HEARTFELT MEMORIALS GROW WHERE PLAYERS LIVED AND DIED
It is the hub of the community, the main gathering place for its townspeople to revel in their love of the sport of hockey and their beloved junior team, the Humboldt Broncos.
On Wednesday morning, the Elgar Petersen Arena is eerily quiet. The venue that held thousands at a vigil three days earlier has no press conferences booked. Where just a few days ago a wall of international media parked itself in front of the arena’s front doors, one lone television reporter stands outside in the freezing wind as he files a report for his cameraman.
Still, the people keep coming, sometimes alone, sometimes in pairs and groups. As the GoFundMe campaign for the team rises above the $8-million mark on this day, those on the ground bring their floral bouquets to set on the rink’s ice, the shrine to those 16 who lost their lives following last Friday’s crash growing larger by the hour.
“I had to come and see it for myself,” says Al Lemoignan, who drove a good two hours from Moose Jaw to visit the crash site and arena. “I put flowers at the crash site, too,” he says. “Now I’m going to go buy Humboldt Strong T-shirts for my grandkids.”
As the city of nearly 6,000 souls prepares for the funerals that will begin on Thursday, a hush has fallen on Humboldt.
The students of the area schools have returned to class; the local shops on the main street are open, but foot and vehicle traffic is slow, partly due to the frigid front that blows into town, prompting a weather alert.
Still, throughout this community and along the route where the horrific crash between the team bus and a semi-truck took place, the tributes speak loudly of the grief and sympathy that has descended upon the region.
Nearly every single storefront in town is painted in green and yellow, with phrases like “Pray for Humboldt” and “Humboldt Strong ” written on the windows. Along a stretch of highway that spills onto the main street, green and yellow ribbons hug the stately elms.
“It was my mom’s idea,” says Shelley Wylie of the ribbons made from yellow surveyor’s tape and shredded green plastic tablecloths. Wylie, her sister Lynne Brecht and mom Gwen Saret, who was named the town’s citizen of the year in 2013, spent the better part of Thursday evening wrapping the teamcoloured bows around every tree in the town’s core.
“I raised my family here, these are our hometown boys,” says Wylie, whose teenage daughter attends the same school of several of the dead and injured. “These are ribbons of love — we want those families to know they’re in our hearts and prayers.”
The human impulse to commemorate loss has also been on full display over the past few days at the crash site, a highway intersection so heartbreakingly close to the team’s destination on Friday.
“I’m just trying to make sense of it, though I know that’s not possible,” says Darcy LaRiviere, who made a nearly 600-kilometre journey from his home at English River First Nation in northern Saskatchewan with his wife Hazel to lay flowers at the arena and at the crash site.
“This could have happened to any one of us,” says LaRiviere, who coaches a team of young players. “We’d taken our kids last Thursday on an incentive trip to see the Edmonton Oilers,” he says, shaking his head. “We heard about the accident when we were on the road heading back home.”
Mervin Delowski made the hour’s drive from Hudson Bay to pay his respects. “My grandson, Michael Ferland, plays for the Calgary Flames,” says Delowski, whose front licence plate bears the NHL team’s logo. “I needed to come and pay my respects to these fallen members of our hockey family.”
Margaret Daniels, a Cree elder, leads a small group up to the shrine overflowing with candles, flowers, hockey pucks and stuffed toys.
“I was at the vigil and I promised the families I would come by and bless the site,” she says, “so that all the hockey players would rise up to heaven, non-stop.”