‘Brother-like’ bonds may help ease pain of survivor’s guilt

Swift Current crash survivors recall turmoil

IT’S VERY PAINFUL AND YOU CAN NEVER CHANGE ANY OF IT.

The crash of the Humboldt Broncos’ team bus brings a flood of aching, hand-tomouth stories of those who died and those who survived and the cruel trick of the what-ifs and if-onlys.

Nothing shouts the randomness of life louder than tragedy and survivor’s guilt becomes real for those who escape it.

“There were a lot of questions from myself, a lot of guilt for not having been there, guilt that I wasn’t there for my teammates, how it could have been,” said Dan Lambert, who was a member of the Swift Current Broncos hockey team involved in a similar deadly team bus crash in 1986.

“Where would I have been sitting on the bus? What would have happened? Would I have been one of the unfortunate ones? You have all of these questions and, truthfully, you will never know the answers.”

Similar stories from the Humboldt crash will emerge.

The memory of the Dec. 30, 1986, crash that killed four members of the Swift Current junior ice hockey team returned with a flush for many when news of Friday’s crash with a transport truck — far bigger in magnitude of fatalities and injuries with 15 dead and 14 injured — first broke on Friday.

Bob Wilkie was on the bus back in 1986. He had recently been traded from his hometown team and moved to Swift Current.

“I just got past the homesickness phase. Then I got on a bus for a hockey game and we never got there. I watched one of my teammates take his dying breath. I was 17,” Wilkie said.

When he heard of the Humboldt crash it was like he was transported back in time, he said.

“In a second I was back standing there over my teammate in the middle of the freezing cold. Every memory came rushing back.

“You replay it a million times in your head. Is there anything you could have done differently; could you have done more. It’s very painful and you can never change any of it.”

For about 20 years he kept asking, “why not me?”

Lambert said he also felt everything all over again.

“For us, it’s been more than 31 years (since our crash) and when I heard of this, it brings you right back. This becomes a part of you and who you are,” said Lambert, who now coaches the Western Hockey League’s Spokane Chiefs after his playing career.

Lambert should have been on the team bus back in 1986. He was 16 and playing defence for the Broncos. Instead, he was called up to play on an all-star-style Western Canada junior hockey team facing a Russian junior hockey team for three exhibition games that winter.

The first of the Swift Current games he was to miss for the tournament was the night of the crash. He heard something about it during the game from a team trainer, who also was the Swift Current trainer.

“There was no social media back then and it wasn’t easy to find any information right away. It was very vague and very confusing. I finished the game and made a phone call.”

His roommates at the time with a billet family were two players on the bus who survived — Joe Sakic and Sheldon Kennedy.

“We had some conversations to help us all get through it. It was a difficult time for everyone. The relationships we had made it a lot easier, just being there for each other.

“The biggest thing (that helped) was the support that our teammates had and our families and our billet families really helped ease those questions and doubts and guilt and helped me go through this tough time.”

In the Swift Current crash, those who were not killed were able to continue playing and the team decided to finish the season.

“We had a long talk about what we wanted to do moving forward. We decided that the players who were killed would have wanted us to keep playing. We all had the same dream and they wouldn’t want us to quit on those dreams.”

Lambert said junior hockey players usually don’t live in their hometowns, relying on billets or host families to take them in. He said that creates strong bonds between players. Lambert described it as “brother-like.”

A symbol of the bond became an emotional one over the weekend when a parent tweeted a photo of three survivors of Friday’s crash together in hospital beds, one in a neck brace, each clasping hands.

“Derek, Graysen and Nick bonding and healing in hospital,” wrote R.J. Patter, father of Derek Patter, one of the young men.

That’s what will get the survivors through this, said Wilkie and Lambert. Support from teammates, parents, the community and the hockey world will be crucial.

Wilkie, who now works as a mental health coach, along with a few other Swift Current survivors, rushed to help. He was visiting survivors and their families in Saskatoon hospital Sunday afternoon before heading to Humboldt for a service for the victims.

“There was lots of crying, a little laughing and lots of talking,” Wilkie said.

Scientists and health care researchers have documented and studied survivor guilt that comes from being spared from harm.

Mental health professionals consider it an associated feature of post-traumatic stress disorder.

“It’s a very tough time,” said Lambert. “There is a tough, tough time ahead for them.”