'It feels just as fresh as if it happened yesterday'
Five years to the day after the Humboldt Broncos bus crash, the father of one of the victims continues to look for solace and peace, and often manages to find it in a hockey arena
It was an hour before game time and Scott Thomas was at an arena, which is a really good place to be when you need a distraction. He got roped into an assistant coaching job six years ago when his son played for an under-18 team in Moose Jaw and he hasn’t been able to get out of it since. “Every year I say it’s going to be my last, but I’m still here,” Thomas said. “I’m in a hockey rink. How can things be bad when I’m in a hockey rink?”
Finding solace in the game is nothing new because, for all its shortcomings, hockey can be wonderfully cathartic, even when it’s also the source of all the pain. Thursday marked exactly five years since the worst tragedy in the history of Canadian sports, the Humboldt Broncos bus crash that took the lives of 16 people – including 11 teenage hockey players who were chasing their dreams. One of those teenagers was a 19-year-old by the name of Evan Thomas, Scott and Laurie Thomas’ only son. Earlier in the day, before his Saskatoon Blazers Under-18 team defeated the Thunder Bay Kings 7-0 in the first game of the Telus Cup West Regionals in Warman, Sask., Scott and Laurie Thomas went with their daughter, Jordyn, and Scott’s parents to the crash site at the intersection of Highways 35 and 335, just 20 minutes south of the Centennial Arena in Nipawin, where the Broncos were supposed to be playing the Nipawin Hawks in a playoff game that night.
“We had some hugs and some cries and we tried to talk to Evan a little bit,” Thomas said. “We had our moments with him and now it feels good to be back at the rink. I know if Evan were here, he’d be watching. There’s always comfortable space in a rink, that’s for sure.”
But no matter how long you spend in a hockey rink, the passage of time does not heal all wounds. Every morning when he wakes up and every night before he goes to bed, Scott Thomas thinks about his son and what kind of young man he would have been. Evan would be 24 years old, almost certainly studying at the University of Saskatchewan with his sister, working toward fulfilling his dream of becoming an orthopedic surgeon.
Five years later, it doesn’t get any easier to deal with the loss. “I don’t think so,” Thomas said. “It just gets different. It’s not easier at all, it’s just different. Keep putting one foot in front of the other and keep trying to do things in a positive way to help our community out and raise our daughter. The grief is just as fresh as it was five years ago and, to be honest, I can’t believe five years’ worth of calendar pages have flipped over. It feels just as fresh as if it happened yesterday.”
On the afternoon of April 6, 2018, Thomas was on his way to Nipawin to watch his son play. He was driving to the game from Saskatoon along with Cal Hobbs, the father of Hawks goalie, Declan. The two kids grew up playing hockey together and the families are close. When Thomas and his family travelled to the crash site Thursday morning, the sky was as bright and cloudless as it was the day the Broncos’ bus was hit by a semi carrying peat moss. “Declan phoned and said, ‘There’s been a bad accident,’ and his father said, ‘Scott’s in the car with me,’ ” Thomas said. “He just paused and I could tell right then that it wasn’t good. He said, ‘Scott, it’s not good.’ ”
Thomas and his family have spent the past five years on a journey filled with grief, but one that has also been marked by grace and forgiveness. Not all the families of the victims feel the same way about the driver of the truck, Jaskarit Singh Sidhu, who received an eight-year prison sentence in 2019 for his part in the crash. But Thomas has been vocal in his belief that Sidhu should not be deported to India. The night before he was to give an impact statement at Sidhu’s sentencing hearing he delivered a letter to Sidhu through Sidhu’s lawyer that also contained a Broncos pendant with Evan’s No. 17 on the back. The two broken men met the next day and cried in each other’s arms. Thomas has also devoted much of his effort to tightening up Canada’s trucking laws.
“Our daughter has a little more trouble with the forgiveness part of it because she lost her best friend,” Scott said. “But I can’t imagine doing this any other way. It has freed us up to concentrate on the good things, to remember the good times we had with Evan, to try to be a positive force in our community in the things we do in Evan’s name and Evan’s legacy. I just can’t imagine doing that stuff with a bunch of negative energy tied up inside. Evan was a very compassionate young man, very empathetic. And one of the reasons we went down this path is because we felt very comfortable that this is what Evan would want.”
If the Blazers can win the four-team regional tournament this weekend, they’ll punch their ticket to the Telus Cup, which is the Canadian national championship for Under-18 AAA players. The tournament is slated for St-Hyacinthe, Que., three weeks from now. And if they get there, Scott Thomas will be with them, carrying the memory of his son with him.
Ken, a fantastic, emotional article. Thanks for sharing. It IS hard to believe it has been 5 years, even harder to believe it has been 37 years since Brent Ruff died in a bus crash. Let's keep the memories alive of all the players who died too young. Thank you for helping do so.