‘Old wounds will be opened up and we want families to know they are supported’

It’s been a year since a nation was united in grief, waking up early one spring Saturday morning to the news that a team of young men pursuing their hockey dreams was torn apart in a horrific crash.

The tragedy would claim 16 members of the ’ family and leave 13 others with various physical and emotional scars they will carry a lifetime.

It’s a day that resonated beyond the hockey community. Across Canada, and over borders, millions were shaken by the deaths of the players, coaches and team officials on April 6, 2018, a Friday afternoon when the bus carrying the Junior ‘A’ Broncos of the Junior Hockey League to their next playoff game with the collided with a transport trailer near the community of Tisdale in northern Saskatchewan.

It’s a grief that will be replayed as a town and a nation remember.

Humboldt’s multiple faith groups have organized a memorial service for April 6 at the Humboldt Uniplex, which houses the rink the Broncos’ call home.

Rev. Joseph Salihu

Rev. Joseph Salihu, pastor at St. Augustine’s Parish in Humboldt, said the anniversary is another of the peaks and valleys the town’s populace has dealt with since the crash.

“This tragedy has its own rhythm,” said Salihu. “There’s been a lot of climax, then anti-climax. It gets private, it becomes public then private again.”

With the anniversary, the national media has been focused on the crash once again. The remnants of the team — only two players returned this season, which ended with a Game 7 overtime loss to the in the quarter-finals March 26 — has been in the public eye all year, with news crews never far from the team during this trying season.

“Old wounds will be opened up and we want the families to know they are supported by us,” said Salihu.

Indeed, the wounds will open again for Salihu and St. Augustine’s parishioners. Like the rest of the town, Salihu and the parish were touched deeply and personally by the tragedy: One of the deceased players, a billet family that lost its adopted hockey son, and the team’s athletic therapist Dayna Brons were all connected to the St. Augustine’s community.

Salihu has kept in touch throughout the year with the families struggling with the loss of loved one.

“Just being present and allowing them to speak to you can be so helpful for them,” said Salihu. “Listening to themselves speak makes more sense than reaching out with a lot of words.”

That’s one of the key lessons Salihu has learned from this tragedy.

“I’ve learned to cultivate presence more than offer words. People appreciate your presence more than what you say.”

That hasn’t been lost on chaplains in Saskatoon’s hospital system.

Jackie Saretsky is co-ordinator of hospital chaplaincy for the Diocese of Saskatoon and was front and centre at Royal University Hospital where most of the crash victims were treated.

The situation was unprecedented for the chaplains and “brought to light that we didn’t have enough information out there for families and what information there was outdated,” said Saretsky.

Still, the chaplains did what they could at the time. There was a chaplaincy presence available 24 hours a day in the weeks following the crash and many families took advantage of what chaplains offered in their time of need. Since the accident, Saretsky and chaplains from other denominations have worked with the Saskatchewan Health Authority to get the information out to hospital patients that chaplaincy is available.

“We have made some improvements in awareness of the presence of denominational and interfaith chaplains at the public hospital,” she said. In the event of another crisis, “there will definitely be something more efficient in place.”

Death is no stranger in a town like Humboldt, a retirement community with an aging population. But it’s different when it’s an event of this magnitude and when it is young people who are being buried. It’s taught some lessons to the town.

Humboldt, Salihu said, has recovered its sense of community, something that had been fading in an age where the personal connection is waning.

“This tragedy kind of called us back to what is fundamental to us as a people, and that is we need each other,” he said.

As the anniversary neared, Saretsky said she was seeing signs of this coming together more and more, even in Saskatoon, 110 kilometres west of Humboldt.

It may be something simple, like a bumper sticker with the “Humboldt Strong” hashtag that went viral across the nation. And she hears it from her family who live in the Humboldt area.

