‘We are stunned . . . everything about this tragedy is unprecedented’
Ribbons of highway that bind a vast country.
Passion for a sport, hockey, that makes us us.
It should not end in tears and such immeasurable grief when they transect.
It should not end with a poignant epitaph from a surrogate mom who gave billet shelter to a trio of young men: “Goodbye my sweet sons.”
It should not be seared into a nation’s soul — we weep, if in gratitude for this much — of three recovering players reaching out to lock hands in their hospital room.
Of course families converged at a hockey rink in Humboldt on Friday night, anxiously awaiting news about the crash between a team of young hockey players and a transport truck. Where else would they go in a small town? Relieved parents who’d heard from their kids and the stricken who hadn’t. Will never hear those voices again.
Sobs. Tender, helpless gestures of consolation. Because it is not possible to ease such pain.
We know now how colossal the loss was: 15 killed and two others, from among a further 14 injured, in critical condition.
Sons who’d clambered onto a bus, headed for a Game 5 playoff match some 200 kilometres away across the flat Saskatchewan landscape, all excited and probably goofy in that boy-man way. Earbuds screwed in, card games breaking out, Slap Shot on the laptop, the go-to movie for hockey road trips, whether among NHLers on a chartered plane or teenagers with the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League.
Fun, you know? Laughs. Making precious memories that will last a lifetime.
Lives cut abruptly and brutally short amid the twisted wreckage on Highway 35, broken bodies transported to hospital, first responders frantically sorting the dead from the maimed, the deceased to be identified by next of kin.
Almost like war-time casualty lists, except the names go out over social media.
Just about half of a hockey team dead, the pride of their families, their own lost generation now. Fate — tons of steel — slamming into them at a rural intersection.
“We are stunned and grieving,” Kevin Garinger, president of the Humboldt Broncos, said at the Saturday afternoon press conference. “Everything about this tragedy is unprecedented.”
From a hospital employee, describing the Code Orange bloody scramble: “Last night can only be described as the longest, worst and most tragic night of my career. The images can’t be unseen or forgotten, the stories can’t be unheard or ignored. Meeting each family and explaining the extent of each industry was nothing short of a painful exercise of cruelty…”
There may have been greater peace- time wounds for Canada — natural disasters and industrial calamities — but never before something that felt quite so intimately personal. Our sons. “I grew up right there in Saskatoon, just down the road,” an emotional Mike Babcock said after the Saturday morning Leafs skate. “We pray for those families. I don’t know what else you can say. Horrific, horrific accident.”
The previous evening, Babcock had received calls from distraught friends and colleagues, individuals who’d coached the boys who were on that bus. Everyone in disbelief. Thinking immediately of the parents and siblings learning of it back home. “The hockey world is an unbelievable world,” Babcock said. “But you can’t make up for that loss. It’s got to rip the heart out of your chest.”
A parent’s worst nightmare. Only the details are different. Yet these details — hockey, a road trip — resonate deeply across Canada, a country stitched together for now in grief. A knife to the heart.
And for the second time in just over three decades, Saskatchewan mourns the death of young hockey players in a highway bus crash — four members of the Swift Current Broncos killed on Dec. 30, 1986, when their bus skidded on a patch of black ice and flipped.
“You send your kids away, my kids, to junior hockey or college hockey or college soccer,” Babcock, father of three, continued. “And you think, I always used to think, about those vans, when coaches were driving. I always thought those were a nightmare. This is supposed to be as safe as it gets. It just goes to show you’ve got to embrace each and every day you’re” — Babcock choked up, swallowed hard to finish — “with your family, you better enjoy it.”
Twenty-nine people were on the T-boned bus, hailing from near and far, Manitoba and Alberta and Ontario and the United States. The players who had been, in small-town Canada, celebrities of a sort, in their team jackets, playing for a club that has won more championships than any other in the province. Look at them, those lovely faces, in their team photo.
Names of the victims began surfacing in the long hours afterward.
Darcy Haugan, coach and general manager of the Humboldt Broncos: Killed.
Logan Schatz, team captain: Killed.
