Pair swamped with cap requests to help paralyzed hockey player
A couple who offered to help with a promotion to fundraise for a paralyzed hockey player soon found themselves wearing too many hats.
Jason and Sue Bissonnette were making baseball caps to raise money to help with the costs of Ryan Straschnitzki’s rehabilitation, but they couldn’t keep up when thousands of requests started rolling in.
“I thought maybe there will be a couple of hundred hats and we’ll do our part,” said Jason Bissonnette. “We’re now over 3,600 hats that have been ordered.”
The Bissonnettes didn’t know Straschnitzki before the 19-yearold from Airdrie was paralyzed from the chest down in a crash of the bus carrying the Humboldt Broncos Saskatchewan junior hockey team in April.
But they felt an immediate bond because they also live in Airdrie and their son played hockey.
“He was a goaltender and was travelling just like these guys. It hits close to home to a lot of people,” Sue Bissonnette said during an interview in the family home.
The couple owns a company that provides promotional items for businesses as well as doing embroidery. Several Airdrie dads had come together the day after the crash and came up with the idea of hats to help raise money for the Straschnitzki family.
The first cap — with the green and gold Broncos colours, Ryan’s No. 10 on the front and #strazstrong stitched on the back — was done just hours later.
The couple eventually received help from Bruce Fogel of Embroidery Systems in Calgary, who offered the use of extra machines he had in stock. Sue was responsible for the first 1,900 hats that were made before the job was outsourced to a Montreal company.
A fundraiser for the Straschnitzki family is to be held in Airdrie next Saturday. About 150 of the hats, signed by Ryan, will be on sale.