“We are just in utter disbelief and shock at the loss...”
April 9, 2018 9:20 PM Subscribe
15 Dead in Canadian Bus Crash Involving Humboldt Broncos Junior Hockey Team [CBC.ca] “The death toll from the bus crash involving a Saskatchewan junior hockey team bus has risen to 15, a day after the tragedy impacting players, personnel and others with the Humboldt Broncos. The RCMP said the 15th person died Saturday after the crash involving the bus, which was carrying 29 people including the driver, and a semi-trailer. Another 14 people were injured — some critically — in the collision about 30 kilometres north of Tisdale, Sask. ”
The RCMP released the names of the 15 people who died from the crash.• 15 Lives Devoted to Hockey: A Look at Who Died in a Crash in Canada [The New York Times]
The players were:Adam Herold, 16, Montmartre Sask.The team personnel were:
Conner Lukan, 21, Slave Lake, Alta.
Evan Thomas, 18, Saskatoon, Sask.
Jacob Leicht, 19, Humboldt, Sask.
Jaxon Joseph, 20, Edmonton, Alta.
Logan Boulet, 21, Lethbridge, Alta.
Logan Hunter, 18, St. Albert, Alta.
Logan Schatz, 20, Allan, Sask.
Stephen Wack, 21, St. Albert, Alta.
Parker Tobin, 18, Stony Plain, Alta.Brody Hinz, 18, Humboldt, Sask.
Darcy Haugan, 42, Humboldt, Sask.
Glen Doerksen, 59, Carrot River, Sask.
Mark Cross, 27, Strasbourg, Sask.
Tyler Bieber, 29, Humboldt, Sask.
“The following is a list of people who died when a bus carrying a Canadian junior hockey team collided with a tractor-trailer on a highway in Saskatchewan.”• Humboldt grapples with Broncos tragedy [Humboldt Journal]
“ Humboldt community members gathered at the Elgar Peterson Arena on April 6 night to share their grief and wait for news. As information trickled in, people reacted with shock and emotion. Victim Services and a crisis support team were at the arena all weekend to help. In Nipawin, fans of both teams stood around the Centennial Arena, not knowing what had happened or what do to. The Hawks’ game day co-ordinator asked Jordan Gadsby, the pastor at the Nipawin Apostolic Church, if people could gather there. “From there, it turned into the spot for people to come for waiting for information or not wanting to be alone,” Gadsby said. The pastor said hundreds of people, including fans of both teams, entered and exited the church during the course of the night. “It was a lot of waiting,” he said. “Part of the night was sitting with parents who didn’t know if their kids were alive or not.” Gadsby said the reaction of the Nipawin community was awesome, with the Pineland Co-op and No Frills bringing food and drink, daycares sending staff and supplies, pizzas showing up due to orders from the town’s residents and phone calls offering places to stay. The hockey rivalry between the towns didn’t matter when something like this happens, the pastor said. “You care for each other and sometimes caring looks like sitting beside someone and crying together.””• Humboldt Tragedy Hits Home for Hockey and Non-Hockey Families Alike [Sports Illustrated]
“There is an encompassing warmth to hockey that touches everybody who plays it, and everybody who loves it, and everybody who writes about it for a living. It’s impossible to define, but you know it when you feel it. Hockey doesn’t demand the kind of intellectual vassaldom that baseball requires. There doesn’t seem to be the same kind of entrance exam that there is to other sports. Walk into any rink – either as a mom at six in the morning, with the next Great One tying his skates wrong in the chill of the dawn, or as an aging cynic in a press box, three stories above the ice – and you immediately feel part of a kind of extended family. [...] So many small towns, like Humboldt. So many teams, like the Broncos. The towns are a mixture of Victorian Britain, refugee Quebecois from the east, and what Canadians call First Nations. Battlefords and Flin Flon. La Ronge and Notre Dame. Humboldt and Nipawin. The teams are called the Millonnaires (Melville), the Hounds (Notre Dame) and the Terriers (Yorktown), and even the Bruins (Estavan), Canucks (Moose Jaw) and Red Wings (Weyburn). That is the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League, in which, over the weekend, the Humboldt Broncos were on their way to play the Nipawin Hawks. Humboldt was named after a German explorer while Nipawin is a Cree word meaning “resting place.” The game never happened because Humboldt never got there.”• Hockey Sticks Are Being Left Outside Homes to Honour Humboldt Broncos Victims [Vice Sports]
