‘Nothing compares’: Humboldt bus crashed at same spot where six family members died 20 years ago

When the bus carrying Dylan Fiddler’s hockey team would pass through the quiet intersection in northeast Saskatchewan marked by six white wooden crosses, he would close his eyes.

“Our junior hockey team would travel quite a few times a week from Carrot River to Saskatoon and back, and we would pass that intersection every time we traveled,” the 27-year-old said on the phone from Kingston, Ont., on Sunday.

“Passing that intersection was still very difficult years later. It was a spot where you … hope you can forget about it, and try to move past it.” 

Fiddler was six years old when his mother, aunt, uncle and three young cousins were killed at the intersection known to locals as Armley Corner, where Highway 35 meets Highway 335.

More than 20 years later, the bus carrying the Humboldt Broncos  would have passed the same intersection moments before the horrific collision that left at least 15 dead.

The Fiddler family had been traveling from Saskatoon to Carrot River to visit relatives on June 17, 1997. RCMP said the vehicle — a half-tonne truck truck — ran a stop sign located on Highway 335 and crossed the path of a semi traveling southbound on Highway 35. Both trucks ended up in a ditch, but the pickup burst into flames.

Members of the RCMP lay flowers at the intersection of a crash site near Tisdale, Sask., Sunday, April, 8, 2018.

All six occupants of the pickup truck were killed instantly. Among the dead were Fiddler’s mom, Wendy, then 26; his uncle Roderick Fiddler, 33, a muffler mechanic at a local garage; his aunt Terri Fiddler, 30, a Grade 8 teacher on maternity leave; and their three young daughters — Jocelyn, 4, Jasmine, 3 and one-month old Kassandre. The driver of the semi suffered minor injuries. 

Fiddler and his four siblings, however, had not been brought on the trip. After the crash, Dylan and his older brother moved to Carrot River, about 40 kilometres northeast of that intersection, to live with another aunt and uncle, while the other three Fiddler children moved in with other relatives. 

The white wooden crosses — three large ones with three smaller ones in front — were put up by someone in the town of Carrot River, Fiddler said. They are metres from the wreckage of Friday’s accident.

Saskatchewan RCMP are still investigating that collision. What is known is that the semi-trailer was traveling westbound on Highway 335, while the Humboldt Broncos bus was traveling northbound on Highway 35 when the collision occurred. 

On Sunday, RCMP officers placed flowers at the crash site. A playing card and a broken DVD of the hockey movie Slap Shot could be seen in the mud at the intersection. 

A photo of Humboldt Broncos. The crash hit home for Fiddler, also a junior hockey player who lost his mother along with five other family members at the exact same spot 20 years earlier

Ian Boxall, a farmer who lives approximately 12 kilometres away from the scene, said the intersection is not a high traffic area. There are two stop signs with flashing lights, and the trees don’t impede sight lines. But a review of the spot might be valuable, he added, to see whether warning signs or rumble strips are warranted.

Fiddler says its hard to wrap his head around the Broncos tragedy itself, let alone that it was at the same spot where his own tragedy took place. Over the weekend, friends in Ontario have asked him about the Humboldt collision, and he said he struggles with how to respond.

“Nothing compares to what just happened,” he said. “This is just so tragic. I’m not saying what happened with my family wasn’t, but that was just one family that was affected. This is 15 families, an entire hockey community. It’s so devastating.” 

With files from the Canadian Press.