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.
At about 5 p.m. local time at a crossroads on the highway between Humboldt and Nipawin in east-central Saskatchewan, a semi-trailer truck crashed broadside into the Broncos’ team bus. The impact killed 16 members of the team of 18- and 19-year-olds. But as Brandow described to a spellbound audience at the Uxbridge Arena community hall, last Friday, he admitted he had even more at stake that night. Among the passengers on that bus was one of Brandow’s closest friends – Broncos’ head coach and general manager Darcy Haugan. He looked everywhere for Haugan, called every hospital that had received the injured, combed through every list the RCMP had compiled.
“I realized by 10:30 that night, that Darcy was gone,” he said. What was tougher still, he knew he had to break the news to Haugan’s wife and family. “It was a moment in my life that I never want to relive.”
We learned quickly at the impromptu gathering at the arena on Friday how passionately this young volunteer chaplain experiences and expresses his Christian faith. At the time of the bus crash, Brandow immediately jumped into the fray, telling every young Bronco player, “I’m here for you. I love you.”
Then, for the next few days, he and his wife dashed from one Saskatchewan community hospital to another offering assistance and moral support at every bedside. But as strong as he seemed to those bloodied and traumatized young hockey players, Brandow admitted inner doubts, wondering to himself, “What are you doing here, God?”
I think it’s fair to say, the young bearded chaplain from Saskatchewan found as much salvation in the physical world as he did the spiritual. He found it in the communities around him. He found it in his hockey fraternity. He found it among his neighbours. He even found it in the far-off township of Uxbridge, all these months later.
Among the gestures this town made to young Brandow materialized Friday night when coaches, players, fans and families of the local Bruins Junior C team presented him with a replica trophy regularly handed out in these parts – the “For The Love Of The Game” Award.
“It’s in memory of Brent Foster … who had a gleam in his eye before every game he played,” the Bruins explained to Brandow. And that’s when Jackie and Brian Foster stepped forward to present the visiting chaplain with the replica trophy. As well as the trophy, hugs and tears were exchanged, Friday night, as one community opened its arms to another in grief.
And Brandow reciprocated. In response to a question about what advice he might have for the young hockey Bruins in front of him, Brandow offered the same words of wisdom he’d given the Bronco bus-crash survivors.
“Young men in this situation put on a brave face,” he said. “One of the Broncos, when he was in hospital, his jaw wired-shut, his chest collapsed in, his hip shattered, his leg broken, he still gave me a thumbs up.”
Nevertheless, Brandow recognized the young man really had a broken heart, the effects of which could last a decade. But the Saskatchewan pastor looked directly into the Bruins players’ eyes and told them they should live their lives to the full, never with a sense of fear or dread. And his Uxbridge audience applauded warmly.
But it turned out that Sean Brandow needed just as much consoling as any of the men and women he has ministered since last April. On the Sunday morning after the bus crash, Pastor Brandow went to his regular congregation. He admitted a failing. He confessed that unlike other Sundays, he needed them more than they needed him. One after another the men and women of his church rose in solidarity for their pastor – some prayed, others read scripture or sang songs.
“It was a really sweet time to be refreshed by my other family,” he said, “by my church community.” It was one of many communities that has rallied ’round a team and its still-wounded pastor.