SMALL TOWN COPES WITH WIDE-RANGING GRIEF
As condolences pour in from around the world, Kevin Mitchell describes a small Saskatchewan town rallying to support the bereaved and make room for those who would share — and record — their grief.
Pray for Humboldt, they’ve said, over and over and over, for three days — hashtagging it, chanting it, willing it.
So Sunday night, cars and pickup trucks rolled through town en masse, headed for Humboldt’s newest place of prayer: The local rink. They settled into old, hard seats at Elgar Petersen Arena, which has played host to thousands of puck-chasing players and the fans who root them on.
Farmers, businesspeople, teachers, teens, kids, NHL coaches, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League players, grief-stricken family members ... they got together as a group, and they prayed for Humboldt during a vigil that drew thousands.
Thousands? Many, multiple thousands. They streamed in, one big and steady line, starting two hours before the 7 p.m. start. They filled the 1,800-seat rink — many more piled around the fringes — and occupied 400 more seats on the ice. Those who couldn’t get in moved into overflow areas, such as the curling rink, and local schools, all of them set up with screens.
A few hours before that mass of humanity converged on the arena, Clinton Thiel wandered the upper concourse. He volunteers with the Broncos, hanging jerseys on stalls, washing uniforms, doing the hundred little things nobody notices except players and coaches.
Thiel’s an honorary assistant equipment manager, has taken a few trips on the bus, but wasn’t there on Friday when a busload of dyed-blond heads moved toward a highway intersection and a onein-a-million tragedy.
“When I see that logo, I remember,” Thiel says, pointing to the centre-ice circle, which at this point is ringed by flowers. “After every practice, they gather around there and have their rally cry.”
On Wednesday, Broncos head coach Darcy Haugan gave him a ride home after practice. Haugan knew Thiel likes metal music, and as they parted, the coach said, “We’ll see you Sunday, buddy,” and gave him the metal-horns hand symbol.
Haugan died on Friday, one of 15 casualties from a bus crash that has caught global attention.
Thiel is suffering, just like the community he lives in. Saturday night, he rammed his fists into a punching bag, working out his frustration.
Thiel says he’ll be back with the Broncos next season, after they rebuild the team.
But he won’t go on a bus, he says. Maybe never. “Since this happened, I don’t want to go. I just don’t think I could. I’m scared.”
That crash killed more than half a hockey team, plus the head coach, an assistant coach, the radio play-by-play guy, the statistician, and the driver. The collision happened at the junction of Highways 335 and 35, as the Broncos drew close to Nipawin, where they were hours away from Game 5 of their SJHL playoff series.
Reaction has poured in from both close to home, and on the other side of the globe.
Humboldt Mayor Rob Muench said his phone is lighting up with text messages from area codes he doesn’t recognize — people are sending poems, songs, messages of deep sorrow.
Muench harbours no illusions about what this tragedy means for his community. He’s talked to people in Swift Current, which has never fully recovered from losing four Swift Current Broncos hockey players in a 1986 crash.
When you remove that many young people from a town of less than 6,000 people, when you factor in how deeply the hockey team has embedded itself into the town’s fabric, when an entire geographic locale tumbles into mass grief and mourning for precious lives lost ... Muench knows.
“Not just days. Not just weeks. Not just months,” he said.
Ron MacLean and Don Cherry, the famed hockey broadcast duo, stopped in at Royal University Hospital in Saskatoon en route to the Humboldt vigil. They visited the survivors, tried to boost spirits.
“I knew they would love to see Don. A lot of those boys are tough as nails, just like Grapes — and he’s a hero to them,” MacLean told Alex MacPherson of The Saskatoon StarPhoenix.
Townspeople have gathered in a big room adjacent to the arena since word trickled out Friday that this thing was serious. At each table, there’s a box of tissues. Sometimes, as you wander the site, you’ll see somebody lugging a case or two of those tissues, taking them to a place where they’ ve been depleted.
There’ s closed doors in the sprawling facility, and behind those doors, men and women make important decisions. They’ve worked out logistics for the town’s gathering spot, co-ordinating food, counselling support services, media relations. They planned Sunday’s prayer vigil on the fly, and with heavy deadline pressures. They needed a month; they had a day and a half.
They have access to those same tissues.
“There’s been times where we’ve had to pause our meetings a little bit,” says Joe Day, the manager for the City of Humboldt, the guy who has driven much of the planning.
Meanwhile, the media presence grew hour by hour, moving from a trickle to an explosion — a few notebook and mic-clutching reporters on Friday night, then more, and more, and more. They ’re in from big cities down east, from networks, from news agencies.
In that roiling little sea this weekend was Les Lazaruk, stopping in from Saskatoon, where he reports for 92.9 The Bull and works as the Saskatoon Blades’ play-by-play man.
Lazaruk has announced 1,799 games since he started in 1994. He’d never met Broncos play-byplay announcer Tyler Bieber, but he was shaken to hear the latter was among the dead.
“One second. One moment. Thousands of trips,” said Lazaruk, who has been the one constant on the Blades bus during 24 years of travel. “In the course of 24 seasons, I think I’ve seen pretty much everything the highway has to throw at you.”
These bus trips, this criss-crossing, those rolling wheels, are routine in these parts. You start here, and you load your equipment, and you go there with your buddies, feeling safe the whole time.
But then comes that split second on the highway, and the wreckage, and those boys in the snow. The creeping horror started in a Saskatchewan ditch and moved around the world.
So on Sunday, the people in Humboldt prepared to share their grief, with each other, as a group, and with us all.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made his way into town, sat in the arena, soaked it all in. He’d earlier issued a statement, expressing his grief. “No one should ever have to see their child leave to play the sport they love and never come back,” it said.
Sportsnet was in town, broadcasting the vigil live. They showed the speeches, the hymns, the scripture reading, Amazing Grace.
“I don’t want to be here. I really don’t want to be here,” said Sean Brandow, the pastor at Humboldt Family Church.
But it was good to gather, he added. Then he told his story: Brandow was en route to the game, as a spectator, when he came upon the crash. He talked about the horror. The sights. The sounds. The darkness. And he talked about how we have no answers.
“I don’t know why. I don’t know why,” he said.
But he also talked about comfort, and hope. And with that, comes a sharing. Which is what happened Sunday night, at a hockey rink in Humboldt.
Said Day the city manager: “This is something the world wants to see.”