‘COMFORT CREW’ ARRIVES WITH MESSAGE OF HOPE
‘Old guys’ who lived through 1986 crash share their story with Humboldt survivors
Everything changed that day, in the proverbial blink of an eye.
One moment, Bob Wilkie was joking around with his teammates in a bus headed to their next hockey game. The next, “bodies were flying everywhere,” he said, his eyes closing briefly as he recalls the horrors of Dec. 30, 1986.
“I went from being a 17-yearold looking to get drafted,” he says of that day 31 years ago, “to a survivor.”
While it’s a word that usually has mostly positive connotations, survivor in Wilkie’s mind meant the start of a decades-long process of healing.
“We know what a long road it is, we know how dark it can get,” says the former NHLer and current mental health coach, who chronicled the tragedy and its aftermath in his 2012 book, Sudden Death: The Incredible Saga of the 1986 Swift Current Broncos.
Wilkie and his fellow mostlyteenage survivors were never offered counselling or grief support during that turbulent time, an injustice further compounded by the sexual crimes perpetrated on some of them by their coach, Graham James.
On Sunday morning, Wilkie landed at Saskatoon’s John G. Diefenbaker International Airport, part of what can best be described as a “comfort crew.” The band of “old guys,” as his friend Sheldon Kennedy — also a former NHLer who now heads up Calgary’s Sheldon Kennedy Advocacy Centre — puts it, is here to let the survivors of Friday’s Humboldt Broncos bus crash know “there is light at the end of the tunnel, there is a way out of the darkness.”
Over the previous 48 hours, Wilkie, Kennedy and other survivors of that 1986 crash that took the lives of four of their teammates joined their fellow Canadians in mourning the loss of 15 lives when a bus carrying the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League team collided with a semi-truck on a remote stretch of prairie highway.
On Sunday, the friends, who also include Peter Soberlak, Darren Kruger and Bob Harriman, make their way around Saskatoon and Humboldt, spreading a message of hope and healing for the survivors, their loved ones and their community.
At Royal University Hospital, they visited two floors where several of the Humboldt Broncos players are being treated. Family and friends, many wearing the logos of the team on hats, jackets and sweatpants, spilled out into the ward as they at some points joke and commiserate with the young patients, and at others share tears and words of wisdom with the injured who are also grieving for their lost friends and mentors.
It’s the kind of outpouring of love, compassion and kindness spreading in this quiet corner of Canada, across the country and the world, after news of the devastating crash travelled fast and far.
Still, there is a unique gift in knowing that when a life is irrevocably altered by tragedy, there are others who have not only survived but also thrived in its wake.
That’s why, said Soberlak, he didn’t hesitate to jump on a plane Sunday to join his fellow comfort crew members.
“We’ve been a family for over 30 years and now they’ve joined our family,” said Soberlak, a mental performance coach at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops.
“There were a lot of eyes that lit up, and moms and dads who had a smile when we told them we’ve been through this and we’re doing OK now.”
Hope. It seems such a faint possibility in the hours before thousands gathered at Humboldt’s arena to say goodbye to 15 beloved boys and men.
Kennedy and his crew — Kruger lost his brother, Scott, in the 1986 crash, while now retired RCMP officer Harriman was a new first responder when he came across the devastating scene — know that the promise of hope is worth its weight in gold.
As the day goes on, other notables descend on the hospital to offer kind words, support and small gifts — from Don Cherry and Ron MacLean of Coach’s Corner, to Oilers coach Todd McLellan and Flames coach Glen Gulutzan.
Still, it’s a good bet that when it comes to instilling a belief in future hope on these young hockey players, few could hold a candle to the comfort crew — an appreciation that is mutual.
“To hear them say that’s what we needed to hear ... was extremely powerful,” said Wilkie. “It’s a day I’ll never forget.”