Four donors share their stories,
There’s been no money coming in for a couple of weeks now. Not since Nicholas Harris was laid off from his job as an electrician in Newfoundland.
But the “very expensive” payments haven’t stopped on his 2017 Honda Civic.
“Insurance isn’t cheap here either,” says the 19-year-old, who lives in Birchy Bay, a little town of 600 tucked in along the northeast Atlantic coast on the Bay of Exploits.
Still, Harris donated what he could.
“Twenty dollars is all,” he says. “But just a little here and there over so many people, it adds up.”
Harris had never heard of Humboldt before he settled in to watch the Blue Jays game April 6. Soon he was hearing more about the Broncos than the Jays.
Now he can’t get the news and the images out of his mind.
“Just the fact they were around my age was the big key, I think,” he says. “I just can’t stop thinking about it.”
It’s the same for the entire town, he says.
Harris has watched the money total rise steadily and he believes it says something about Canada and, really, about human nature.
“Hockey is a part of Canada. That’s what Canada is known for. It just hits so many homes that are related to hockey,” he says.
“There’s kind people out there, I guess, that are willing to help no matter the sacrifice they have to do. Twenty bucks might be all they have, but they’re willing to give the money to someone else in need.
“I just wish I was out there to speak to the boys that are in the hospital. I’d do anything to help out.”
Harris isn’t the only one to notice the players killed in the crash were his age.
“My mother has kissed me every day since, knowing how blessed she is.”
The Timmins Rock were loading the bus outside the Cochrane arena when word started to spread.
There’d been a horrible bus crash. A junior team, like their own, was involved.
Suddenly, their playoff elimination that Friday night didn’t matter as much.
“The loss to end your season is one thing, but the loss those people are going through really took hold,” head coach Corey Beer says.
It was a “sombre” ride home, says Beer, the players either chatting in small groups or engrossed in their cellphones searching for news updates. Beer or one of the other Rock staff would make the occasional reassuring walk down the aisle, to check in on the players.
The bus, a common thread in the junior hockey experience, is a team’s safe place, where the long hours together lead to lifelong friendships.
“We’re hopping on the bus like it’s business as usual and then you find out more and . . . it’s a little scary at the time,” Beer says.
The Rock understood it had to support the Broncos and, by the next morning, an idea was hatched. The team no longer needed its Sunday home ice for a playoff game, so it was instead booked for a charity skate for Humboldt.
“Basically, Saturday morning we put a bug in everyone’s ear around town,” Beer says.
“It’s pretty shocking how fast word of mouth travels here in Timmins. I think you’ve got about 30 minutes before everyone knows what you’re doing.”
Beer, who is from Oshawa but raves about Timmins’ civic pride and community involvement, didn’t misread the situation.
The team threw open its doors and somewhere between 300 and 400 skaters showed up to take to the ice with their favourite Rock players.
More importantly, they left behind almost $5,000 to be donated to the Broncos.
“Everyone is grieving over this,” Beer says.
“It’s such a tragic loss. Everyone getting together, I think, was huge. The way that this community rallied around it and donated their money, it was pretty special.”
It’s something many organizations do, especially when the kids are younger.
At a year-end party, the players are given a little gift from team funds. Some of the parents on the Kemptville Storm atom squad, a team that had an undefeated regular season, were thinking that a $20 spa certificate might be fitting.
They thought the girls, mostly 10 and 11, might enjoy a manicure or a pedicure. The crash changed that.
The team drove into Toronto from Kemptville, an hour south of Ottawa, for the provincials — where they made it to the quarterfinals — and suddenly the weekend became bittersweet.
“(The girls) did well but knew about the news so, yes, they were upset,” says Mike Ross, the team’s manager. “It was hard for them to understand, hard for all of us to understand from a distance.” Some parents wondered how this team of girls might help this team of junior boys. One parent had already donated $100 to the Broncos in the name of the team and another suggested that, instead of gifts for the girls, that money should go to Humboldt.
Ross ran the idea past a couple of other parents, who thought it was a great idea. The kids were on board too.
So, with 13 girls on the team, that became a $260 donation.
“The girls have their friend- ships gained over the season, which in some cases will last forever,” Ross explains. “These boys and their families don’t have that anymore. Nothing will ever replace what they lost, but hopefully the money will contribute to the healing.”
Chicago’s Ray Czarnik is from a hockey family and he raised a hockey family. As a hockey dad and one-time assistant coach he has seen Slap Shot dozens of times.
It’s part of the deal if you get on a bus with a team. Memorizing the best lines is almost a rite of passage for many young players.
So as he scanned the internet trying to learn more about what happened to the Humboldt Broncos, one photo was like a punch to the gut: a close-up of a broken Slap Shot DVD in the mud at the crash site.
“If that doesn’t bring you to your knees, I don’t know what does,” he says. “That’s when it really hit home — hard.”
Czarnik lives just outside the Windy City, where he owns a car dealership, but there are no boundaries when it comes to compassion.
The hockey experience, he said, is universal — the fun on the bus, the movies, teammates with hair dyed the same, kids putting in the hard work with hope of getting to the next level; a team becoming a family through the ups and downs of a season. Czarnik’s son and daughter started playing hockey at age 5 and still play almost two decades later. He says he saw his own children when looking at the photos of the Broncos. He also thought of the devastated parents and the community. He donated $200.
“Here’s kids whose parents we’ve never met but you feel like you’ve met them. It’s like they’re your best friends because you know what they’re going through (to help their children). When you go to another arena, let’s say you go to Canada, you can talk to the other parents and you’re like buddies. They’ve been through everything you’ve been through. The 4 a.m. wake-up calls, going out for 6 a.m. practice, all that stuff.”
“Even though it happened far away, it’s like it happened to your next-door neighbour.”
Czarnik’s son, Scotty, played college hockey as a goalie for Arizona State and Illinois State, and the father recalls seeing his boy off so many times on a bus.
“I’d think, OK, he’s in good hands. I never thought a second about it,” he says.
“Then you see the photo of those (Humboldt) kids, so innocent. All they want to do is play a game, a sport they love. It just crushed me as a parent, as an assistant coach, just as a human being. They’re going to playoff game, all pumped up and excited. Can you imagine the excitement on that bus? And to have it snuffed out like is such a tragedy.”