If there was an SJHL team I wanted to have a good season, it was the Humboldt Broncos. If they found themselves on top of the league standings, I was happy. It wasn’t so much a love of the team, but an appreciation of Humboldt itself. It might not be my home town (Watson is a bit down the road from Humboldt itself) but it’s close enough. It’s the town we went to when we needed things. It’s the town where my mom was born and raised. It’s a good town, and it’s a town that appreciates their hockey team.
I want them to do well because they’re part of where I grew up. I might not actively follow hockey very much, but I did smile whenever I saw a successful game for the Broncos. When I saw that, I remembered people I knew from when I was a kid, and I remembered how happy they would be to see a local team do well. I would always think not of the team itself, but the people who surrounded it, supported it, and continued to help the team thrive in the small city where it lived and played.
I think of those same people again, because they’re now facing something they did not think would ever happen, or even could happen.
The tragedy that happened on Apr. 6 goes far beyond Humboldt. It even goes beyond the SJHL, though I know every team in the league - including our own Yorkton Terriers - is reeling from the loss of their competitors, people they respected and were likely friends with even if they wanted to beat them on the ice.
Connections come in unexpected ways. I can think of several ways I am a couple degrees off from someone in the incident. Saskatchewan is the most spread out small town you can find and you can quickly find a thread in everyone that leads back to the Broncos bus.
Humboldt is at its centre. It is the community where team members went to school, where the Broncos were a big part of the community. When a community loses one young person in an incident like this, it is permanently changed. Yorkton has known that fact more than once since I have been here. But to lose 15 people in a single bus crash is an ordeal that no community should have to face. Many communities are faced with a loss in the wake of this tragedy, but the hole is largest in the centre.
That’s what keeps bringing Humboldt back in my mind. I wouldn’t be here without Humboldt. It’s the town on my birth certificate, it’s the town where my mom was born, where my grandmother lived, and where my grandfather chose to run a greenhouse after he immigrated to Canada. It’s a part of me, and so now I can only think of the people I knew from the area and still know today, and how they’re feeling.
The team will rebuild. Junior hockey is always in a state of renewal, as players age out of the game and others advance through the ranks. But the team will also have the 2017-18 team as a part of it. A loss like this is a scar. The pain might eventually heal and the body might recover, but the mark it makes will never go away.
I always wanted the Humboldt Broncos to do well, not as a hockey fan but as a fan of Humboldt itself. I don’t know how Humboldt will recover, but at least they know that the rest of the world is in their corner.
