A Canadian tragedy
The hockey world is mourning after a horrific crash between a transport truck and a junior hockey team bus in Saskatchewan kills 15 teens and accompanying adults
HUMBOLDT, Sask. — The Humboldt Broncos were supposed to play the good old hockey game Sunday night, under the white-beamed roof at Elgar Petersen Arena.
Game 6, it would have been, and the place would have rocked, lit up by the town’s enthusiasm for playoff hockey.
But then came that bus ride to Nipawin on Friday afternoon for Game 5, and the crash that killed 15 teenage players and accompany adults and horrified not just the town, and the province, and the country, but big swaths of the much wider world.
“The worst nightmare has happened,” Bill Chow, president of the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League, said during a Saturday press conference, tears streaming down his face.
Instead of a Sunday night hockey game, a prayer vigil will be held in that same space. Volunteers were setting up chairs on the ice late Saturday, lining them up just so, for a crowd that’s going to be big.
There’s still an insular feel in Humboldt as residents struggle with shock and grief, but they’re fully aware that the wider world shares their profound sadness.
The crash attracted a tweet on Saturday from United States President Donald Trump, who on Twitter posted, “Just spoke to (Justin Trudeau) to pay my highest respect and condolences to the families of the terrible Humboldt Team tragedy. May God be with them all!”
Humboldt Mayor Rob Muench did an early-morning interview with the BBC, and talked with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for “about 10 or 15 minutes.”
Professional teams from across the sporting world, and not just from Canada, expressed solidarity.
Saskatoon Blades president Steve Hogle made the drive to Humboldt feeling the need to do something, to extend support, to help, even if he wasn’t sure exactly how to do that.
Hogle’s Blades play in the Western Hockey League, where bus travel — just like in the SJHL — is a daily activity, a place where teams bond and the prairie flashes past.
“They’re all chasing their dreams, playing this beautiful sport they love,” Hogle said. “You want to do everything to encourage them, and this is the last thing you expect to happen.
“It could have been any team, in any league, on any given day, that came into this catastrophe. In the same breath, it could be any school band heading off to a trip. It hits the hockey community hard, but it’s bigger than the game. It’s about community and family.”
The town set up a gathering place in a big room at the arena site on Friday evening, as news shifted hour by hour, from accident to unfathomable tragedy. Mayor Muench left the room at 3 a.m. or so, went home for a couple hours of fitful sleep, interrupted starting at 5 a.m. by phone calls from national and international reporters.
Other Humboldt residents lingered even longer into that interminable night at the arena. Counsellors stayed all night, and remain there now.
“I think they’re here until they’re not needed, and that may be a while yet,” Muench said.
A radio reporter from Humboldt’s Bolt FM asked a question of Broncos’ president Kevin Garinger during the press conference, and broke down before she could get out the last words. Her co-worker, Broncos play-byplay man Tyler Bieber, died in the crash, and her question was about what the team was doing to support non-players on the bus.
As the tragedy drops onto Humboldt like a big, dark shroud, practical on-ice matters will soon be considered.
The SJHL still has a championship series in its immediate future, and a national-championship pursuit. The Broncos won’t play again this season, which leaves three teams. The question of what comes next looms large: Do they cancel the balance of the season? Play with heavy hearts? There’s not much precedence for this.
“We haven’t had any conversations as of right now,” Chow said. “We will have conversations as to what the Humboldt Broncos want to do, and we’ll then have some discussions with the governors of the league. Whatever decision we make, we’re going to do what we think is in the best interest of everybody involved.
“There’s going to be people who disagree with whatever we decide; there’s going to be people who agree with what we decide. At the end of the day, what we’re going to do is what we think is right. That’s just what we’re going to do.”
Curtis Zablocki, the assistant commissioner with the Saskatchewan RCMP, outlined the bare facts of the case. On Friday at 5 p.m., Nipawin RCMP were alerted to a collision between a bus and a tractor-trailer unit. The truck was travelling westbound on Highway 335, the bus northbound on Highway 35.
There were 29 people on the bus. Fourteen were killed, a 15th died Saturday, the rest were hospitalized. The driver of the tractor-trailer unit was not injured.
The investigation continues. “This work will take some time,” Zablocki said.
He said more than 50 RCMP officers were in and around the scene that day, and he was asked if that’s unprecedented.
“I would say it is in this province,” Zablocki said. “Yes.”
So a province mourns, with a prayer vigil coming up fast in one of Saskatchewan’s favourite hockey shrines.