Six years ago today, many Canadians watched the horrific scenes of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks unfold on television screens, but one local politician was there.

Yukon MP Larry Bagnell was in Washington, D.C., Sept. 11, 2001 with Vuntut Gwich'in First Nation Chief Joe Linklater, lobbying against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska.

Bagnell was the only Canadian MP in Washington when a hijacked airplane crashed into the Pentagon. He had first been elected in 2000.

'We saw the World Trade Center attacks on TV, and when the second one hit, they evacuated the building here,' he recalled in an interview this morning from Watson Lake, where he is on a community visit.

'I was outside with my luggage, planning to leave from the airport where the plane took off.

'I was standing beside a security guard, and when the plane hit, it shook everything. We looked at each other and went, What was that?' ''

Bagnell described the ensuing scene as, 'controlled chaos.' The immediate jump in cell phone calls to family members shut cell phone use down, he said.

'The train stations shut down, there was no way out but by car, and even then the roads were gridlocked,' he said.

'At the end of the day, it was the opposite; Washington was a ghost town.'

Bagnell went to the Canadian Embassy, where he was given a workspace and a phone to call his family and the media, he said.

Bagnell said he couldn't recall if he was ever scared, similar to many Washington workers.

'In Washington, the reason there wasn't pandemonium was the reality that they lived in Washington the United States have a number of enemies, and it's a fact of life,' he said.

Having travelled to Afghanistan in the past and simply by virtue of being a politician, he said he expects his job to include a dose of danger.

He did get a little nervous for a moment though, he said.

'They had closed the airspace over Washington, so there was dead silence.

'We were in the ambassador's office on the top floor of the Canadian Embassy, which overlooks the Capitol building. Then, an American military helicopter came up by the window, maybe 50 to 100 feet away. It was quite strange because nothing had been flying, and we're thinking, Oh no! Is he going to shoot us?' ' he laughed.

His stay in Washington continued a few days past the Pentagon attack.

'I booked a room with Chief Joe Linklater, and we couldn't get out for three days,' he said. When they finally got a spot on a Canadian government bus to Ottawa, the shared tension aboard was released at the border crossing.

'Moving across the border, everyone let out a big cheer,' he said. 'We were so happy to be in Canada.'

Since Sept. 11, Bagnell said, he has learned a few lessons that he has tried to share with others, including his colleagues on Parliament Hill.

'We have to deal with what caused people to do such horrible things, we have to deal with the root causes,' he said.

Bagnell said those root causes include religious intolerance, individuals who use religion as a tool for violence against that religion's core belief system, and poverty, within Canada and globally.

'The world is a global village; we're not isolated from it,' he said.

'No one should try and think they don't have some responsibility for problems in the world if they have the ability to help out.'