“You go to Humboldt and the storefronts still have Broncos and memories of the accident. Humboldt Strong. They’re still very much in that place where they have come very close as a community,” she said. “It’s sad, but when you think of the warmth, the outpouring, it’s almost like balm on the wound.” Humboldt pastor guides crash victims’ families on the long road to forgiveness

There were tears, there was pain and there was forgiveness as 30-year-old truck driver Jaskirat Singh Sidhu faced the families of the people killed and maimed in the Humboldt Broncos’ bus crash.

Sidhu listened and wept for three days as victim impact statements were read in court last week after he pled guilty to 29 counts of dangerous driving in the April 6 crash near Tisdale, Sask. that killed 16 and injured 13 others.

Two of the victims, Logan Hunter and Stephen Wack, were local Alberta alumni of St. Albert Catholic High School. They were mourned at a small memorial in April of last year.

The question of forgiveness isn’t a public discussion at Humboldt’s Catholic parish of St. Augustine’s, said pastor Rev. Joseph Salihu.

Rev. Joseph Salihu

“As with every public tragedy, eventually it dwindles down to the immediate family,” Father Salihu said.

“Then they have to deal with these issues. Their responses, of course, vary.” The media spotlight on Humboldt, a town of less than 6,000 about an hour’s drive east of Saskatoon, has delayed and drawn out the grieving process for many of the families, Salihu said.

“A lot of the families are tired of all the publicity around this. They’ve become very, very private now,” he said.

“You have two realities here. You have the public reality and then you’ve got the private reality for immediate families. Making a blanket statement (about forgiveness) is a bit dangerous. Families grieve differently.”

Many of those who spoke of forgiveness during the sentencing hearing also spoke of their Christian faith, or of their desire for faith.

“I want to tell you that I forgive you,” said Christina George-Haugan in her statement.

Her husband Darcy was the Broncos’ head coach.

She told the court she was full of anger as she began to compose her statement, but she remembered her husband’s Christian faith.

“There are days when the unjustness and sadness are definitely there, but I have been forgiven for things when I didn’t deserve it, so I will do the same,” she told Sidhu.

Pain and forgiveness are a tough combination and not everyone was ready to forgive.

“You hurt my baby. You broke him, and for this I will never forgive you,” said Andrea Joseph, the mother of 20-year-old crash victim Jaxon Joseph. Sidhu, who came to Canada in 2013, apologized to the families.

“I can’t even imagine what you are going through, what you have been through. I’ve taken the most valuable things of your life,” Sidhu told the families. “I am so, so, so, so, so sorry about this pain.”

For Melissa Doerksen, daughter of Glen Doerksen, the 59-year-old bus driver killed in the crash, forgiveness is a work in progress.

“We’re working towards finding understanding and forgiveness, because that’s what my dad would have wanted,” she said.

“Forgiveness is one of the highest qualities you can achieve as a human being on earth,” Scott Thomas, whose 18-year-old son Evan was killed, told reporters outside the courtroom.

“I wouldn’t consider myself a religious man, but I do consider myself a spiritual being and one of the things we’re trying to reconcile here is my existence on this earth and my ability to find my son in another realm when this is over.”

The job of every pastor and every Christian community is to meet people where they are in the grieving process.

“The families directly involved are dealing with very complex grieving issues,” Salihu said.

Landry: Jesus, knowing who we are, for some reason still loves us

One of my lingering memories from the Humboldt Broncos tragedy last April was the heart wrenching sermon of Broncos chaplain Sean Brandow from the vigil that took place two days following the accident.

As team chaplain, Brandow not only knew all those who had been on the bus on that fateful evening, he had been at the scene shortly after the collision took place. To live that experience — losing one of his best friends (Broncos Coach Darcy Haugen) alongside other members of the team he knew and loved — and then be asked to share a message of faith and hope two days later seemed an impossible task. In his sermon, Brandow wove a raw honesty alongside the hope of faith in a message I won’t soon forget.

When the Broncos played their first game since the accident on September 12, Brandow was once again asked to be in the spotlight, but this time he brought a much simpler message. He remembered how former coach Haugen had asked him to help with the team because of a belief they both shared: “We believe that Jesus, knowing who we are, for some reason still loves us.” It’s a simple sentence, but one that is ripe with meaning: one which in my experience, far too few of us truly understand.