“In one of the the many touching tributes that has poured in since the fatal collision Friday, Canadians from coast to coast and beyond have been leaving hockey sticks on their porches to honour and pay respect to the Humboldt Broncos junior hockey team and those who were injured in the crash. The tribute started a #PutYourStickOut hashtag campaign, which gained traction Sunday night after a tweet from TSN broadcaster Brian Munz [@BrianMunzTSN]. People from across Canada, the United States, and other parts of the world, replied to Munz's tweet with pictures of their own sticks left outside their homes in what was a fitting and touching gesture during this difficult time.”• Humboldt vigil: Sorrow, love and loss take the ice on game night [Maclean's]
“A small Saskatchewan city that loves its team deeply now weeps for it openly, joined in sorrow by many people throughout Canada and abroad. It’s a grief that spirals out from this city where the players are local heroes to the schoolchildren; to the Saskatoon hospital caring for the surviving young players and their parents; to the Prairie communities like Montmarte, Sask., and St. Albert, Alta., from where victims and survivors hailed; to the many small towns where the children formerly played; and further outward to every Canadian town where hockey parents hug hockey kids after they return happy, exhausted and safe from their games. Like they’re supposed to. This night was supposed to be Game 6 for the Humboldt Broncos. At the average home game this regular season, there might have been fewer than 600 fans. But tonight, they filled the arena well beyond the 1,872 the stands could accommodate. The adjacent curling rink, six sheets wide, was melted to accommodate hundreds more. Locals kept pouring in. They filled up the high school next door to watch a video feed of the proceedings. Season ticket holders came. Fairweather fans. Relatives. People touched in various ways. Young men clad in Broncos hoodies or team sweaters entered in clusters; some wore suits, while a few arrived with jerseys on over dress shirts and neckties. Nick Shumlanski, the only player on the bus who’s been discharged from hospital so far, wore his No. 21.”• 'You close your eyes and you still see the accident': The story of the tragic Humboldt Broncos bus crash [National Post]
“Bus rides are a part of hockey life on the Prairies, and in some ways the bus was the heart of the Broncos team. After a win, the atmosphere on the team bus would be electric, but just as often the long rides down the rural highways were an occasion for teammates to unwind, to bond over games of cards and kill time listening to music or watching movies. Some might put on their headphones and chill to music. Others might play a round of cards. Sometimes, Brayden Klimosko recalled of his time on junior hockey buses, a player would take the microphone and tell jokes over the intercom or break out into song. Or the team might throw on a “classic” movie like Dumb and Dumber or Happy Gilmore to get a few chuckles. “The bus was always a safe place for us,” he said. The bus may have always seemed safe, but the back roads could be treacherous. In 1986, the bus carrying the Swift Current Broncos hit black ice on a trip to Regina and skidded off the road, killing four players. And if the Humboldt Broncos had been looking out the right-side window in the seconds before Friday’s crash as their bus drove north on Highway 35, they would have seen a cluster of white wooden crosses, memorializing six members of the Fiddler family, killed at the same intersection in June 1997.”• A horrible mix-up in the wake of the Humboldt crash [Globe and Mail]
“A young hockey player thought to be dead is in fact alive, and his teammate, initially thought to have survived the Humboldt Broncos’ bus crash, has instead been declared dead – a mix-up the Saskatchewan coroners office is attributing to the extraordinary circumstances of the collision that killed 15 and injured 14 others. The coroners office said on Monday that it will review its identification process after the mistake, but noted that the initial determinations were made with the participation of the families. The province’s coroner had identified Xavier Labelle, 18, as one of the deceased in a news release issued on Sunday afternoon. On Monday morning, it issued a correction stating Mr. Labelle was alive, but that 18-year-old Parker Tobin – previously believed to be alive – was, in fact, dead.”
Toronto Maple Leafs' Mike Babcock emotionally reacts to fatal Humboldt Broncos bus crash
posted by blob at 9:28 PM on April 9, 2018
posted by blob at 9:28 PM on April 9, 2018
Fucking worst.
posted by Keith Talent at 9:30 PM on April 9, 2018
posted by Keith Talent at 9:30 PM on April 9, 2018
\_ .
posted by Homeboy Trouble at 9:48 PM on April 9, 2018
posted by Homeboy Trouble at 9:48 PM on April 9, 2018
\_ .
