recalled how she and the other 11 members of her wedding party were in a daze when their Las-Vegas-bound flight was forced to land in Halifax on Sept. 11 and they were taken to a local high school, which was converted into an emergency shelter for the passengers.

There they met Leah Cameron, a member of the Kinette Club who was working as a volunteer at the shelter.

"There were 12 of us and we didn't want to split up but she [Ms. Cameron] said she would take six of us and her neighbour [Ms. Popowich] would take six. It was absolutely unbelievable. In London here, people aren't very friendly and it was like finding a completely different type of people," Ms. Johnson recalled.

The hospitality was so overwhelming that she and Mr. Johnson abandoned their plans to be married in Las Vegas and suggested to their hosts that they do so in Halifax.

"Nobody really wanted to fly to America and we had met the new family and it wouldn't have been the same without everyone there. We wanted them at the wedding and Halifax looked like a cool place to get married," she said.

In a day, a massive community effort produced the clothes, flowers and food for the wedding. The ceremony took place at the Halifax City Hall, complete with an RCMP officer on horseback.

Ms. Cameron remembers how she planned the Johnson nuptials in about eight hours, compared with the year that went into planning her own wedding.

"It makes me awful proud to be a Canadian and to have pulled off what we did," she said in an interview. "I feel bad for everything that happened and the reason we met, but I think this definitely showed how we can pull together in a time of tragedy."

A year later, Ms. Johnson says the warmth and hospitality of the Canadians she met has made her and her husband more considerate and willing to help other people in the huge metropolis where they live.

"I never expected to become a refugee and I never expected to visit Canada," she said. "But we were treated like royalty there. It was really a shame that we had to go home.

"It was such a major tragedy and everybody just came together and it just showed how wonderful people can be," she said. "We were in the school and people just came and took the passengers into their homes, people they didn't even know, and they trusted them."

She said she and her husband are yearning to return to Canada but found the airfares too expensive for an anniversary celebration over the water this year.

Ms. Cameron, whose two sons, Brandon, 7, and Mitchell, 9, were ring-bearers for the wedding, said she runs up steep phone bills keeping in touch with the Johnsons.

"We tell each other everything."

Similar bonds have been forged between passengers who were stranded in Newfoundland and their hosts.

Shirley Brooks-Jones of Columbus, Ohio, who travels frequently for her volunteer work, remembers her initial despair when the captain of her flight said they would be in Newfoundland indefinitely.

"I never really knew how it could feel as an American not to be able to get back into my country," she said in an interview. "The pilot came on the intercom and said the airports [in the United States] were closed and the military had control of the air space. It had never dawned on me until that moment that I couldn't come and go freely."

But after three days in the small town of Lewisporte, Nfld., Ms. Brooks-Jones said she wept when she had to leave the community that provided food, shelter, entertainment and even boat rides for nearly 1,000 stranded passengers.

"When Sept. 14 came along, we wanted to go home but we didn't want to leave those people. We were really torn," she said.

She stayed with Mayor Bill Hooper and his wife Thelma, and now the two families talk by telephone weekly and exchange e-mails.

"I think they are my closest and dearest friends," she said. Ms. Brooks-Jones was instrumental in setting up a scholarship fund for Lewisporte students, which has received $50,000 (U.S.) in contributions.

She is now on her third visit to the town of 3,800 people, staying with the Hoopers and revisiting places like the local Lion's Club where passengers were sheltered.

"I'll never really leave those people. I've made up my mind that every Sept. 11 as long as I'm able, I'm going to be with those people in Lewisporte," she said.

Mr. Hooper said the links between his family and Ms. Brooks-Jones are so strong because they came together during a time of tragedy. The two families were in constant contact last month when Ms. Brooks-Jones's husband, Ron, became ill.

"It's not like you meet people in the park and you go out to dinner and you chat and make friends and then after you get home you send them a card and that's the end of it," he said. "You don't forget things like this. I'm just as concerned about her husband as if it was my own brother."

The accidental tourists were impressed by the kindness of Canadians and since last fall many media articles and documentaries have focused on that generosity.

Mr. Hooper said he still marvels at the gratitude of the passengers and the positive publicity the town has received. He said he sometimes feels guilty that the community has benefited from the Sept. 11 tragedy.

"They [the passengers] were really overwhelmed by the things that were done for them and we didn't do anything out of the ordinary. We just treated them as ordinary people," he said.