Bus Crash Of Junior Hockey Players in Saskatchewan - Fatalities Confirmed [in 2018]

[Northern_Piper]

The town council in Bay Roberts, Newfoundland & Labrador, had a moment of remembrance for Parker Tobin, one of the dead players.

Tobin’s dad grew up in Bay Roberts but moved west.

His uncle still lives there and said a few words on behalf of the family.

Parker Tobin’s uncle speaks on behalf of family | SaltWire

Truly, this has touched Canadians across the country.

[Northern_Piper]

@Patx2

Northern Piper, thank you for all of the information and updates you’ve been giving about this sad event. You’ve not only helped keep us informed, but you’ve done it with a sense of compassion too.

You’re welcome and thank you. I’ve not responded to similar comments up-thread, because it’s not about me, but families and communities in grief. I appreciate it.

[Northern_Piper]

I think a big hug of support is owed to Kevin Garinger of Humboldt, who has been a rock in all of this.

Garinger is the president of the Broncos, which is a community-owned team. It’s essentially a volunteer position.

On Friday night, Garinger was in Edmonton, Alberta, visiting a family member who was in hospital there, when he got the call.

The next day, he was back in Humboldt, a 650 km trip. No idea if he flew to Saskatoon or drove all the way, but a long trip.

Then he started giving interviews for the team. Very low-key and focussed entirely on the casualties and their families, doing a fine balancing act between respecting their privacy while keeping the community informed.

While we were watching one interview, Mrs Piper said, “There’s something more there than just grief for the team.”

She was right. Late Saturday or early Sunday, word came out that Garinger and his family were billets for one of the boys from away. That is, they took a young teenage guy into their home and looked after him like a son, far from his own family, while he chased his dream.

Their billet was one of the ones killed in the crash.

Garinger must have known that was likely, pending the identification process, while he was doing all those interviews and work.

Then Garinger spoke at the vigil on Sunday night. It was very low-key. He spoke of the team, the coaches, the support from the community. Then he read the names of the dead, nearly losing it at times, but making it through, somehow, because it was his job to speak to the community about the people they had lost.

That done, Garinger had to go back to his day job on Monday: Director of Education for the public schools in Humboldt.

Schools were closed on Monday, while Garinger and others worked out what sort of grief-counselling and support the kids, and teachers, and staff would need, especially since some of the Broncos were young enough that they were going to school in Humboldt.

Schools re-opened Tuesday.

So in the space of one extended long weekend, he had to deal with the disaster that hit the team, provide support for the families and friends of the players, speak publicly at the vigil on behalf of the team and to the community, the province and the country, and help plan how to provide comfort and support in the schools, all the while grieving the loss of a player who lived with his own family.

Haven’t seen much of him in the interviews since. I hope he’s taking time for himself. He really must need it.

But my guess is, he’s quietly going to as many of the funerals as he can.

[Northern_Piper]

News article: “Sask. school divisions supporting students in coping with Humboldt Broncos tragedy.”

Talks about the steps being taken, and mentions the letter from Garinger as Director of Education to the school division, outlining the steps they’re taking.

Then says, with typical Saskatchewan under-statement: “Garinger is also president of the Humboldt Broncos.”

Sask. school divisions supporting students in coping with Humboldt Broncos...

[elbows]

Everyone here still seems gutted and constantly on the brink of tears. I’m still seeing rock hard types, well up just listening to others converse about these events.

[Northern_Piper]

Three more funerals yesterday: the coach, Darcy Haugen, and the stats kid, Brody Hinz, both in Humboldt, and Logan Boulet in Lethbridge, as Cat mentioned:

A ‘hero,’ a ‘gift’ to the community and a devoted family man — three Humboldt Broncos remembered during Saturday funerals

[Northern_Piper]

And players are being released from hospital:

[Humboldt Broncos centre Brayden Camrud released from hospital](Humboldt Broncos centre Brayden Camrud released from hospital)

Camrud, who has played for the Broncos for two seasons, was released Monday evening according to his grandmother, Glenda Camrud.

