EMBRACING A NEW NORMAL
Straschnitzki family adapts
Thursday: Straz Strong — From Tragedy Comes Tenacity
Today: A Family United — New Realities for All
Saturday: Another Shot — Looking to the Future
It’s been almost one year since Ryan Straschnitzki was paralyzed in the horrific Humboldt bus crash that killed 16 people. Postmedia Calgary journalist Sammy Hudes and photojournalist Leah Hennel have been spending time with Ryan regularly since that life-changing day. This is Part 2 of a special three-part report.
Michelle Straschnitzki still felt a little weary from two nights earlier.
The Humboldt Broncos had played into triple-overtime in Game 4 of their semifinal playoff series against the Nipawin Hawks, losing 6-5 on a power-play goal five minutes and 44 seconds into the third extra period.
She stayed up watching the game on TV, her husband Tom turning in before it was over, having to be up early the next day.
Despite the loss, Michelle felt it was “one of the most extraordinary” hockey games their son Ryan, a Bronco, had played. It would also be his last. Their son’s games provided a bright spot in the lives of Tom and Michelle.
Like many Albertans, plummeting oil prices and a difficult economy had spelled trouble for the couple’s employment. In November 2017, Michelle was laid off from her job as an administrative assistant in the oil and gas industry. Tom faced a similar fate in early April 2018 — the same time his son was going toe to toe in the Saskatchewan junior league playoffs. He ended up losing his production accountant job in the same sector.
Their lives, however, would soon turn upside down in a much more serious fashion.
Tom and Michelle were relaxing at a neighbour’s house, waiting for Ryan’s game to start on a Friday evening. They were planning to head home and invite a few friends over to watch Game 5 of the series, a do-or-die game in which the Broncos were facing elimination.
Tom’s iphone buzzed 40 minutes before puck drop.
There was a bus crash on the way to Nipawin, a friend of his had heard, quickly texting whatever limited information was available.
Tom figured it was probably something small, maybe just a fender bender.
He looked at his phone again about 10 minutes later.
“You better call me,” his friend wrote.
He spent a few minutes on that phone call, getting an update. Things were much worse than he could’ve imagined. Tom turned to Michelle. “We’ve gotta get home,” he said.
The night of April 6, 2018, would forever change what lay ahead for the Straschnitzki family after Ryan was paralyzed in the Humboldt bus crash that killed 16 people.
A year later, their “home” would be the Hampton Inn in Airdrie, north of Calgary, after already having stayed at the Wingate hotel for more than seven months.
Tom and Michelle and their four kids — Ryan, 16-year-old twins Jaden and Jett, and six-year-old Connor, along with Dexter the family dog — moved into the hotel as a temporary living space after Ryan was released from hospital in July.
The family takes up three rooms at the hotel; the three younger kids share a room, which also doubles as a cooking space for Michelle. Sometimes the kids eat in the lobby, other times in their own rooms. Between everyone’s busy schedules, it’s challenging to find time to sit down together as a family at the dinner table.
Renovations have been underway since last summer at their Airdrie house, where volunteer crews have been installing an elevator and overhauling the basement to make it a completely accessible space for Ryan.
As the anniversary of the Broncos crash looms, they’re still not back.
“This is like the new normal, I guess. This is how our lives are now,” says Jett. “It’s just life now. And it feels like home anyways.”
Before the crash, Tom and Michelle spent most of their time watching Ryan’s games in Saskatchewan on TV and taking their three younger children to hockey and soccer practice.
Life “was stressful in the normal way,” Michelle says.
“Basically, we were just doing day-to-day stuff, trying to figure out what to do. I was probably online job searching and then paying bills, making sure the kids got to whatever sports they were in and making sure that they were taken care of, fed.”
There was no way for Tom and Michelle to prepare for what would hit them that harrowing evening; nor could Ryan’s younger siblings.
Jaden was on her way to a party when her friends told her something had happened. Rather than staying home worried and in the dark, she thought going out would help take her mind off the situation.