The easier part of this is understanding that God loves us.

A quick search in the Bible app I use (Olive Tree), comes back with 606 results in a search for the word “love.” Among these are a few favorites:

“I have loved you with an everlasting love” (Jeremiah 31:3), “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16), and, simply, “God is love” (1 John 4:16).

We need to know that God’s love for us is not mere sentimentality, nor some trite word of encouragement. You’ll find that we cannot discuss any part of the history of our faith – the creation of the world, the Old Testament covenants, the sacrifice of Jesus, and the life of the Church – without considering God’s love at the centre of it all.

The beginning of John’s Gospel sums this up well: “to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God” (John 1:12).

God’s eternal goal has always been to bring us into a familial relationship with him. It’s for this reason that when the apostles asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, he began with “Our Father…” (Luke 11:2).

This would have been a tremendous shift for them. Through most of the Old Testament, it was believed that God was holy and unreachable, but Jesus was showing them a nearness to God beyond anything they could have imagined.

All of this being said, we need to remember that we are only able to call God ‘Father’ because He has first called us His own. And as Sean Brandow points out, He does so in spite of His intimate and total knowledge of who we are … of our weaknesses and failures, from what we mutter under our breath, to what we do when no one else is watching. This can be the more difficult part of understanding God’s love for us: when it becomes less academic and more personal.

It is here that it can be helpful to consider the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32). Taking for granted the idea that God is the father, we find ourselves in the role of the younger and/or older sons. The younger son’s story is quite familiar: his brash request for an inheritance (which is granted), the incredible waste of his newfound wealth, and the desperation that leaves this young man starving in a pigpen.

When he comes home, the younger son finds his father waiting for him, ready to celebrate this child of his home. No hearer of this story would imagine that the father was naïve about where his son had been and what he’d been doing … but nothing the younger son could do or say was going to stop the father from welcoming him back.

The older son did all the right things and felt like his younger brother didn’t deserve his father’s mercy. Luckily for the older son, the father shows him the same sort of mercy — seeking him out, listening to him, and encouraging him, so that his bitterness might not turn into a hardened heart.

An understanding of God’s love is at the heart of being a Christian.

It is a great gift knowing that God loves us, that He calls us to be in His family, and that in those moments when we are the ones who leave home or lack compassion for others, it is He who seeks us out and calls us back to Himself.

In many ways, what Sean Brandow said in Humboldt this past September echoed words spoken by the late, great St. John Paul II. During the final Mass of his 2002 visit to Toronto for World Youth Day, JPII’s homily concluded with the following: “We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures; we are the sum of the Father’s love for us and our real capacity to become the image of his Son.”

Thousands remember Humboldt Broncos players at Rogers Place memorial

Madyson Bruneski says her Christian faith was the only way she could come to terms with grief after a tragic bus crash claimed the life of her close friend Stephen Wack and 15 other members of the Humboldt Broncos hockey organization.

“It’s been honestly the only thing really getting me through it,” said Bruneski, who attended an April 18th public memorial for the crash victims from the Edmonton area. “I try to talk to Stephen as much as I can. Even though he’s not here anymore, I know he’s there with me.” Madyson Bruneski

She was one of thousands who gathered at the Rogers Place arena to honour Stephen Wack, 21; Jaxon Joseph, 20; Logan Hunter, 18; and Parker Tobin, 18. They died when the Broncos team bus collided with a tractor trailer on April 6 near Tisdale, Sask.

Photos of the four players – on and off the ice – were placed in the front of the Rogers Place stage, surrounded by flowers, jerseys and handmade signs as friends and families shared memories of their sons, brothers, godsons and friends.

Mourners wore team jerseys, and ribbons of green and yellow – the Broncos colours. As the arena was bathed in green light, the names of all 29 victims of the bus crash scrolled on a screen.

For many, faith and love have been the only ways to make sense of this tragedy.

