Humboldt hockey tragedy leaves Lions coach shaken
Like every hockey player or coach who’s ever boarded a team bus, Jon Goyens has trouble finding the words to describe his reaction to the fatal bus crash last Friday that claimed 15 lives on a stretch of highway in Saskatchewan.
“It’s horrific,” said Goyens, head coach of the Lac St-Louis Lions, the local midget AAA team that often travels by bus across Quebec in wintry conditions.
“You can’t really fully describe how you feel because, from a distance, you feel numb about it. It’s almost surreal. Then you start reflecting right away. At least I did.”
Goyens also knows a bit about travelling the highways of Saskatchewan to play hockey over two decades ago.
In 1995, when he was 17, he left Montreal to attend Notre Dame College in Wilcox, Sask., home of the famous Hounds hockey team.
Goyens only stayed for half a season, but remembers travelling along the desolate highways of the Canadian Prairies.
“I lived some of those bus trips in Saskatchewan. If you’ve never been to the Prairies, when they say that section of the Prairies from below Saskatoon to the American border is flat, well, it’s flat.
“That means when the wind picks up, you’ve got nothing but cars taking the impact of that wind. A when you’re in a (long and tall) vehicle like a bus, it’s like being on stilts.”
Goyens says the impact of such a horrific tragedy on a small town like Humboldt is unimaginable. He says much of civic life in rural Saskatchewan revolves around the local midget or junior hockey team.
“When you’re in a small town like Wilcox of about (a few hundred) people, and the school has 400 students, the rink is the place to be. Every time there is a game the rink is jammed. I didn’t matter if it was midget AAA or another level, people would come from all the small towns around to watch.
“It was the mid-90s when I was there,” he added. “Without electronics and social media, without distractions, without a lot of stuff, you really had no choice but to immerse yourself in that lifestyle and that type of community.”
Goyens also recalls long bus rides while he was an assistant coach with the defunct Lewiston MAINEiacs of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League for the 2008-09 season,
“That season we were living on the bus, crossing the Canadian border every time we faced an opponent because there was no other American team. Our closest opponent was five to six hours away.
“We travelled 35 to 40 days on the road that season. If you’re a team that doesn’t have a huge budget, you’re doing a lot of over-nights.
“… In bad weather, trips that are normally 10 hours can become 17 hours.”
The Lions, who play out of the Dollard Civic Centre, travel by coach bus. The longer road trips include stops in Amos, Jonquière and Rivière-du-Loup.
Goyens has experienced his share of white-knuckle drives over the years when the weather turns bad.
“As coaches we sit in the front of the bus. I don’t think everybody understands that. We see things that maybe the players don’t see.”
Goyens praised the Quebec midget AAA league for postponing matches when weather forecasts point to dangerous travel conditions.
But he added that one of the biggest accident threats come from other drivers who “play chicken,” even as the team bus is pulling into the Dollard Civic Centre late at night.
Goyens, who became a father not so long ago, says the Humboldt tragedy has left his young family shaken.
“My little guy (Henri) is not even 17 months old, I can’t imagine something happening to him.”
Meanwhile, students at Clearpoint school in Pointe-Claire participated on Monday in a jersey tribute day, for a suggested $2 donation, in order to show empathy for the loss that the Humboldt Broncos community has had to bear.