He had an MRI and a CT scan and was found to have suffered a concussion, bruises and cuts but is doing well and is “lucky,” according to his grandmother.

She said he is recovering at his family home in Saskatoon and preparing to attend his teammates’ upcoming funerals.

[Northern_Piper]

The service for Tyler Beiber, the play-by-play announcer for the Broncos, was also on Friday, in the same Humboldt rink where he called games; his friend and fellow-play-by-play caller, for the Hawks, reminisces about the last game play-off Beiber called, which went into triple overtime:

Humboldt Broncos’ announcer Tyler Bieber laid to rest

And sports broadcasting personalities are coming up with a way to memorialise Bieber:

‘A great way to honour him’: Broadcasters offer to call games in memory of Humboldt Broncos play-by-play man Tyler Bieber

When Les Lazaruk looked up at the broadcast booth at Elgar Petersen Arena during Tyler Bieber’s funeral service, he thought of an idea to honour the memory of the Humboldt Broncos play-by-play announcer.

Lazaruk offered to call a Broncos game next season for free and he put out a call on Twitter for fellow broadcasters to do the same. It wasn’t long before several prominent on-air personalities volunteered their services.

Sportsnet’s Rob Faulds and TSN’s Chris Cuthbert and Gord Miller all tweeted offers to participate in the initiative. Other broadcasters from a variety of leagues and sports also wanted to get involved and support the effort.

…

Lazaruk, the play-by-play voice of the Western Hockey League’s Saskatoon Blades, said with the Broncos set to play 58 games next season, he’s hoping 57 other broadcasters can enter the booth for a game apiece.

He added the initial response to his initiative was overwhelming.

[Baker]

An injured player attending the funerals, that’s going to be traumatic for him.

[Northern_Piper]

Messed up the link here:

And players are being released from hospital:

Humboldt Broncos centre Brayden Camrud released from hospital

Camrud, who has played for the Broncos for two seasons, was released Monday evening according to his grandmother, Glenda Camrud.

He had an MRI and a CT scan and was found to have suffered a concussion, bruises and cuts but is doing well and is “lucky,” according to his grandmother.

She said he is recovering at his family home in Saskatoon and preparing to attend his teammates’ upcoming funerals.

[Northern_Piper]

And a story about another family whose son died, and the way the night unfolded:

A father goes to watch his son play for Humboldt. Then, a phone call – Scott Thomas says as soon as he saw the team’s bus, he knew his son was dead

Scott Thomas says he knew when he saw the wreckage of the bus carrying the Humboldt Broncos that his 18-year-old son Evan had died.

Thomas played hockey as a teen for the Moose Jaw Warriors and knows the pecking order on a hockey bus: rookies in the front, vets in the back.

Evan, who was a right winger, had only started playing for the Broncos this season.

“When we pulled up and saw the front of the bus was gone, my head knew, right there,” he said in an interview.

…

It says something about the tight-knit hockey community in Saskatchewan that he caught a ride from Saskatoon to Nipawin with the family of Declan Hobbs, the starting goaltender for the Hawks. The two boys had played hockey together and their parents became friends.

The trip north was uneventful until they reached Melfort, about 70 kilometres southwest of Nipawin. Declan phoned his parents and was put on speakerphone, not knowing that Thomas was in the car.

“He said, ‘Mom, Dad, you might as well turn around and go home, there’s been a bad bus accident and the game’s been cancelled. The Humboldt bus has been hit by a semi, and it’s bad,’” he said.

“So we take off and as we’re driving, one ambulance comes flying by, a second ambulance comes flying by, a third ambulance comes flying by. So we knew it was bad.”

…

“You’re at the church and most of the families are there. All the veterans’ parents start getting phone calls, we got your boy, come to the hospital. You get a little deeper and at the end of the night it’s mostly the rookies’ parents there,” he said.

“And then of course the police had the conversation with us.”

The coroner met with the families on Saturday at the local funeral home, briefing them on what was known at that time.

“The coroner said ‘Be prepared, some of your sons aren’t going to look like what they used to look like,’” Thomas said.

He said they identified Evan by a small birthmark on his right cheek.