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 10:07 PM on April 9, 2018
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 10:07 PM on April 9, 2018
\_ .
posted by Pseudology at 10:11 PM on April 9, 2018
posted by Pseudology at 10:11 PM on April 9, 2018
\_ .
posted by Joey Michaels at 10:33 PM on April 9, 2018
posted by Joey Michaels at 10:33 PM on April 9, 2018
It's just such a terrible loss.
Saskatchewan is built on small towns like Humboldt (6000 people); almost the entire population lives in the farming southern half of the province, which means that a million people live in an area roughly the size of Arizona or Italy, with so many of them in these small towns. And because the province is so spread out, everybody knows people from a few towns over, i.e. a couple of hours drive. It's a real small-town feeling place, for good and for ill. And hockey is just so important to the cultural life.
These sort of bus rides are part of growing up, when there's only a few thousand people in one town, then there's only going to be one school, and the sports teams and the band and the theatre kids and the debate club all have these long bus rides to a meet the next town over, filled with boredom and bonding.
For context, the Humboldt Broncos are a "Junior A" team, which means boys 16 to 21, and also means players who are talented enough to concentrate on hockey, maybe get a scholarship to a college in the States, maybe if they're lucky play a little pro hockey in the Southern League or the fringes of the sport, but who are very unlikely to ever make it into the NHL - maybe one player a decade. This was their version of making it big, and in the small towns, this may as well be the NHL. The players aren't local - more of the kids killed were from Alberta than Saskatchewan - and they live away from home with billet (host) families in their team's town during the hockey season, so there are two sets of families dealing with each loss.
Most NHL players came up through "Major Junior" hockey, the same age range but one level higher - slightly bigger cities, but the same sort of life, living with billet families, the same long bus rides. So I think this is why it hit really hard in the NHL, and why the teams did such a good job of paying their respects -- the last games of the season started with the teams standing together at centre ice, holding a moment of silence. The Winnipeg Jets and the visiting Blackhawks wore "Broncos" on the backs of their jerseys instead of their names, and every player in the league had a decal on their helmet; every coach wore a ribbon in the yellow and green of the Broncos.
The National Post story briefly mentions the Swift Current Broncos crash from 30 years ago; the team still wears a memorial patch to remember those four players, and the most valuable player in the league wins the Four Broncos Memorial Award. Doubtless this tragedy will be as long remembered.
I want to close with two positive thoughts; one is that the GoFundMe campaign is closing in on 7 million dollars, which is an incredible outpouring of support. And to note that Broncos defenceman Logan Boulet and his family has saved six other lives, thanks to their decision to donate his organs. Yet another way people are brought together with this tragedy.
posted by Homeboy Trouble at 10:35 PM on April 9, 2018 [56 favorites]
Saskatchewan is built on small towns like Humboldt (6000 people); almost the entire population lives in the farming southern half of the province, which means that a million people live in an area roughly the size of Arizona or Italy, with so many of them in these small towns. And because the province is so spread out, everybody knows people from a few towns over, i.e. a couple of hours drive. It's a real small-town feeling place, for good and for ill. And hockey is just so important to the cultural life.
These sort of bus rides are part of growing up, when there's only a few thousand people in one town, then there's only going to be one school, and the sports teams and the band and the theatre kids and the debate club all have these long bus rides to a meet the next town over, filled with boredom and bonding.
For context, the Humboldt Broncos are a "Junior A" team, which means boys 16 to 21, and also means players who are talented enough to concentrate on hockey, maybe get a scholarship to a college in the States, maybe if they're lucky play a little pro hockey in the Southern League or the fringes of the sport, but who are very unlikely to ever make it into the NHL - maybe one player a decade. This was their version of making it big, and in the small towns, this may as well be the NHL. The players aren't local - more of the kids killed were from Alberta than Saskatchewan - and they live away from home with billet (host) families in their team's town during the hockey season, so there are two sets of families dealing with each loss.
Most NHL players came up through "Major Junior" hockey, the same age range but one level higher - slightly bigger cities, but the same sort of life, living with billet families, the same long bus rides. So I think this is why it hit really hard in the NHL, and why the teams did such a good job of paying their respects -- the last games of the season started with the teams standing together at centre ice, holding a moment of silence. The Winnipeg Jets and the visiting Blackhawks wore "Broncos" on the backs of their jerseys instead of their names, and every player in the league had a decal on their helmet; every coach wore a ribbon in the yellow and green of the Broncos.
