Humboldt humbled by avalanche of gifts
Humboldt dedicates a place to house gifts still flowing in after bus tragedy
HUMBOLDT The gifts began accumulating mere hours after the Humboldt Broncos’ team bus collided with a semi trailer at the intersection of two rural Saskatchewan highways.
In the aftermath of the April 6 tragedy that left 16 people dead and another 13 injured, flowers and Teddy bears were dropped off at Humboldt’s Elgar Petersen Arena. Then came cards, banners and books of condolences. There were benches and statues. Paintings and origami cranes. Hockey jerseys and hockey sticks.
“You name it, it’s come. And it has not stopped,” says Broncos’ vicepresident Randy Maclean.
“It’s been overwhelming and humbling and I’m really quite in awe.”
People dropped off items at the arena, city hall, the Humboldt Chamber of Commerce and the local RCMP detachment. Some people walked a block to deliver their gifts, others drove hundreds of kilometres.
Humboldt Mayor Rob Muench recalls speaking to people from British Columbia and Ontario who drove for hours to bring things to thecity.
“It was quite remarkable,” he said. “I just see those people doing something just because everybody wants to do something, right? Because they feel, I think, a little bit helpless in the whole situation. That’s what I felt anyway.”
Items arrived in the mail from return addresses around the world and showed up outside the arena in the middle of the night. Some came with notes, some anonymously.
One of the gifts that mesmerized Muench was a large steel hockey stick with 16 holes — one for each of those who died — drilled into the shaft. Barbed wire wrapped around the top and bottom of the stick where hockey tape would normally be. Muench doesn’t know how the stick got to the arena; it was just there one day with an anonymous note explaining what had gone through the artist’s head when they created it.
“I think a lot of people were doing these things just in the middle of the night — you know, get up and say, ‘I’ve got to do this.’ So it was actually quite touching that people would do this type of stuff for us,” Muench said.
In the immediate aftermath of the crash, gifts lived on the ice of the Elgar Petersen Arena. But it wasn’t a permanent solution. The ice would eventually need to come out. And the arena is the hub of the community. Muench didn’t want the items to be there, in people’s faces, whether they were ready to view them or not.
“We just didn’t want to have it overwhelming therefor the people that have togo there on a daily basis,” Muench said. “We just thought that it would be better to have an area where we could put it that’s a little bit out of the way, a little bit more private, and people could make a conscious decision to come.”
Some items remain in the arena including an electric fire pit with “Broncos Strong ” written across it, a towering cross with the names of the deceased, a pair of angel’s wings and a massive hockey stick with the hash tag #prayersforhumboldt emblazoned on the side.
But most gifts have been relocated. Humboldt city council tasked its local museum and gallery with cataloguing and showcasing the gifts the city and team received and, earlier this month, dozens of items were put on display on the top floor of the city ’s gallery. More items can be viewed across the street at the museum.
Jennifer Fitzpatrick, director of cultural services for the City of Humboldt, said attendance at the gallery has been above average since the items were put out.
She said the gifts will remain up until the middle of August. At that point, gallery staff will photograph and inventory them before packing them away and storing them in vaults below the building. Then, they’ll go into storage rooms at the Elgar Petersen Arena to get a new set of items to show.
“We’ll be digitizing and cataloguing for awhile,” Fitzpatrick says.
Broncos vice-president Maclean says he hasn’t gone into the gallery yet. He knows when he does it will be “overwhelming.”
Muench has visited a few times. “Just sitting back and reading the banners and looking at the photos and the hockey jerseys that people have sent, it’s quite heart warming,” he says.
Some gifts given to the team and city are meant for the families of those who died or the 13 Broncos players who survived.
Maclean says there’s a group making sure everyone gets the items that are meant for them.
He knows someone in Prince Edward Island sent plush potatoes with eyes and legs for all 29 people who had been on the bus. All families also received quilts — a small portion of the nearly 4,000 that were given to the team and city.
“People just want to find a way to give back, find a way to be attached, find to a way to demonstrate they could identify. It’s humbling and overwhelming on so many levels,” Maclean says.
“Each one of the articles has a story and obviously I can’t do it justice. I don’t think there’s anyone who can do it justice, but each article has a story. And behind the story is an individual or a group of individuals. This action touched their life and they took time out their life to touch ours and so that’s important.”
Maclean and Muench say it’s too soon to say what will happen to the gifts in the long term — that’s a conversation to be had with the community, the Broncos and the families of those involved in the crash.
“We’re still trying to take it all in and try to digest exactly the magnitude of the lives that this tragedy has touched and how do we recognize that long term? I don’t know what it could or should look like. We’re going to have to have some deep dialogue involving multiple partners to get to that place where it works,” Muench says.
For now, he just wants people to know that their items are valued and will be preserved.
“I would like to say thank you and show our gratitude,” he says. “I’ve said this many times: As a community and as a hockey team and as families, this has been a tough thing to go through and we always looked at what was coming in from other areas, other people, other countries even, and taking that as a way to find strength to get through a difficult situation and that outpouring, I think, has helped many people get through what they needed to get through.”
People just want to find a way to give back, find a way to be attached, find to a way to demonstrate they could identify.