“I kissed him, kept telling him I loved him. That’s probably all I said to him.”

[Northern_Piper]

A story about the impact on the first responders. Remember, this isn’t the big city where anonymity is common; these are volunteer firefighters and EMTs who live in the same small towns. And hockey tends to be be big among firefighters and police; they tend to have played hockey when they were young, and have their kids in hockey. Everyone knows everyone. And then you get called to a horrific accident where you know victims …

For first responders, Humboldt Broncos crash was ‘just too close to home’

The scene of Friday’s Humboldt Broncos bus crash has been described as “chaos” and a “valley of death,” where moans of the injured pierced the air and young players everywhere were covered in blood.

But for the paramedics, firefighters and police officers arriving on the scene, it was a work site, requiring them to set emotions aside in an effort to save lives.

…

Jessica Brost, a paramedic from nearby Nipawin who was among the first on the scene, knew as soon as she got the call about the accident that it was the bus carrying the Broncos to their game in Nipawin that night.

It was “just too close to home, especially in Saskatchewan,” where everyone is either a billet, obsessed with hockey, or the parent of a teenage hockey player, she said in an interview.

…

John McPhaden, a Tisdale crane operator, was called to the crash scene Friday to help with the “poor young fellows” who had not survived. He used his crane to hoist the bus’s roof, torn off on impact with the tractor-trailer, so that the first responders could reach the four or five bodies buried beneath the debris.

On Monday, McPhaden said he didn’t feel changed by what had happened; he felt sorrow for the dead – and for the living, saddled with memories they may never be able to shake.

“The poor first responders, them guys — they were the ones getting the people out of there, they were the one who were making the decisions — and that’s the story you should be writing about,” he said.

Brost, the paramedic, is experiencing symptoms she never has before in her career. “There’s just times where you just start shedding tears, it’s kind of difficult to concentrate, (you) can’t hold a thought,” she said. “It’s remaining raw… I don’t see that healing anytime, or that open rawness closing up anytime soon.”

[Northern_Piper]

Here’s a few stories from Christie Blatchford. By way of background, she’s a hard-bitten, investigative reporter from Toronto, who writes for the National Post, one of the two major national papers. And yet, she’s always had a soft spot for Saskatchewan for some reason, which shines through in these columns she’s written.

The first one highlights how the billeting works, and shows why the team of kids from away becomes a team of local kids.

Christie Blatchford: In the midst of tragedy, Humboldt families stand together after devastating bus crash

HUMBOLDT, Sask. — 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.

…

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.”

…

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.

…

Devin and his wife Rene have two daughters, but they’ve had Broncos in the house for as long as anyone can remember. Two of their three charges – 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.

…

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 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.

[Northern_Piper]

Christie Blatchford: Devastated Humboldt comes together to mourn the loss of what could have been

Even a man of the cloth, Pastor Sean Brandow, was lost.

“This is the valley of death, this is the valley of darkness,” he remembered Sunday night, as he told an enormous crowd of the broken at a vigil at Elgar Peterson Arena what he saw at the scene of the terrible crash that has devastated this small Prairie town.

Brandow is the team pastor for the Humboldt Broncos, the junior hockey club which was essentially destroyed Friday evening when the team bus and a tractor-trailer collided at the intersection of two rural highways.

…

But Brandow’s children insisted they had to go, so they arrived in their car, not far behind the bus, at the terrible scene.

“It was a scene I never wanna see again,” Brandow said. “Sounds I never wanna hear again – groaning, panic, stress and pain and nothing but darkness…all I saw was fear, and I had nothing. I’m a pastor; I’m supposed to have something.”

He was one of the religious leaders who organized and spoke at the vigil, held at the Broncos’ home rink.

Despite a star-studded array of political and hockey visitors, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, only team officials, Humboldt Mayor Rob Muench and clergy spoke at the service. It was as low-key and unfussy a vigil as can be imagined in the modern world, with the best seats in the rink reserved for the town’s minor hockey league players. Yet all the right notes were hit.

…

Towards the end of the vigil, the shattered townspeople were invited to sing along with Araba Quaye, a beautiful local singer.