The National Post story briefly mentions the Swift Current Broncos crash from 30 years ago; the team still wears a memorial patch to remember those four players, and the most valuable player in the league wins the Four Broncos Memorial Award. Doubtless this tragedy will be as long remembered.
I want to close with two positive thoughts; one is that the GoFundMe campaign is closing in on 7 million dollars, which is an incredible outpouring of support. And to note that Broncos defenceman Logan Boulet and his family has saved six other lives, thanks to their decision to donate his organs. Yet another way people are brought together with this tragedy.
posted by Homeboy Trouble at 10:35 PM on April 9, 2018 [56 favorites]
\_ .
posted by limeonaire at 10:56 PM on April 9, 2018
posted by limeonaire at 10:56 PM on April 9, 2018
I spent some time today reading about this and then googling around in satellite and street view to get a sense of the physical place where these kids and families live and travel. I've lived in rural places before but they were Eastern (US) rural places, where even though a town might be small it's pretty close (by Western US/Canada standards) to other small towns. The scope is utterly different. There was a quote I read, from a piece on CBC, maybe, from a woman in a family that's been hosting these young players for a long time. She talked about how local families took them in and they weren't just boarders or strangers but immediately became part of the family, and she talked about how now there are two families that are just shattered. There was no dust or onions or whatever in my office; I just fucking cried.
posted by rtha at 11:00 PM on April 9, 2018 [14 favorites]
posted by rtha at 11:00 PM on April 9, 2018 [14 favorites]
.
posted by twilightlost at 11:11 PM on April 9, 2018
posted by twilightlost at 11:11 PM on April 9, 2018
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posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 11:57 PM on April 9, 2018
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 11:57 PM on April 9, 2018
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posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 12:31 AM on April 10, 2018
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 12:31 AM on April 10, 2018
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posted by heatvision at 2:28 AM on April 10, 2018
posted by heatvision at 2:28 AM on April 10, 2018
You get a real sense of just how important junior hockey is to not only Canada itself, but places like Saskatchewan. I've no interest in hockey but this tragedy made me so sad because these were young men who were so so part of the weave of their communities.
posted by Kitteh at 3:20 AM on April 10, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Kitteh at 3:20 AM on April 10, 2018 [1 favorite]
\_ .
posted by Rock Steady at 4:22 AM on April 10, 2018
posted by Rock Steady at 4:22 AM on April 10, 2018
\_.
posted by lazaruslong at 4:59 AM on April 10, 2018
posted by lazaruslong at 4:59 AM on April 10, 2018
I have no words.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:46 AM on April 10, 2018
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:46 AM on April 10, 2018
This hit me in a way I wasn’t expecting. Growing up 1/2 way between Edmonton & Calgary when the teams were decent and being a terrible skater left me pretty meh on the whole fandom thing. I did really enjoy the game when World Juniors came to town.
Mostly I just swam. And travelled. Busses and vans; arriving home well after midnight Sunday after days of racing. Or maybe monday. Lots of 4-6 hour trips home in the dark, too many 2-3 hour trips that hardly count anyway. The odd 12 hour drive to spice things up a bit. Stomach sore from laughing in the way that only happens when you’re tired beyond description and surrounded by the only friends who will ever know, ever understand, what you feel like. Even the twit you’d punch if only you could lift your arm. Dreading getting up for school in a few hours; getting ready to do it all over again.
It felt like such a quintessentially Canadian part of growing up. Well at least until I moved to Vancouver, and then to Montreal, and realized that it was a ‘small town that wasn’t a suburb’ thing. We (and more often our coaches and parents) did these things out of our necessity, not theirs. This is where the bonds of our chosen family were first forged. Eventually I left this behind a little; you have to travel much further to find good swimming than good hockey, only to return a lifetime later as a coach.
I think back to the late nights, the weary souls, the challenging weather, the long drives. A little fondly at first, and then I remember the bald tires on the community van, the pinched & drawn - exhausted - faces of the coach and manager, and I wonder. I wonder and I hurt.
