B00ADOAFYO EBOK (6 page)

“I couldn’t shake the picture of Trent’s twisted body from my mind,” Leesa says. “He was lying on his back and I walked around and took his left hand, which was straight and flat on the ground. One leg was twisted at the knee and I just knew that it didn’t look right.”

As she stared into the darkness, with the snow pounding against the truck’s windshield, she wondered if maybe it all had been a dream … or a nightmare. It also struck Leesa that she was all alone. Her parents were two provinces away. Her boyfriend was across the country. Her friends were at home for the holidays with their families. And she was in a transport truck with a stranger who had tried to hit on her.

When they reached the outskirts of Moose Jaw, she got out of the truck at Rodo’s, the same twenty-four-hour truck stop where she and Bill had had their first date. It was dark — Leesa remembers thinking that this was the darkest night she had ever experienced — as she gathered her luggage and located a pay phone. Desperately wanting to hear a familiar voice, she called her apartment. Her roommates weren’t home, and she wasn’t interested in going home to an empty apartment. She then thought of Stuart McIver, a college friend, and phoned his house, but his dad said he was away for a couple of days. Somehow — maybe it was the tremor in Leesa’s voice — Mr. McIver sensed something was wrong.

Leesa tried to tell him what had happened, but it was a struggle. Finally it all came out. She told him what she had witnessed and where she was, and that she needed someone to pick her up. It wasn’t long before he was at Rodo’s and they were on the way to the McIver home. Mrs. McIver sat Leesa down in the living room and asked if she wanted to talk about what happened. After hearing the details, she suggested Leesa call home.

“Who wouldn’t want to talk to Mom after what had just happened?” Leesa says, admitting that there were times when she felt like a six-year-old badly in need of a mother’s hug.

However, the first two times she called and spoke to her mother, Leesa cried so hard that she was unable to speak, and had to hang up. Eventually, she calmed down and was able to explain things to her mother.

Leesa found she was completely exhausted. Recognizing this, Mrs. McIver led her to a vacant bedroom and suggested that she get as much rest as she needed. After the worst day of her life, Leesa finally climbed into bed. But it took a long, long time for her to fall asleep. As she says, “I was afraid to close my eyes.”

Even today, her memories of the first few days after the bus accident are a blur. She thinks she must have heard something about the accident on the news at some point prior to leaving Moose Jaw for Toronto, but says she doesn’t remember talking or even thinking about the accident.

“I didn’t realize it then,” she says, “but I was burying the memory and pain of the accident … I was in survival mode.”

She spent New Year’s Eve with friends in Moose Jaw, although she didn’t want to be there. In fact, twenty years later, she got together with two Moose Jaw friends, Yvonne Scancen and Murray Schock, on the occasion of Murray’s fortieth birthday.

“I had put together a scrapbook of pictures from our college days, and I had some pictures near the end of the scrapbook of the 1986 New Year’s Eve party,” Leesa says. Looking at the photos, she said to Murray, “I don’t know whose party this was, but I remember not wanting to be there.”

Murray replied: “That was my party!”

“I felt like such a heel for saying what I did,” Leesa now says, “but I had been in no mood to party on December 31, 1986.”

The Invisible Goaltenders

A
rtie
Feher and Bob Crockett. Call them the invisible goaltenders. They were in Swift Current, and then they weren’t.

Feher, who had celebrated his twentieth birthday on September 21, 1986, was on the Swift Current Broncos’ ill-fated bus slightly more than three months later. But it seemed few people were aware of his presence. Feher had arrived in Swift Current with little fanfare; he would leave the same way.

Crockett wasn’t on the bus. His name, however, was on a list of survivors that appeared in the
Swift Current Sun
. Neither would play even one minute for the Broncos.

In September 1986, Artie Feher was fighting to keep his WHL career alive. A six-foot-one, 170-pound native of Prince Albert, his WHL career had already included stints with the Saskatoon Blades (six games), Brandon Wheat Kings (fifty-five), and Moose Jaw Warriors (eight), all of those appearances having been made over the previous two seasons.

When teams went to training camps in August 1986, Feher was with the Warriors. They released him — each WHL team is allowed to keep a maximum of three twenty-year-olds, and he got caught up in what is an annual numbers game in major junior hockey — and found himself with the Spokane Chiefs. The Chiefs would use thirty-nine different players that season; Feher was one of four goaltenders who got into action. He played in six games, Bill Francione got into ten, and John Colvin played in twenty-nine. Future NHLer Troy Gamble was the workhorse, playing in thirty-eight. In November, when the Chiefs decided to go with Gamble and Colvin, Feher again found himself without a WHL team to call his own.

“In the middle of November I was released, yet I didn’t want to leave Spokane,” says Feher, who is now known as Art and is the principal of Red Wing School, an elementary school in Prince Albert. “I found a part-time job laying carpet and thought my playing days were over.”

He was wrong. Like so many players before and after him, Feher found that the game of hockey had a real hold on him. As much as he knew he likely should walk away and get on with his life, he simply couldn’t cut the tie that binds. So when his phone rang early in December, he answered. Rob Daum, the head coach of the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League’s Nipawin Hawks, was on the other end. The Hawks needed a goaltender — was Feher interested?

