From a 'steel gang' to a hockey crew, devastating bus crashes remembered (2024)

In the aftermath of the deadly Humboldt Broncos bus collision, there were often references to another bus crash, 32 years earlier, that claimed the lives of four members of the Swift Current Broncos.

One reader, not looking to take any attention away from those tragedies, recently wrote to point out that this month marks the anniversary of another catastrophic bus crash in this province. Indeed, occurring back on May 28, 1980, it remains Saskatchewan’s deadliest, with 22 young lives taken on the Trans-Canada just west of Webb, a hamlet some 20 minutes from Swift Current.

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Around 2:30 p.m. that day, a school bus filled with 30 Canadian Pacific Railway workers — known as the Prairie Region Steel Gang, as headlined in a memorial plaque — was returning “home” (rail cars stationed on the line). Rain had brought the crew’s work replacing rails on the CP mainline to an early end.

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After a lunch that included a few drinks at the Legion in Swift Current, two Ontario men were continuing on their journey to Vancouver. The bus and their oncoming car connected, sending the bus flipping on its side. The defining blow came next, when the bus was then hit by a tanker transport truck hauling liquid asphalt, setting off explosions and a devastating blaze.

From his hospital bed, the Calgary trucker later told of his desperate, futile attempt to stop before opting to instead veer into the ditch — only to clip the bus as he did so.

Some died on scene, others enroute or after arriving at hospital.Bodies in plastic zippered bags were laid out on the ice at Swift Current’s Fairview Arena, a rink temporarily converted to a makeshift morgue.

Digging into the Leader-Post archives and thumbing through the old black and white photos, I was taken by the similarities and odd coincidences of then versus now.

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Like those images of the Slapshot movie disc and the Tim Hortons cups found at the site of last month’s crash — telling of countless road trips for the Humboldt Broncos team and support crew — the 1980 photo that stood out for me was of hard hats and work boots scattered on the highway, the trappings of life on the road for a work crew.

Then there are the aerials, showing the similarly mangled metal, roofs torn off both buses, remnants of semi-trailer trucks and loads spilled everywhere.

I watched the memorial that filled Humboldt’s arena, and it echoes of the crowd, albeit smaller at around 500, that gathered in a Swift Current church for a multi-faith memorial service days after the Webb crash. As in Humboldt, the minister in Swift Current tried to help people find sense in a senseless tragedy.

I’ve peered at those haunting images of hockey sticks pinned together in crosses against a prairie sky, and I was drawn to a picture of a memorial with a steel cross in Newfoundland, home of many of the killed and injured rail workers.

Back in 1980, the charred carnage made for difficult identification. First reported as 23, the death toll was subsequently reduced to 22. In a 2009 St. John’s Telegram article, survivor Mike Lake, who lay unconscious for nearly three days, recalled how his family was initially told he’d died. Of course, it echoes of the similar mistake that occurred with two of the Broncos players in the midst of a confusing and devastating time.

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As with many of the junior hockey players, all of the steel gang were from away. Among those who died,12 were Newfoundlanders, nine Manitobans, and one from Ontario. After last month’s crash, some of the families with whom the Broncos billeted gathered in their grief at an arena. Back in 1980, the family the workers made on the road — their fellow crew members — gathered at a Gull Lake hotel to share their grief and stories.

Those yellowed newspapers capture the chaos, the nightmare and the horror of that day and those days that followed.

And as with the Broncos stories 38 years later, they also tell of residents and motorists who rushed to help, of first responders and medical staff working desperately to save lives, and of the outpouring of community support.

In August 1980, a small service was held by the tracks in Swift Current as two CP Rail employees unveiled a bronze plaque with the names of the 22 victims. An engineer had taken up a collection, raising $1,627 from his fellow workers, to pay for the plaque, with $2 to spare.

Mounted at the main station, it reads simply: “This plaque is placed here in tribute so we will never forget.”

Barb Pacholik is the Leader-Post’s city editor. Her column appears weekly.

bpacholik@postmedia.com

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