Jaxon Joseph, son of former Edmonton Oiler Chris Joseph: Killed.
Adam Herold, 16 years old: Killed.
Tyler Bieber, radio play-byplay man: Killed.
Conner Lukan, Logan Hunter, Stephen Wack, Logan Boulet, Jacob Leicht …
And the sad, sad comments that were posted to social media. “My brother didn’t make it …” “The tears just keep coming …”
Those of us who grew up in big cities don’t really know what a hockey team means to hamlets and towns, how their communities’ hearts throb in tandem with their fortunes, how wrenching such a disaster to a spot on the map like Humboldt, population 5,000. They are sons — and daughters — taken to the breast, many of them billeting with local families. Because, in Canada — as in the U.S. or Sweden or Russia — it is normal to send young athletes away in pursuit of a dream. Or just to play at a skilled level.
Leaf defenceman Morgan Rielly left his B.C. home when he was in Grade 9 as a boarding student playing midget hockey with the Notre Dame Hounds in Wilcox, Sask., later spending two years, as a billet, with the Moose Jaw Warriors of the Western Hockey League. He was among the first to tweet out condolences Friday evening.
“Growing up, playing hockey and spending a great deal of time in Saskatchewan, you get an appreciation for the kind of people that come from there,” he said Saturday ahead of the final game of the regular season, where the Broncos crest was hologramed onto the ice and a minute of silence for the victims observed. “In times like these, you definitely need people around you. Our thoughts and our hearts go out to Humboldt Broncos and their families.”
What the team means to the community, “you can’t even … understand. Going around and playing in small towns, being able to be a part of one of those teams, is extremely special. That community and the other small communities around Saskatchewan live for hockey. They drive that team and players love living there. I speak from experience. The values that you learn playing in those communities stick with you for a long time.”
All the miles he put in, during those salad days, traversing the province and beyond. Life on the buses, that was like a second home, a movable feast of youthful levity.
“You spend a lot of time on the bus and you really want that to be something that you look forward to, going on the road with your team. We drove to Kamloops from Wilcox. We drove to Chicago. We drove all over the province of Saskatchewan, from Wilcox to Prince Albert.”
Winter driving, sometimes perilous, but they were young and never worried about that much. “Like I said, you want to be able to look forward to that time of going on the road with your teammates. It’s being on the bus for a number of hours with your teammates and your friends. You really get to know one another. You really get to know a lot about yourself. Travelling, playing cards, you learn to enjoy that. That’s part of life growing up, playing hockey. Not much has changed.”
Memories that remain dear to him.
“Even once you play for different team, the Western League guys often exchange stories about riding on the bus. You compare how much time you spent. It is a rite of passage you compare your whole lives. Even guys that aren’t playing anymore, you still talk about what movies you watched and what card games you played. It’s memories that won’t ever leave you.”
He recalled that first year in Wilcox, in the dead of winter, a trip to Prince Albert. “At the time it was not something that you wanted to do because it was cold and you didn’t have any food. But now when me and my buddies get together from Wilcox, those are the things you talk about.”
Riding all night to get home, up early for school the next morning.
“You talk about things like that because they create positive memories. Then something like this happens and it puts everything into perspective.”
It’s a tragedy that sent shudders coast to coast. But perhaps especially so right now for those who have Saskatchewan in their bones.
Patrick Marleau, raised on a family farm in the tiny speck of Aneroid (population: 40), near Swift Current.
“Hockey is everything in Canada. But in Saskatchewan every community is fairly small so everybody knows everybody. You try to look out for each other and take care of each other. It’s very tight-knit.”
He is father to four young sons and likely he’ll be putting one or all of them on a hockey bus in the future. “That’s why it hits so close to home. It could easily have been …” His voice trails off. Tyler Bozak was born in Regina and played most of his junior career in B.C. before attending university in Denver.
“It was hard to sleep last night,” he said, after hearing the news. “I can’t imagine what everybody’s going through back in Saskatchewan.
“You’re with your buddies, having a good time. You feel safe in that situation. It’s just really sad, a sad day. Everyone holds a heavy heart today.”
For the families, for the little town of Humboldt, today and forever.