It didn’t take Feher long to agree to join the Hawks, who play in the junior A SJHL, which is one level below the WHL.

“It was a large curve going from Spokane to Nipawin,” Feher says, “but I still wanted to play … so I went.”

Feher wasn’t in Nipawin long when his phone rang again. Another team was looking for a goaltender.

“Graham James called and asked me to come to Swift Current,” Feher says. “I said I needed time to think about it because I had committed to play in Nipawin.”

By now, it was into the middle of December, and teams were preparing for the Christmas break. Feher told James that he would think about the offer over Christmas.

“I took a couple of days to think about it over the holidays,” Feher says, “and I decided to go. So I said goodbye to Nipawin — I believe it was on December 28 — and left for Swift Current.”

The decision really wasn’t that tough. As a twenty-year-old, Feher knew he was in his last season of junior hockey. This was it — his last shot. And at least a part of him was still chasing the dream. So would he want to finish his junior career in the Saskatchewan junior league? Or in the WHL, a league that is one step below the professional ranks, a league in which he previously had played, and one in which he felt he definitely could play? Like so many athletes in his situation, he felt it was simply a matter of getting himself into the right place at the right time.

The Broncos, in their first season back in Swift Current, had been juggling goaltenders — by season’s end, they would use five of them in games — and had not yet found a combination with which they were comfortable. So why wouldn’t Feher roll the dice one more time?

When Feher arrived in Swift Current, he discovered that the team, whose players were just rolling back into town from the Christmas break, didn’t have a billet for him.

“I ended up in a hotel that night with another player, whose name I don’t remember,” Feher recalls. “We practised on December 28 and 29 and left for Regina on December 30.”

Feher boarded the bus to Regina that fateful day knowing he wouldn’t play against the Pats that night. In fact, he was so sure that his services wouldn’t be required that he left his hockey equipment in the Broncos’ dressing room.

“I was just along for the trip and to watch the team play; to familiarize myself with the players, at least a bit,” he says. Still, the happenings of that day are as clear in his mind now as his wedding day or the births of his children.

“Before getting to the rink, I went to McDonald’s for a bite to eat and brought it onto the bus,” he says. “As we pulled out of Swift Current, I finished my lunch. I took off my coat and put it up in one of the top racks. I was sitting right in the middle of the bus on the right-hand side in a window seat. There was nobody beside me. Trevor Kruger and Kurt Lackten were sitting across from me.” Kruger was one of the Broncos’ goaltenders; Lackten, a rugged forward, was the team captain.

Feher remembers that he was just getting settled into his seat when “the bus driver yelled ‘Hold on!’” Feher says. “The first reaction I had was to grab the seat in front of me and look up to see what was going on. I could tell the bus driver had lost control of the bus as we began to fishtail. We ended up in the ditch when we hit the farm approach.

“As we hit, all the windows in the bus shattered. I saw a ‘Do Not Enter’ sign that had been on the shoulder of the highway; it was lying in the aisle of the bus.

“I can’t remember if we landed on the other side of the approach and the bus flipped onto its right side, or if the bus twisted in the air as it hit the approach and became airborne and then landed on its right side. But we slid in the ditch, and I remember grabbing on to the seat for all it was worth. That is the only thing that kept me inside the bus because my right knee now was sticking through the broken windows and dragging along the ground.”

Feher also remembers, almost in slow motion, what it was like when the bus came grinding to a halt.

“As the bus came to a stop, it was very eerie,” he says. “The wind was whistling through it and not a sound from the bus was heard. Then, after what seemed like an eternity, someone from the back of the bus began yelling to get help and to get a doctor.

“Trevor and Kurt were lying on top of me, and I remember Kurt getting up very fast and going to the front of the bus.”

Lackten helped people get off the bus — they had to exit through the hole where the windshield had been. The bus had come to rest on its right side, thus the front door was inaccessible.

“Players began to scream,” Feher says. “I didn’t know what was happening.”

By now, people in other vehicles were arriving at the accident site on the Trans-Canada Highway.

“I remember someone saying that we should all get into a car and meet at the hospital,” Feher says. “As I left the bus and walked to a car — there were many of them now stopped at the side of the road — I looked at the bus and saw two groups of people behind it. I instantly knew there were two players back there, but I didn’t know the extent of their injuries.”

To this day, Feher doesn’t recall who gave him a ride to the hospital. And it wasn’t until after he got to the hospital that he began to understand the seriousness of the accident.

“As the players began to gather, we heard of players being thrown out of the bus and being trapped,” he says. Feher especially was concerned about the status of Trent Kresse, the only player on the Broncos with whom he was familiar. The two had played together with the SJHL’s Lloydminster Lancers in 1982–83.

“When it really hit me that this was serious was when we saw Scott and Trevor’s mom come into the hospital,” Feher says. “She was wearing pins and buttons — the typical hockey mom and fan. I was with a group of players when a doctor approached Mrs. Kruger, who was about ten metres away from us. As the doctor [spoke with her], she broke down, and all of us sat in the chairs and stared.”