Sean Brandow, the Humboldt Broncos team pastor, said 1 Corinthians 13, a Bible passage on the importance of love, came to mind as he was preparing to officiate at the memorial. Pastor Sean Brandow

“Love is the most painful thing in the world. We mourn, we grieve — because we love. Yet, it’s also love that helps us move through this,” said Brandow.

Lawrence Hunter, father of Broncos right-winger Logan Hunter, said even in his grief and fear, he feels the love for his son.

“Some people might say time heals all. I haven’t grasped that yet, because right now it doesn’t feel possible,” Hunter said. “I do know one word that has brought me some inner peace, and that word is ‘love.’ I know our son Logan swelled with love.”

Christine Frew, a friend of Logan’s mother, says her Catholic faith is helping her deal with the young man’s death. “It has helped me a tremendous amount, because I know that one day we will be together.”

When Bryan Radmanovich decided to post a selfie on social media wearing his godson Jaxon Joseph’s jersey, he had to ask him permission first.

“I sent Jaxon a text that simply read, ‘#hugsforhumboldt, love Uncle Bry.’ It showed ‘delivered’ on my iPhone, so I know Jaxon received my text up in heaven and he approved.”

Broncos goalie Parker Tobin was a compassionate young man who could always find the good in the worst situations, said Brandon Ewanchyshyn, his friend and fellow goalie. Kevin GaringerLincoln Ho, Grandin Media

“Whether someone stole the tailgate from his truck or I let in three terrible goals on three shots, (Tobin) would be standing there with that goofy grin of his saying, ‘Don’t worry man, we will get them next time.’”

Kevin Garinger, president of the Broncos hockey team, says the Humboldt community and the victims’ families have been devastated by “an unthinkable tragedy.”

But they are blessed by the generosity of donors across Canada and around the world. A GoFundMe page has raised more than $15 million for the victims’ families.

“We have been incredibly blessed by a nation and a world that has wrapped their arms around our Broncos family,” said Garinger. “We have witnessed a nation that has reached out through words, and thoughts, and prayers, and gifts, and we thank you.”

The Rogers Place public memorial ended with a minute of silence, broken by the blaring sound of the ’ goal horn. In lieu of flowers, the families have asked for donations to STARS Air Ambulance. Archbishop Smith: Jerseys, Sticks, Ribbons and… a Piece of Fish

It has been a beautiful – and deeply moving – sight. Beginning locally, and then spreading across Canada and throughout the world (!!), people have been donning hockey jerseys, wearing green and yellow ribbons, and placing hockey sticks outside the doors of homes, schools, and offices. This movement is born of a strongly felt desire to manifest solidarity with the families and communities mourning the tragic death and injury that has befallen the Humboldt Broncos hockey team as a result of the terrible bus crash. The impact of the tragedy reverberates widely. At meeting after meeting, event after event, participants ask me to lead them in prayer for the deceased, the injured and their loved ones, as well as for the first responders, doctors, nurses, and medical personnel who tended to the victims. Even at great distances from the small community of Humboldt (as I write, an image is circulating in the news of a teenage child in Uganda donning a jersey), people everywhere want to draw near to the sufferers by both prayer and symbol.

Candles set up in memorial for two alumni students killed in the Humboldt crash.

I found it particularly moving to see this at play in the schools I visited last week. Students wore jerseys, we prayed at mass for everyone impacted by the tragedy, and of course, there were lots of questions when I visited the classrooms.

Not surprisingly, most of those questions were variations on WHY: why did God allow this to happen; why did young lives come to such an end; why do people have to suffer so much, and so on. To such questions, it must be openly and humbly admitted that no answer will fully satisfy. We try to make sense of what is senseless, and our efforts always fall short. We are left with the simple fact that, in life, tragedies happen that are inexplicable. This does not mean, however, that God leaves us alone to grapple with them. On the contrary, he draws very close to any who are broken-hearted to comfort, heal and show the way forward.