But she’d soon face a barrage of questions she couldn’t answer, as it wasn’t long before reports on news sites and social media began revealing a few details of the collision.
“People kept coming up to me and stuff like that, so that didn’t help,” she says. “It felt so surreal. I didn’t even think it could happen, like something so big and tragic like that. I was scared and shocked.”
It took hours to find out what occurred or even whether Ryan was still alive. Tom and Michelle tried to get a hold of their eldest son, but had no luck.
Ryan’s phone had stopped working at 4:58 p.m. that day.
“It was just so terrifying to see what was going on and not be able to be there and do anything, and not knowing the condition of our own child,” Michelle recalls.
A phone call from teammate Bryce Fiske’s dad, Kelly, came late that night. He had been to the crash site. Ryan was alive.
“He said it was just carnage. Of course, your heart still sinks into your stomach,” Michelle says. “You’re waiting around and you’re thinking this is the most unbelievable night of your life.”
With the help of someone else’s phone in the hospital, the family managed to connect with Ryan that night, just before he was airlifted to Saskatoon. Tom and Michelle made it there by 10 a.m. the next day as Ryan was already two hours into surgery on his back.
“As Michelle and I are walking through the ICU, you couldn’t recognize any of the boys or Dayna (Brons, the team’s trainer),” says Tom. “And I just remember grabbing Michelle and going, ‘Just brace yourself,’ because they were unrecognizable.”
Ryan was paralyzed from the chest down, the doctors told them. He would likely never walk again.
“That was the worst news,” says Michelle, pausing. “Almost the worst news that we can possibly have imagined.
“I just remember the pain.”
For some kids, 18 years is the age when they decide to move out on their own, almost a celebration of crossing the threshold into adulthood. For others, that time might come in their early 20s, when they have a job secured.
Ryan was just 16 years old when he left home to play midget AAA hockey for the Leduc Oil Kings. He lived in the Edmonton area for two years during the hockey season, coming back home in the summer and on Christmas breaks.
“Before he went off to play hockey in Leduc, we were starting to get that brother bond,” recalled Jett, 31/2 years Ryan’s junior. “We kind of lost that bond as he went away for hockey.”
Ryan joined the Junior A Whitecourt Wolverines to start the 201718 season before he was traded to Humboldt.
For three years, Ryan had been fed and cared for by his “billet parents,” couples who take in teenage sports stars to live with their families as they pass through junior hockey towns. The rink was Ryan’s home away from home and his teammates were his family away from home.
When he compares that situation to his current circumstances, surrounded by his parents and siblings around the clock every day, Ryan can’t help but laugh.
“It’s different,” he says, “to be the first year I’m with them all year round.
“We’re not in the house, so it’s different living in a hotel, but I mean we’re here together. They have my back, so I’m happy.”
Ryan and Jaden were especially tight when they were young. Ryan assumed the big brother role and took his little sister under his wing from the time she was born.
She was his “best buddy,” according to mom Michelle.
“We were close when we were younger and then he’s the older brother, so obviously we drifted apart,” Jaden says. “He got into hockey and stuff like that and then the accident happened.”
It was a night of worry for Jett, who’s usually careful to keep his emotions in check. Like his dad and older brother, Jett is calm and even-keeled. If he’s feeling upset, he prefers not to let it show.
That night of the crash — his brother’s life possibly in jeopardy — left a sense of fear.
“I was kind of confused as to what was going on, but as I found out what happened to him, I got scared,” says Jett.
It’s different to be the first year I’m with them all year round ... They have my back, so I’m happy.
“I can’t really explain it. It was a bunch of emotions going through. It was just totally different emotions than I’ve ever experienced.”
It only got harder when he visited Ryan in hospital for the first time a week later.
“I just looked at him and didn’t know what was going on. Seeing him in a hospital bed was kinda tough, seeing him have all these difficulties,” he says.
Jett always admired Ryan, who carved a path that the younger brother hopes to follow.
