A year later there is some anger, but more than anything there is sadness, for the families who lost loved ones to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. CTV News talked to the families of three of the Canadian victims - Michael Pelletier, Ralph Gerhardt and Ken Basnicki. Like all those who lost loved ones in the attacks, they are still feeling very wounded, their personal grief compounded by the nature of this very public tragedy.

In his spare time at home in Vancouver, Dan Pelletier writes and records music. Composing a song for his brother Michael seemed like the best thing he could do, after the events of Sept. 11.

That day is never very far from Dan's mind, but etched just as sharply in his memory is the final time the two men said goodbye.

Dan Pelletier

Last summer, Michael brought his family home to Vancouver for a holiday. When it was time to head back to New York, Michael had tears in his eyes.

"You could count on one hand how many times he had cried in his life," Dan recalls. "And this time, he was crying -- that was really special to me. I felt like he almost knew in his subconscious mind, that that was it."

Michael Pelletier, 34, was a successful commodities trader in Manhattan. By the second week of September, Pelletier was back at work with Cantor Fitzgerald, on the 105th floor of the World Trade Center.

He worked on the same floor as another Canadian, Ralph Gerhardt, who had come to New York just two years earlier.

And just one floor above Pelletier and Gerhardt, a 47-year-old businessman from Ontario, Ken Basnicki, was on his first business trip to New York.

The news bulletins

As she talks about her husband and what happened that day, Maureen Basnicki's blue eyes brim with tears.

Maureen Basnicki

"The terrorists, they shot him down from the top floor from one of the highest buildings," she says. "But they didn't shoot down his spirit and his will to live -- that is what is keeping our family going."

A flight attendant with Air Canada for 31 years, Maureen was on a layover in Germany that morning, when she heard that a plane had struck the World Trade Center. News of airplane accidents always grab the attention of airline employees -- but then she realized something else.

"I realized to my horror that Ken had mentioned his meeting was going to be at the World Trade Center."

Ken Basnicki's stepdaughter, Erica, was back home in Toronto. A journalism student, she woke up to the radio,

Erica Basnicki

and realized the newscasters were sounding unusually somber. She knew her dad had gone to New York on business trip, and by the time she turned on the television, she knew he was in trouble.

"My dad is the kind of person who would be at work hours before everyone else … I knew he was there."

The phone calls

Meanwhile, in Connecticut, Michael Pelletier's wife Sophie was taking their two-year-old daughter to her first day of school, when Michael called her cell phone. From an account of that conversation, Dan Pelletier is able to piece together some of what was happening to his brother.

"I can say for sure he was on the phone, and there were other people on the phone and relaying information to others in the background. A lot of it sounded like he was directing other people… he did say, 'We need to go up to a higher floor'."

If they did go up, they would have found more smoke, on the floor where Ken Basnicki was trapped. Somehow that day, Basnicki had also found a phone, and called home to his mother. That conversation is all Erica and her mother have learned about Ken's last minutes.

He said, "the building is filled with smoke" and he said he "didn't know he was going to get out."

"I think he was fairly very calm," Erica says. "The kind of calm where I think he knew he wasn't getting out of that building"

About the same time, Hans Gerhardt says his son Ralph called home again. Gerhardt knows the exact time. "At 8:48, according the phone bill."

Hans Gerhardt

He said on the phone: "Dad, something just happened at the World Trade Center … I'm okay, we're okay. We are trying to evacuate … we are evacuating right now. And I love you and I will call you as soon as I can."

Within an hour of the first plane crashing into the World Trade Center, North American airports were shut down, and Maureen Basnicki was stuck in Germany with no way to get home to her family. From across the Atlantic, she watched the television news coverage in horror.

"I was glued to the television -- they couldn't peel me away. Of course, before the collapse, I wanted to believe that Ken had enough time to get down those 106 floors, and he would have if he could have."

Hans Gerhardt and wife saw smoking pouring from the top of the World Trade Center building. They waited for Ralph to call again -- and the call never came.

Ralph Gerhardt

The journey to Ground Zero

Hans remembers his son as a man who loved life and loved living. "He loved the basic things in life: honesty, friendship, the quality of life … he loved the outdoors, canoeing, fishing - he and I were the best fishing partners."

Maureen Basnicki still has their dream home, which Ken built near Collingwood, Ont. She sold his treasured Harley Davidson, but kept Ken's motorcycle jacket, and the memories.

"When I received the death certificate, I didn't have a sense of finality. I still don't have a sense of finality," Maureen says. "I still wake up at nights waiting for Ken to come home… I don't think there's a motorcycle that goes by, that I don't check to make sure it's not him."

Like those of hundreds of other victims, the bodies of Ken Basnicki and Ralph Gerhardt were never recovered.

What Maureen Basnicki does have is a piece of the World Trade Center. It's a piece of metal in the shape of cross, found in the twisted wreckage of the building. It's a gift from one of the clean-up workers, whom she met on a pilgrimage to New York. When he realized Maureen had lost her husband, the man in the hard hat offered it to her.

"With all the compassion that a stranger can give … I don't know where the piece came from but it was in the shape of a cross, and it was a very special memento."

The Gerhardts were also drawn to the place that became known as "Ground Zero." A New York City policeman pulled some strings so the Gerhardts could get a little closer to Ralph, by arranging for them to board a police boat and approach the site by water.

"It was calming amidst this chaos," Hans says. "It was just an unbelievable picture. It was shortly after Sept. 11 and Ground Zero was still on fire … it was just unreal and somewhere you sensed - 'your son is there' - and it was a big moment."

The grieving goes on

Erica Basnicki's stepfather came into her life when she was just two-years-old, and she had great love and respect for him. She misses his warmth and his good, fatherly advice. And she wants people to know about Ken Basnicki.

"I just want them to know about my dad: He was a Canadian, he worked hard, he played hard, and it's everyone's loss that he is gone".

Maureen thinks about what Ken might have said, had he survived last year's tragedy.

"I think its only human to have angry feelings and question why this happened but on the other hand, one of the biggest tributes I can give to Ken is try to emulate his belief system," Maureen says. "And Ken wasn't a revenge-seeker, or a man who was prone to anger. He would rather shake the hand of an enemy than seek a fight and seek a revenge."

In Toronto, the Gerhardt family has launched three different charitable funds in Ralph's name. The money will go to help underprivileged children and provide money for scholarships. The Gerhardts find it hard to understand why Ralph died.

"I just can't understand how someone can have so much hate -- and so much disregard for life . And the brutality of it, it's just so far-fetched from my or my family's reality - I just can't go there."

Dan Pelletier, too, is still grieving. What he can't say in words, he put down in music. Dan and his sister Christine got some help from a Vancouver community college, to record their memorial song.

Dan says that his brother Michael was a powerful influence in his life. He offers advice to siblings who find themselves at odds. "You should just put aside a lot of that anger … I know there are a lot of families that are not even talking to each other. If you only knew, tomorrow you'll regret it."

The Pelletiers have been left with so many images, this past year, that it will be hard to ever forget Sept. 11.

"To be honest that is one of the hardest parts of grieving," Dan says. "If you can think of being trapped in a building and knowing that you have no way out, and knowing you are going to die - it's a horrible experience and that what we have to live with the rest of our lives. It's over for him, but us it continues for the whole family."