Tragic reminder of riding buses
FORMER NHLER WHO LOST SON RELIVES PAINFUL EMOTIONS FROM 1986 CRASH TO WAKE UP AND HEAR HE DIDN’T MAKE IT WAS DEVASTATING.
Having spent three years travelling as a member of the Seattle Thunderbirds, Chris Joseph was keenly aware of the perils of winter driving across Western Canada.
After all, in the midst of his junior career, his season was interrupted in 1986 by the Swift Current Broncos bus crash that took the lives of four players and halted league play.
On Friday, the retired NHLer lived out his worst nightmare as news broke of a bus crash involving his son’s Humboldt Broncos hockey club.
Alerted to the head-on collision with a semi-trailer around dinnertime, Joseph and his wife Andrea jumped in their vehicle in Edmonton and headed east toward the crash outside Tisdale, Sask., without any details of their son’s condition.
T hey prayed t heir phones would ring with good news during the seven-hour drive.
Dozens of other families clung to similar hope their sons were OK.
“The last conversation ( Chris) had with someone was that Jaxon was in hospital in Saskatoon, so we went to bed thinking everything was OK,” said Mike Joseph, Chris’s Calgary-based brother.
“To wake up and hear he didn’t make it was devastating.”
So chaotic was the scene, police struggled late into the night trying to piece together the fate of all 29 on- board, eventually determining 15 had died and 14 were injured, some critically.
Of all the emotions running t hrough t he Joseph f amily ’ s heads, Mike insists anger over the misinformation is not one of them.
“Everybody on scene was just trying to do their best,” said Mike.
“I don’t think anybody is pointing the finger of blame. From the picture I saw, it looks like all the boys dyed their hair ( blond) so you can see how it could be confusing to identify people as part of the scene. It just goes to show how devastating, and what the scene must have been like.”
The Broncos were on their way to Nipawin, Sask., to play Game 5 of their Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League playoff game late Friday afternoon.
They had dyed their hair as part of a long- standing hockey tradition aimed at bringing them even closer together.
One can’t even fathom how quickly the excitement and anticipation of their game, scheduled for hours later that night, gave way to horror as the surviv- ors fought for their lives amid the mangled mess.
“It’s every parent’s nightmare, my brother’s and his wife’s whole world revolved around their kids,” said Mike. “It’s just so hard to fathom as his son was the star of the team and was having the best season ever as a 20- year- old and was loving it and was so happy. Now he’s gone and we’re just waiting for any updates from family and what to do next.”
Jaxon Joseph had been traded to Humboldt earlier in the season from Melfort. He was the team’s leading playoff scorer with seven goals and five assists in nine games to sit among Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League playoff leaders.
With only five points in 16 games in Melfort to start the season, his trade sparked a dramatic turnaround in his hockey career, responding with 25 goals in his next 38 games as a beaming Bronco.
You can imagine how proud his father, who played for seven NHL teams over 14 seasons, was of his son and his recent success.
“He had a tough year last year and everyone was so excited because he was playing so well and was having so much fun this year,” said Mike, who grew up in North Burnaby, B.C., with Joe Sakic, who was involved in Swift Current’s bus crash in 1986.
“It has been a tough day for the Joseph family.”
And for everyone in Canada with a hockey- playing child, or a heartbeat.