And I try not to feel bad for my gratitude that this pain is only borrowed; what if? I think I can imagine, but only imagine. I wish a had a platitude with which to conclude that I could actually believe in.
posted by mce at 6:14 AM on April 10, 2018 [16 favorites]
Mostly I just swam. And travelled. Busses and vans; arriving home well after midnight Sunday after days of racing. Or maybe monday. Lots of 4-6 hour trips home in the dark, too many 2-3 hour trips that hardly count anyway. The odd 12 hour drive to spice things up a bit. Stomach sore from laughing in the way that only happens when you’re tired beyond description and surrounded by the only friends who will ever know, ever understand, what you feel like. Even the twit you’d punch if only you could lift your arm. Dreading getting up for school in a few hours; getting ready to do it all over again.
It felt like such a quintessentially Canadian part of growing up. Well at least until I moved to Vancouver, and then to Montreal, and realized that it was a ‘small town that wasn’t a suburb’ thing. We (and more often our coaches and parents) did these things out of our necessity, not theirs. This is where the bonds of our chosen family were first forged. Eventually I left this behind a little; you have to travel much further to find good swimming than good hockey, only to return a lifetime later as a coach.
I think back to the late nights, the weary souls, the challenging weather, the long drives. A little fondly at first, and then I remember the bald tires on the community van, the pinched & drawn - exhausted - faces of the coach and manager, and I wonder. I wonder and I hurt.
And I try not to feel bad for my gratitude that this pain is only borrowed; what if? I think I can imagine, but only imagine. I wish a had a platitude with which to conclude that I could actually believe in.
posted by mce at 6:14 AM on April 10, 2018 [16 favorites]
I was kind of distant from this, until I started seeing the hockey stick photos on Facebook and then read about them. I'd heard about it, of course -- it's massive news in Canada -- but the other tributes didn't really affect me emotionally. Those hockey sticks, though. I sat in the office and sobbed while I read about them.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:26 AM on April 10, 2018
posted by jacquilynne at 6:26 AM on April 10, 2018
Me too, jacquilynne. Full disclosure, I'm a hockey fan. But even if I weren't, seeing the posts on Tumblr, with comments like "the boys might need these sticks, wherever they are" and seeing so many lined up in a row with "we put one out for each of you." I remember the school bus trips for our ski club, the camaraderie and friendships borne of a shared love. My heart just hurts.
posted by librarianamy at 6:39 AM on April 10, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by librarianamy at 6:39 AM on April 10, 2018 [1 favorite]
\_ .
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:27 AM on April 10, 2018
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:27 AM on April 10, 2018
Yes, the #putyourstickout movement is very touching. This tragedy has weighed heavily on me since it happened. I can't imagine the pain these families are going through.
posted by aclevername at 9:02 AM on April 10, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by aclevername at 9:02 AM on April 10, 2018 [1 favorite]
I'm not a hockey person by any means (one of the many ways I'm un-Canadian), but this hit me a bit harder than normal b/c I've been on various sports teams and traveled by bus. You form a separate family when you participate in this type of sport, so it touches so many lives. I'm glad that the community is rallying together to help one another.
posted by Fizz at 9:23 AM on April 10, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by Fizz at 9:23 AM on April 10, 2018 [3 favorites]
The accident is so horrifying. My friend is a motorcoach driver and has shuttled loads of teams over the years along with tourists and soldiers (the safest place to sit is in the middle, he says). But this accident also speaks to the dangers of rural intersections. There have been way too many crashes where I live (including a school bus crash) over the past few years. What would it take to prevent these tragedies?
posted by Calzephyr at 10:58 AM on April 10, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Calzephyr at 10:58 AM on April 10, 2018 [1 favorite]
Calzephyr: As a non-driver I would absolutely vote for anyone with a workable plan to introduce mandatory road testing for licence renewals. Not so much for the direct effects but because it’s the simplest, cleanest way I can think of to reinforce the need for treat driving as a potentially lethal privilege that needs to be respected.
Maybe not the best place for the discussion but this is a helluva reminder that (at least the last time I checked) motor vehicle incidents caused roughly as many lost years (as per the province of BC’s mortality report) as breast cancer. Accidents do happen, law of large numbers and all that, but we don’t have to invite them.
posted by mce at 12:34 PM on April 10, 2018 [3 favorites]
Maybe not the best place for the discussion but this is a helluva reminder that (at least the last time I checked) motor vehicle incidents caused roughly as many lost years (as per the province of BC’s mortality report) as breast cancer. Accidents do happen, law of large numbers and all that, but we don’t have to invite them.
posted by mce at 12:34 PM on April 10, 2018 [3 favorites]
Not Canadian, but this feels closer than I expected.