They tried mightily, and a few managed a line or two through swollen eyes.

But for most, it was an effort beyond them. A pastor may need only 15 hours to find his feet; the flock needs a little longer.

[Northern_Piper]

And her column on the misidentification: Christie Blatchford: Families at hospital and morgue with boys they thought were their sons

HUMBOLDT, Sask. — It is such an exquisitely sweet detail, boyish and endearing and wrenching all at once.

In their Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League playoff fever, the Humboldt Broncos had not only dyed their hair bright blond, but also had painted their toenails in alternating team colors, yellow-green-yellow.

Xavier Labelle and Parker Tobin were both about six feet tall, and according to their online player profiles, weighed within five pounds of one another. They were both 18. And they both had the bright hair and painted toenails.

And yet this delightful silliness may have contributed to the dreadful mistake that emerged Monday, first in a Saskatchewan RCMP press release and later in a press briefing by a Saskatchewan Justice spokesman.

Two of the players in the catastrophic crash last Friday had been misidentified — the wrong names attached respectively to the wrong person and body.

…

On Sunday, Xavier’s big brother Isaac posted a picture of the two of them on Instagram, saying they were “best friends, teammates, allies, brothers… I love you so much and I’m sorry.”

Monday, Isaac posted again for the first time since his brother’s announced “death,” saying, “All I can say is miracles do exist. My deepest condolences to the Tobin family.”

…

Monday, [Rene Cannon, billet mom] tweeted a picture of Xavier, and said, “We know that our ray of light is someone else’s shattering darkness. Our hearts are still broken at the loss of two of our boys and for the other family and billet family involved. We are grateful for the gift of being able to say all the words we thought we’d never say.”

The Tobin parents, originally from Newfoundland but now living in Alberta, would have gone through the same terrible whipsaw, but in reverse.

…

Unmentioned by either Justice or hospital officials is the fact, as the National Post has learned, that so great was the trauma inflicted to those who died and those who were most gravely injured that they were effectively rendered unrecognizable.

It was hard to imagine how things could get worse for this poor team and town, but they have.

[Northern_Piper]

An article about the subdued visit by the Prime Minister:

Why Justin Trudeau was a quiet face in the crowd in Humboldt – Politician visits to the site of a tragedy require a sensitive touch, showing leadership and compassion without making themselves the centre of attention

[Northern_Piper]

A photo gallery from one of the billet homes, with three players. Only one, Xavier Labelle, survived.

‘If it’s in the pantry, it’s free game’: Photos from a billet home in Humboldt – A billet mom’s photos offer a look at the home life of three Humboldt Broncos players

[Cat_Whisperer]

@Northern_Piper

An article about the subdued visit by the Prime Minister:

Why Justin Trudeau was a quiet face in the crowd in Humboldt – Politician visits to the site of a tragedy require a sensitive touch, showing leadership and compassion without making themselves the centre of attention

Given how Saskatchewan people feel about Trudeaus, he needed to tread very carefully.

[borschevsky]

The GoFundMe campaign ended up at $15,185,400, the second-highest total ever.

[wolfpup]

@borschevsky

The GoFundMe campaign ended up at $15,185,400, the second-highest total ever.

That’s absolutely amazing, considering that the initial goal was something like $200,000. It just kept increasing.

Here’s a minor update on the investigation. Not much news yet except that it will still take a while to complete, and police are not releasing any interim information. One piece of news is that the truck driver was new on the job, and had only been driving for the company for two weeks. The article also contains the most informative annotated aerial picture of the site that I have yet seen.

It was speculated earlier in this thread that the truck probably ran the stop sign, and its momentum is what carried all the wreckage into the northwest corner of the intersection. That was my theory, too, but this may not be so clear if the truck driver has not yet been charged, and police are not saying what he told them. I’m wondering if the truck may have stopped at the sign, then proceeded because the stand of trees obscured the driver’s view of the bus. Perhaps the bus, swerving or even out of control, hit the slow-moving truck west of the intersection, which would have knocked everything into the northwest corner just as we see.