On Sunday, we heard the Gospel passage from Luke (24:35-48), which recounted one of the appearances of the Risen Lord Jesus to the apostles. He addressed them in their condition of fright and doubt, and asked for something to eat. They gave him a piece of broiled fish and watched as he ate it. In this, Jesus showed clearly that not only had he risen bodily from the dead, but also that he would remain with them, always near and actively participating in the events that mark ordinary everyday existence.

Into that everyday existence, tragedy will sometimes enter. There, too, especially, we will find Jesus present with us. In these days, he is demonstrating his presence and love not by a piece of fish but by jerseys, sticks and ribbons. We are not alone. Catholic community rallies in grief and prayer for Humboldt crash victims

The signs of mourning are everywhere for the lives lost in the Humboldt Broncos bus crash.

Hockey sticks are placed outside front doors. Ribbons green and gold — the team’s colours — are tied to trees and fences. Electronic road signs road signs proclaim communities that are “Humboldt Strong”.

Students and staff at St. Albert Catholic High School wore sports jerseys and gathered at a small memorial with a photo depicting three young Broncos players. Two of them — Logan Hunter and Stephen Wack — were school alumni who died in the crash.

Over at the Canadian Athletics Club arena in Edmonton, dozens of young hockey players set aside competition to unite in grief at a vigil for the Broncos team. Twenty-nine electric candles — one for each Broncos team member involved in the crash — were placed in a circle at centre ice.

These were some of the ways the Catholic community rallied for the Broncos. The team bus collided with a transport truck April 6, leaving 16 dead, 13 injured, and a nation changed forever. A GoFundMe page for the victims has raised more than $10 million. A public memorial for the four Broncos players from the Edmonton area is planned for April 17 at Rogers Place

But in private, and in local communities, the grieving continues.

“You think you’re doing OK, and then you open your phone and it’s all there again, so I think it’s really, really hard,” said Kacey Jost, who graduated from St. Albert Catholic High School with Logan Hunter.

“As teenagers we feel so at a loss for why this would happen for people,” Jost said. “We feel that we are unbeatable. We are kids, we have the whole world ahead of us. Even right now we don’t understand it completely.”

Students signed yearbooks from the graduating year of each Broncos player, which will be sent to their families. And school staff are helping them cope with their grief.

“We have a God with very big shoulders, and he can hear our anger as much as he can be with us in our joys,” said Colin Loiselle, a religious education consultant for the Greater St. Albert Catholic School district, who prayed with the students. For some, the constant flood of stories about the crash has kept their wounds from healing.

“This has been so traumatic. I just hope everybody finds peace, because this is something you never imagine to happen,” said Jost.

In the larger hockey family, young players and parents are also mourning.

“No one should have that experience. I have a lot of friends on my team, and I would be heartbroken if something were to happen to all of us,” said Cam March, 11, who attended the April 12th arena vigil with his dad and brother.

Cam’s dad, Chris, said it’s important for parents to be honest with kids about the tragedy.

“It’s important for them to know that the community needs support. It’s through that support that the hockey community gets through things like this.”

The organizers of the vigil, Hockey Canada and the Canadian Athletics Club, plan to forward donations and jerseys to the Humboldt families.

For Bruce Fitzpatrick, president of the Knights of Columbus Hockey Club, the Humboldt tragedy hits close to home.

“Our kids in our club would have competed against these kids over the years,” said Fitzpatrick, who attended the vigil with his Knights of Columbus council. “You’re not supposed to have your children pass before you; that’s not the natural progression of things.”

Deacon Joseph Leuwer, a Knight and a former hockey player, said the Knights came to bring a faith perspective to the memorial, which he described as a natural response to tragedy.

“We as a community pray for those that are suffering anywhere in the world. It’s a natural way for us to try to extend our arms around this community,” said Leuwer, noting that suffering is an inescapable part of life.

“I think of it as the way of the Cross,” said Leuwer, drawing a parallel with the Catholic devotional that marks Jesus’ last hours before his crucifixion.

“Our faith is central to our way of seeing the world. We all find ourselves or someone that we love at a ‘Station of the Cross,’ figuratively speaking. It is part of the life experience, and so we need to respond to that.”