Growing up in Minnesota, I believe that one of my uncles played Juniors in Canada in the 1970s, plus one of his sons played college with a bunch of guys from the Canadian Juniors, and another son recently spent a couple of years of high school in a similar situation (host family far from home, playing every day, etc.) -- dang, this could have been them.
Some of these Juniors players are like 20 years old, and are grown ups staring hard into do-or-die territory for a pro career, while others are just kids among men. They're from all over, and many are The Kid Next Door. It's the kind of immediate, personal tragedy that reaches into every neighborhood up there.
Humboldt is also a high school in Minnesota, and so I misunderstood the first few headlines I read. Then I saw the wire photo of the NHL game where the players stood at center ice, helmets off and sticks down, and I got it.
posted by wenestvedt at 1:20 PM on April 10, 2018
Growing up in Minnesota, I believe that one of my uncles played Juniors in Canada in the 1970s, plus one of his sons played college with a bunch of guys from the Canadian Juniors, and another son recently spent a couple of years of high school in a similar situation (host family far from home, playing every day, etc.) -- dang, this could have been them.
Some of these Juniors players are like 20 years old, and are grown ups staring hard into do-or-die territory for a pro career, while others are just kids among men. They're from all over, and many are The Kid Next Door. It's the kind of immediate, personal tragedy that reaches into every neighborhood up there.
Humboldt is also a high school in Minnesota, and so I misunderstood the first few headlines I read. Then I saw the wire photo of the NHL game where the players stood at center ice, helmets off and sticks down, and I got it.
posted by wenestvedt at 1:20 PM on April 10, 2018
Heartbreaking. And it's been both yet more heartbreaking and somehow heartening to see all of the hockey sticks out as I scrolled through social media today.
posted by TwoStride at 2:11 PM on April 10, 2018
posted by TwoStride at 2:11 PM on April 10, 2018
.
posted by cotton dress sock at 2:35 PM on April 10, 2018
posted by cotton dress sock at 2:35 PM on April 10, 2018
. _/
This tragedy has resonated across the world - there are photos and videos making the rounds of the Ukrainian national hockey team leaving flowers outside the Canadian embassy.
Of course, Canadians are known for their love of hockey. But Saskatchewan's connection to the sport is especially strong. In so many small towns where there's little else to do, the local rink is not only as a sporting venue but a community hub as well.
Partly for that reason, Saskatchewan, a vast, largely rural province of a million people, also produces more NHL hockey players per capita than anywhere else in the world.
Looking at the historical data, one trend is absolutely clear: Saskatchewan is far and away the most dominant hockey region in Canada, surpassing every other province and territory according to players per capita, in every decade since the 1950s (last season, Saskatchewan had 3.6 NHL players per 100K residents). For most of the last forty years, over 50 NHL players per season called Saskatchewan home, remarkable for a province whose population has consistently hovered at about 1 million. The only provinces to even come close are neighbours Manitoba and Alberta (2.4 and 1.8 players per 100K residents, respectively), and you may as well just forget about any region outside of Canada.
posted by Jaybo at 3:15 PM on April 10, 2018 [1 favorite]
This tragedy has resonated across the world - there are photos and videos making the rounds of the Ukrainian national hockey team leaving flowers outside the Canadian embassy.
Of course, Canadians are known for their love of hockey. But Saskatchewan's connection to the sport is especially strong. In so many small towns where there's little else to do, the local rink is not only as a sporting venue but a community hub as well.
Partly for that reason, Saskatchewan, a vast, largely rural province of a million people, also produces more NHL hockey players per capita than anywhere else in the world.
Looking at the historical data, one trend is absolutely clear: Saskatchewan is far and away the most dominant hockey region in Canada, surpassing every other province and territory according to players per capita, in every decade since the 1950s (last season, Saskatchewan had 3.6 NHL players per 100K residents). For most of the last forty years, over 50 NHL players per season called Saskatchewan home, remarkable for a province whose population has consistently hovered at about 1 million. The only provinces to even come close are neighbours Manitoba and Alberta (2.4 and 1.8 players per 100K residents, respectively), and you may as well just forget about any region outside of Canada.
posted by Jaybo at 3:15 PM on April 10, 2018 [1 favorite]
But this accident also speaks to the dangers of rural intersections. There have been way too many crashes where I live (including a school bus crash) over the past few years. What would it take to prevent these tragedies?