The doctor and Broncos assistant coach Lorne Frey, who was Louise Kruger’s brother, informed her and her husband, Walt, that their son, Scott, had been killed in the crash. Having witnessed that, Feher began to realize how serious the accident in which he had just been involved actually was. At the same time, he began to understand that it soon would be major news. Perhaps it was also the shock wearing off, but it dawned on him that he should call his parents and let them know that he was okay. He didn’t want them to hear about it and wonder about his status.

“I phoned my parents in Prince Albert to let them know that there was a serious bus accident, that there were lives lost, but I was okay,” he remembers. “I also called the Nipawin Hawks to let them know as well.”

Feher was then checked over by a doctor, who found him to have “a badly bruised [right] kneecap.” Feher was given a pair of crutches to help him keep the weight off the injured knee.

“As I began to leave the hospital,” he says, “we were given instructions to meet at the rink the next day.” But before he could even think about the following day, Feher had to find a place to spend the night. After what he had been through, going back to a hotel didn’t particularly appeal to him. As things turned out, he didn’t have to spend another night in the hotel.

“Tim Tisdale and his parents offered me a place to stay for the night,” Feher says. “I don’t think I ever thanked them for that.”

Defenceman Jason Proulx also stayed with Feher in the warmth of the Tisdale home that night. Proulx, who had been acquired with Peter Soberlak from the Kamloops Blazers early in the season, ended up staying with the Tisdales for the duration of the season.

By the time the Tisdales, Feher, and Proulx got settled, the media was onto the story and television news crews had footage for their newscasts. It was while Feher was at the Tisdales’ home that he saw the first pictures.

“We saw the news and the footage of the bus and couldn’t believe what had just happened,” Feher says. He found it almost incomprehensible that he had been involved in what he was seeing on television. Despite the horrors he had just experienced, he adds, “I remember, surprisingly, that I had a pretty good night’s sleep that night.”

When he awoke the morning of December 31, all kinds of questions were rushing through Feher’s mind. After all, he had joined the Broncos just a couple of days earlier. Heck, he hadn’t even gotten into a game with them.

“What is going to happen now?” he remembers wondering. “Are we going to play again? How long will it be?”

Before long, Feher decided that no matter what the immediate future held for Swift Current, he wouldn’t be part of it. He decided that he was going back to Nipawin.

“I never really knew anyone on that bus, besides Trent,” he explains, “so I decided that since I really wasn’t part of the team, I was going to leave. I went to the rink to talk to Graham James and he was very supportive. I noticed he had a lot of cuts on his face.

“Since I wasn’t part of the team, I didn’t want to take part in all the aftermath that was to follow. I said I was going back to Nipawin to finish my junior hockey career. Having said all that, Graham never tried to keep me. He said whatever I wanted to do, I could do. I picked up my equipment and got into my car.” Had Feher stayed with the Broncos, he would have been one of three goaltenders, along with Trevor Kruger and Pat Nogier.

As James told the
Swift Current Sun
, “It would have been tough for him here being the third goalie. [It would have been] very difficult to fit in. I understand how he feels.”

Before leaving Swift Current, Feher made one stop.

“I decided to go to the RCMP building to see if I could go back to the bus and pick up my suit coat,” he says, referring to the coat that he had placed on the top shelf before making himself comfortable in his seat. “They were reluctant, but an officer took me in his police car to a Quonset [hut] out of town where the bus was parked.”

Feher never will forget what he saw in that hut.

“It was unbelievable,” he says. “Glass everywhere … dirt, straw, and a bus that looked like twisted metal. I was allowed to enter the bus to get my coat. I walked over to the ‘Do Not Enter’ sign and retrieved my coat.” As it turned out, the coat was in such poor shape that it no longer was wearable.

“The officer drove me back to my car and off I went,” Feher says.

Three days and a lifetime worth of experiences after arriving in Swift Current, and without playing even one minute for the Broncos, Feher was headed back to Nipawin.

On his way out of Swift Current, he stopped at the accident site.

“All you could see was the slide marks of the bus and a few playing cards scattered around,” he recalls. “I started to drive with my left foot, as my right leg was now in pain, and I went to Moose Jaw to see my old billets and we talked about the accident. From there, it was off to Prince Albert. I arrived at my parents’ house around 10:00 p.m.”

It was New Year’s Eve, but Feher wasn’t in a mood to celebrate. Instead, he went right to bed. He simply couldn’t get enough sleep, he found.

Feher rejoined the Hawks a few days later and finished the season with them, playing in thirty-four games. In fact, he is right there in the team photo, seated second from right in the front row. There are two other goaltenders — Dean Ross and Jeff Holness — in the photo. Feher received one of the team’s individual awards, for most gentlemanly player.

Because he didn’t feel part of the Broncos, Feher says he wouldn’t have felt comfortable attending the memorial service on January 4 in Swift Current. Ten years later, he received a call from
The Hockey News
. They were doing a story on the accident and were preparing a where-are-they-now story as part of the package. He also heard from CBC Radio.