The salvation community can give

Sean Brandow, Humboldt Broncos volunteer chaplain, at Uxbridge Arena, Nov. 23.

All of his initial assumptions were wrong that night. When he neared the scene on a Saskatchewan highway back on April 6 of this year, Sean Brandow didn’t know there’d been an accident. When he got a text about it, it suggested that a busload of fans had crashed. When he spotted ambulances, police and even available conservation officers dashing back and forth, he figured it was bad. But not nearly as bad as he soon discovered.

“As I walked closer, I could see hockey bags everywhere,” Brandow, said. “I knew it wasn’t a fan bus. I knew the guys in the ditch, the guys on stretchers, and the guys being loaded into ambulances were hockey players.”

Sean Brandow, volunteer chaplain for the Humboldt Broncos Saskatchewan Junior A hockey club, still finds it difficult to describe what he witnessed that night seven months ago. (more…)

A claim of security

CHAIN_FENCE2aIt was about 6:15 the other morning. Nothing was stirring outside. I happened to be out giving the dog one last run past the fire hydrant before leaving for the city. My wife had pulled the car into the street. I noticed her staring straight ahead with a look of total surprise on her face. I looked in the same direction.

There, about 20 metres away, a deer (I think it was a doe) dashed across the road, paused on a neighbour’s lawn, then just as quickly bounded several times into a backyard and disappeared over a fence.

“She looked petrified,” my wife commented.

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Lines of duty

When I got my cup of coffee at a downtown café the other day, I got in line right behind a police officer. Like me, he was going through his pockets in search of enough change for his java. I was about to say that I was sorry about the two officers who’d died on duty in Ontario this past week. But before I could say anything a woman in the café approached him.

“Can I ask you a question?” she said.

“Sure,” the officer said.

“Is there any way I can report a guy who’s been stalking me in his car?”

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