I'm not generally a fan of automotive transportation, and lord knows there's room for safety improvements, but this specific one is tough. It seems likely that the driver of the truck is at fault; it ran a stop sign and t-boned the bus at substantial speed. It's plausible the truck driver was fatigued, or impaired, or texting - we already have rules against these, but the general public does not take these seriously enough, especially the first and third.
Truck drivers face more stringent licensing already (as do bus drivers). We already ship most of our freight by rail, so it's hard to take too many more trucks off the road, and of course the team was already travelling by bus. This is super low density country; driving is the only way for people to live there. The intersection is very basic and has no sight line problems; it would be hard to improve substantially, and Saskatchewan is covered with intersections like this; about a thousand vehicles pass through a day north-south, and five hundred east-west.
It's actually tough conditions to drive in; the road is so flat and straight that you can quickly get fatigued - if the truck driver had just been following 335 all the way to the accident, they would have not had to turn the steering wheel for 28 kilometres straight (18 miles). The road the truck driver was on heads due west; this time of year, the sunset is 7:40 PM, but this is a fair way north, so the sun just hangs there above the horizon. If you extend your arm fully and hold the middle three fingers together, that width is about 5 degrees. At 5 PM last Friday, the sun would be about 15 degrees up from the horizon, and about 10 degrees to the truck driver's left (the same direction as the bus was coming from). And it was clear, so the sun was bright. And there was a foot of snow, so there's glare coming up from below.
posted by Homeboy Trouble at 4:16 PM on April 10, 2018 [7 favorites]
I'm not generally a fan of automotive transportation, and lord knows there's room for safety improvements, but this specific one is tough. It seems likely that the driver of the truck is at fault; it ran a stop sign and t-boned the bus at substantial speed. It's plausible the truck driver was fatigued, or impaired, or texting - we already have rules against these, but the general public does not take these seriously enough, especially the first and third.
Truck drivers face more stringent licensing already (as do bus drivers). We already ship most of our freight by rail, so it's hard to take too many more trucks off the road, and of course the team was already travelling by bus. This is super low density country; driving is the only way for people to live there. The intersection is very basic and has no sight line problems; it would be hard to improve substantially, and Saskatchewan is covered with intersections like this; about a thousand vehicles pass through a day north-south, and five hundred east-west.
It's actually tough conditions to drive in; the road is so flat and straight that you can quickly get fatigued - if the truck driver had just been following 335 all the way to the accident, they would have not had to turn the steering wheel for 28 kilometres straight (18 miles). The road the truck driver was on heads due west; this time of year, the sunset is 7:40 PM, but this is a fair way north, so the sun just hangs there above the horizon. If you extend your arm fully and hold the middle three fingers together, that width is about 5 degrees. At 5 PM last Friday, the sun would be about 15 degrees up from the horizon, and about 10 degrees to the truck driver's left (the same direction as the bus was coming from). And it was clear, so the sun was bright. And there was a foot of snow, so there's glare coming up from below.
posted by Homeboy Trouble at 4:16 PM on April 10, 2018 [7 favorites]
I just returned from an errand, and as I was walking past a fire station I wondered, why is the maple leaf at half mast. And then I remembered.
Such a terrible thing.
posted by figurant at 11:07 PM on April 10, 2018
Such a terrible thing.
posted by figurant at 11:07 PM on April 10, 2018
If you haven't sobbed about this yet today, the CBC interview with Scott Thomas, father of one of the team rookies is devastating. His description of the ambulances and how the veterans' parents went to pick up their sons at the hospital and only the rookies' parents remained waiting for news set me to crying in the office again. And then the detail about having to identify his son by a small birthmark. Just ... no parent should ever have to endure that.
posted by jacquilynne at 10:15 AM on April 11, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by jacquilynne at 10:15 AM on April 11, 2018 [2 favorites]
Sadly, the death toll is now 16 -- the team's athletic trainer, Dayna Brons, has died as well.
posted by tavella at 3:31 PM on April 11, 2018
posted by tavella at 3:31 PM on April 11, 2018
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\_ .
posted by Fizz at 9:22 PM on April 9, 2018 [3 favorites]