Just like Ryan and his Broncos teammates, Jett is sporting bleached blond hair in early March 2019 as his Airdrie minor hockey team begins its playoff journey.
He, too, dreams of making a junior team in Alberta, Saskatchewan or B.C. when he’s 18, and then turning that into a college and professional career.
“Even before the crash, I’ve always asked (Ryan) for junior advice,” says Jett. “It’s still like that. He’s still my big brother. He’s still my biggest role model and I always look up to him no matter what.”
Hockey is a competitive sport. It’s far too early to tell how far sixyear-old brother Connor will go as he continues to learn the ropes in his Timbits league.
But for Ryan and Jett, it was a neck-and-neck comparison.
“My dad tells me we’re the same player in some ways, like skillwise,” Jett says.
The brothers have the same mindset on the ice, but according to Tom, Jett is the better player at age 16.
“I honestly don’t see it,” says Jett. “He (Ryan) is obviously more motivated than I am, so he has that drive. I kinda do, but not as much. I’m learning from him.”
Each winter, when Ryan came home to spend the holidays with his family, it gave him and Jett the rare chance to go head-to-head, taking a twirl on the pond near their home.
“He’s always loved when Ryan came home for Christmas,” says Tom. “Obviously, that won’t happen anymore unless Ryan takes his sled out there.”
But Jett says they’ve grown closer — “you kinda have to” — since the accident. He tries to help Ryan as much as possible, driving him to Okotoks, just south of Calgary, some evenings for sledge hockey practice.
He, too, has tried out the sport that his brother aims to conquer.
It’s the job of the little brother, he adds, to “listen to your older brother and take in whatever he says to you.”
For Jaden, Ryan’s shadow has always loomed large.
“I was always known as Straz’s sister,” she says, and that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
“There’s definitely a lot of pride,” says Jaden, whose chosen sport is soccer. “Even before all this, he would help coach younger kids and just do that stuff. He’s always been an inspiration to everyone.”
Her name association with Ryan has only been amplified since the accident, but she doesn’t mind.
Ryan has taken on an even bigger role, one their parents relish, in Jaden’s life.
“Ryan still protects her,” Tom says. “With the boyfriend situation, he’s like, ‘Hey, I’m sitting; I’ll still take care of him.’ ”
Ryan’s confinement to a wheelchair — “seeing her big brother like that” — has been a particularly tough adjustment for Jaden, according to Tom.
But it’s also brought a new-found appreciation for each other’s company. Shortly after Jaden and Jett got their driver’s licences a few months ago, Ryan sent his little sister a text asking what her plans were after school.
An unusual query from Ryan, a confused Jaden said she didn’t have any plans. So, Ryan asked if she’d see a movie with him.
Movies and Flames games have since become their thing, and the two have been able to spend more time with one another in just a few short months than they did for years while Ryan was away.
“We’ve just been closer than ever now and I like to say that I’m his favourite. He doesn’t get mad at me as often as he does with everyone else,” Jaden boasts.
Tom says there’s something positive to gain from the family’s unusual circumstances, cooped up together in three hotel rooms for the past three-quarters of a year.
He’s happy that his kids have formed new relationships, that weren’t as strong when Ryan was living away from home.
“They were 13 (when Ryan left) and that’s usually when the brothers and sisters kinda bond, but he was never home,” he says. “It was like he didn’t know them or they didn’t know him.”
Days at the Hampton Inn start with Ryan’s extensive morning routine.
His first move is going to the washroom. As a paraplegic, he goes through a program to stimulate the bowels, so as to avoid situations later in the day in which he doesn’t have control.
Ryan is now strong enough to get through the program on his own, using his arms to hold onto objects in the washroom and twist his way out of the wheelchair. From the toilet, he rolls over to the shower, where he sits in a special chair, before drying off and transferring himself back to the bed in his hotel room.
He keeps a phone close at all times, should he need help from his parents.
Once back in his bed, Ryan dresses himself, which can be a tricky process for someone without any core strength, and then transfers back to his wheelchair for the day.
