HUMBOLDT, A PLACE OF GRACE.
IN HUMBOLDT, EVERYONE LOOKS AFTER SOMEONE WHO LOOKS AFTER SOMEONE ELSE
Like the fields that surround this place, where the sun catches the frost and shines up the brown heads of last season’s crops, the people of this little town, long and low in the way of Prairie towns, seem lit from within.
They are so full of love and kindness it is almost ridiculous.
From all corners of Saskatchewan and beyond, people were making their way to Humboldt on Sunday.
Billet families were either picking up their old boys from the airport in Saskatoon, 100 kilometres away, to bring them here for the vigil, or visiting those still in hospital there.
“I think we’re the only ones (of the billet families) still here,” said Tracy Smith.
That’s because the young man, Matthieu Gomercic, who has lived with her and her husband Linsey for two seasons, is one of the luckiest ones.
The 20-year-old Gomercic not only survived the Friday crash that effectively wiped out the entity that was the Humboldt Broncos junior team — the coach, assistant coach, statistician, play-by-play man, bus driver and nine players died — but also was relatively unhurt.
They were hoping that Matt, as they call him, would be released from hospital in time to make the Sunday night vigil; his parents and sister had driven from Winnipeg (Gomercic is the only Manitoban on the roster) to Regina, where they waited to hear from the Smiths as to which direction to head, Tisdale or Saskatoon.
The crash, which saw a big rig carrying a load of peat moss Tbone the bus, happened about halfway between Tisdale and Nipawin, where the Broncos were to play the Hawks in Game 6 of their Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League playoff that night.
The Smiths, of course, drove to Tisdale as soon as they heard — Matt was able almost immediately to text his dad in Winnipeg, who texted Linsey — and stayed with him until he was transferred by ambulance to Royal University Hospital in Saskatoon, where his folks had arrived, from one set of loving hands to another.
When Linsey gave up the farm he ran near Spalding with his dad and uncle — they were ready to retire and the farm was just too big for one man — he and Tracy decided to move to Humboldt, where she already worked for the local health centre.
As Tracy remembers it, when they broke the news to their four boys, the kids said, “We’ll move, but we’re getting a Bronco.”
Not much later, she said much the same thing to Linsey.
No sooner had they settled in, in the newish subdivision that sprang up near the health centre, he called home one day and she announced, “We’re gonna take a Bronco.”
Their littlest boy, Brock, was just a baby when they moved in. He’s five now, and as Tracy said, his whole life, there’s always been a Bronco in the house.
They live right next door to Devin Cannon, who at the time was the Broncos’ billet co-ordinator, as well as the announcer at the rink, and Cannon found many families right in his own backyard. One, Carla and Wes Clement, are a second-generation billet family: Carla’s parents did it before her, so she grew up with Broncos too.
Devin and his wife Rene have two daughters, but they’ve had Broncos in the house for as long as anyone can remember. Three of their charges — Xavier Labelle, Logan Hunter and Adam Herold — were killed in the crash, and they headed to Saskatoon Sunday to be with the boys’ parents.
On their doorstep was a tray of home-baked cookies, flowers and a card: Everyone here looks after someone who looks after someone else.
The Smiths’ first billet son was Colten Meaver; they had him for only two weeks before he was traded for Anthony Kapelke, but before he got there, they had Logan Savard for three months. Then they had Anthony for two and a half years, and then they got Matt, who is in his second season with them.
They loved all of them. Though all their Broncos were out of high school when they arrived, most took online university courses, and some, Anthony and Matt, were serious about it. Some players in the league may still nurse the dream of playing in the National Hockey League, but lots play in the Saskatchewan junior league because they’re hoping, first, for a scholarship.
Also, as Linsey said, “They just want to play hockey as long as they can.”
They arrive, still, as young men, far away from home. For Matt Gomercic, for instance, being in Humboldt was the farthest he’d ever been from Winnipeg.
“You just do everything you can to make them feel at home,” Tracy said. “You love them like your own.”
Saskatchewan is unusual, if not unique, in that most of its junior teams (including Humboldt’s) are, like the Roughriders football team, community-owned; there is no single private owner. In these small towns — populations range from almost 6,000 to about 3,500 — the hockey team is everything, permeates every aspect of daily life.
The billet families meet the boys’ parents, both at formal team events and informally. Linsey and Matt’s dad, for instance, texted irregularly but often, usually about football, the Blue Bombers versus Roughriders’ rivalry. Posters for awards banquets and dances are all over town, Broncos’ sweaters too.
Even at the St. Augustine Roman Catholic Church Sunday, in the foyer was a lone chair with a Bronco jersey draped over it. There were parishioners wearing Broncos’ gear, and Father Joseph Salihu dedicated the mass to the team, talked frankly about loss and despair, and invited those with close connections to the Broncos to come forward so people could pray for them.
One of the last things he said was this: “Yes, it is painful and tragic, but it is also a moment of grace.”
The catastrophe has knocked the stuffing out of people here. Tracy and Linsey aren’t sure now if they’ll want to get a Bronco next year (the team’s season is over, and Matt was in his last year). It’s too soon to know, Tracy said.
But like their billet sons, they are resilient. And like Rene Cannon just next door, who told CBC Radio, “We aren’t built not to get attached.”
Attaching is what they do in Humboldt. They know grace here.
MY THOUGHTS ARE WITH THE FAMILIES, THE BILLET FAMILIES, AND FIRST RESPONDERS, AND ANYONE INVOLVED IN THE IMMEDIATE RESPONSE, BECAUSE IT’S JUST HORRIFIC.
— FORMER NHLER SHELDON KENNEDY, WHO SURVIVED THE SWIFT CURRENT BUS CRASH IN 1986