By then, mom Michelle has his breakfast ready — oatmeal and fruit, usually — which he eats in his room while he relaxes. Some days might then involve a trip to the doctor or a morning sledge hockey practice at East Calgary Twin Arena for an hour.
Ryan later heads to physiotherapy for the afternoon — often taking an accessible transport bus — at the Synaptic Spinal Cord Injury and Neuro Rehabilitation Centre in Calgary. On some days, Ryan has a second sledge hockey session in Okotoks during the evenings.
It’s a whirlwind day for the stretched-thin parents, who also get their other three kids to school and various games and practices.
In the early days, when Ryan was at Shriners Hospitals for Children — Philadelphia, Tom and Michelle completed training programs to learn how to be caregivers for their son.
“We learned a lot. We didn’t know the everyday simple stuff that we do,” says Tom.
Michelle says there’s a ton of information that people aren’t aware of when it comes to those living with spinal cord injuries. For example, people with these injuries can become allergic to bananas and kiwis — or latex, as in Ryan’s case — which has meant being extra careful about materials kept at home.
Ryan has also had a few health scares from a condition caused by his injury, called autonomic dysreflexia. It involves the sudden onset of extremely high blood pressure.
A common condition for those with paralysis, it’s triggered when the body experiences a pain or irritant below the level of injury, like a cracked toe or even wearing tight clothing. It could also be caused by a normal function that the body doesn’t pick up on, like having a full bladder and needing to use the catheter.
“You just have to check all the symptoms and signs. But it’s part of the new conditions that we have to live with and figure out,” says Michelle.
“It’s a lot of learning, but it’s good. I’m glad we learned. We’re far more aware now than we ever were before about accessibility.”
If you’d told the Straschnitzki family a year ago what their lives would look like now, they probably wouldn’t have believed you.
But, after waiting and waiting, the end is finally in sight, and in mid-april, family members hope to return to their renovated home, where Mike Holmes — the renovator of TV fame — has been overseeing some of the work.
For Ryan, who was on the road playing hockey for the first half of 2018, it’s been more than a year since he last slept in his own bed. Since he last watched his own TV. Since he last lived in his own home.
“I’ve become accustomed to the hotel life,” says Ryan, sitting in his wheelchair next to his hotel bed. “Hopefully, we’re back in the house soon, because I don’t want to be here too much longer.”
His younger siblings say they’ve adjusted to their new reality — sleeping in the same room together, having strangers around as they eat dinner in the lobby, having little privacy from each other — but they, too, are getting antsy.
Living in close quarters has, in many ways, brought the family closer together, says Michelle.
“Too close sometimes,” she jokes. “But I think it’s been a positive thing for the family. It’s a lot of togetherness.”
The Straschnitzkis’ daily trials have forced them to “figure out who we are as a family.”
“We are together an awful lot and sometimes that’s a good thing. Sometimes it’s not a great thing. But we’re still figuring out what different roles we can play with each other now,” Michelle says.
“There’s stuff they’ve learned about each other that nobody ever wanted to know. I think that’s good for them. Now they can just be siblings.”
Through the trauma of their brother’s scare to the challenges of his ongoing recovery, Jett and Jaden have learned lessons about what matters and what doesn’t — something adults much beyond their years are still figuring out.
“They learned just a new way of life,” Tom says. “It’s just tough for everybody.”
Still, as the patriarch and often the voice of the family, Tom won’t let it show when things are looking down. He stays strong at all times, especially for Ryan’s benefit.
“Some days get stressful,” he admits. “Everyone has good days, bad days and when those bad days hit you’ve just got to plow through that and try and make it a positive day. Every morning I’ll wake up, look out the window, see the sunshine or the snow and go, ‘OK, let’s make this a good day.’”
It’s an attitude that’s rubbed off on his daughter, who sometimes wonders why and how this could have happened to them.
“You think about it and then you’re like, ‘OK, well, you can’t get past anything if you just keep wondering why,’ ” says Jaden.
“You just move forward.”