Humboldt truck driver fights for ‘dream to stay in this country …

CALGARY—It was seen as that most Canadian of tragedies — a tightknit hockey team on an icy highway, headed to a game, struck down when a tractor-trailer slammed into their bus.

Five years on, the sorrow of that moment continues to balloon outward, swallowing up years and space. This month, family members of the 16 killed — including 10 Humboldt Broncos players, two coaches, an athletic therapist, a radio announcer, a statistician and the driver — marked the anniversary, anguish still hanging over them.

The Saskatchewan tragedy became part of the national consciousness.

It also still envelopes Jaskirat Singh Sidhu, the driver of the truck. Sidhu pleaded guilty to dangerous-driving charges and was sentenced to eight years, the longest sentence handed out for a case of its kind in Canada. Today, he is facing deportation, and fighting to stay in this country.

The underlying question of what to do with Sidhu has become a painful one, a reminder of a moment that perhaps no one wants to think about anymore. But with his fate in the balance, it is a question being asked nonetheless.

“It really is a test on both an individual and a national basis of our character,” says Sidhu’s lawyer, Calgary-based Michael Greene.

“If you’re put in this situation, what would you do, if you were a parent, for instance, of one of the kids that got killed or injured?” asks Greene. “You know, how would you deal with that?

“But also as a society, how do we treat people who have done something that’s wrong, that’s bad, with terrible consequences?”

Sidhu says the flashbacks find him wherever he is. When he gets into a car — always as a passenger, never a driver — for the ride to work, or when he passes a collision, or when one is mentioned on the news or in the course of conversation.

At night, they jolt him awake, his mind crackling. “I see all the destruction,” he says, and pauses. “So much rush, the first responders; I see everybody around us, I see the blood, I see people lying on the ground.”

To many, the jagged memories of that April day just over five years ago are an understandable, fitting punishment for the man responsible.

According to court documents, Sidhu had taken his eyes off the road long enough to blow through multiple warning signs plus an oversized stop sign near an eyeblink of a town called Armly, Sask. His truck collided with the bus carrying the young members of the Humboldt Broncos junior hockey team,^[1] leaving 16 dead, many more injured and countless family members devastated.

The collision on April 6, 2018, prompted an outpouring of grief. That afternoon, the Broncos’ bus had been headed northbound across the Prairies to the team’s next game, a rite of passage familiar to elite young players across this country. Many had dyed their hair an ashy blond in a show of solidarity — a choice that would later make the identification of bodies harder.

Sidhu was in his first week of driving a rig alone and had already gotten it stuck once that day, when he took his eyes off the road, distracted by the flapping of the tarps that covered his two trailers. The trailers were loaded with plastic-covered cubes of peat moss that would soon be scattered across the dirty spring snow.

He entered the intersection going just below 100 kilometres an hour, towing a load that weighed as much as 34 regular cars. In the last seconds of his life, the driver of the bus tried desperately to brake, Sidhu did not.

It was one of the biggest modern catastrophes the country has seen.

But if the plight of that hockey team spoke to something about Canada, so too did the following months and years — about the capacity for compassion, the promise of forgiveness and what to make of someone whose actions led to such pain for so many.

The case never went to trial because Sidhu pleaded guilty. He served roughly three years, mostly at Bowden, a medium-security facility north of Calgary, and was released on day parole^[2] last summer, then on full parole earlier this year.

Sidhu has not been abandoned in the wake of the collision and its aftermath. His eyes go wide when he talks about the friends who bring him food and try to distract him, and about his wife, who has not wavered in her support. He mentions strangers who sent him birthday messages while he was in jail and the Edmonton schoolchildren who sent cards to cheer him up.

Some of the families who lost children in the crash have publicly forgiven him. Others have not. Civil suits are still winding their way through the courts. He wouldn’t discuss the accident or questions related to his driving and the trucking company.

His largest looming battle, however, is a last-ditch fight to stay in Canada, where he has lived since 2014. The process that would see him removed from the country is already underway, and federal law says that any permanent resident who receives a jail sentence of more than six months shouldn’t be allowed to stay.

But Singh argues that he has done his time in prison and now deserves to remain here with his wife. He received a glimmer of hope this past week, when the Federal Court agreed to review the recommendation that he be declared inadmissible.

In other words, he will have his day in court.

“I’m very pleased to have this opportunity to present arguments in front of the judge,” Sidhu says, a few days after the decision. “I’m very hopeful that me and my wife will get a chance to stay in this beautiful country.”

To many across the country, Sidhu is known simply as the Humboldt truck driver. Those who paid attention to the court proceedings might recall the images snapped by news photographers that captured him as he was ushered in and out of a Saskatchewan courthouse — in a dark suit and white shirt, his face seemingly haunted.

Half a decade and 1,000 kilometres away from the crash scene, Sidhu, now 34, sits on the couch in the neatly decorated northeast Calgary condo he shares with his wife, Tanvir Mann. At home he looks more relaxed, dressed in leisurewear and a zip-up hoodie, less gaunt than in the old court photos. He’s a soft-spoken man who seems to select his words carefully.

Beyond their window, a savage Prairie cold snap, with temperatures plunging to -30 C and below, has settled in. Inside, the sounds of a neighbour’s child are occasionally audible through the walls. A wooden map of the world hangs high on one wall, a key hook with art depicting the sightseeing gondola in Banff National Park — a token from a recent visitor — hangs by the door.

Mann moved in here in 2018, and Sidhu joined her when he was released on day parole last summer. The two met at a birthday party back in India, when they were just out of high school. They were newlyweds of two months when the crash happened. Sidhu has said he took the job as a temporary way to make money while Mann went back to school.

Mann is working at a dental clinic. Sidhu is working part time as a construction supervisor on new home builds in the Calgary area, overseeing things such as the delivery of supplies and arrival of tradespeople.

When Sidhu first gave his account of the crash to the RCMP, he said the sun was in his eyes and he was unable to see clearly, according to an account laid out in a report from the Canada Border Services Agency. However, the resulting investigation determined that, given the make of the truck, sun would not have been a factor.

Since then, Sidhu has accepted blame, pleading guilty to all charges, and his punishment, which he points out is still ongoing. While on parole he must return home every night and comply with other rules.

But he is pushing back against the idea that he must leave the country.

If he were a Canadian citizen, his incarceration would have been the end of the story; he’d have paid his debt, as far as society was concerned. But for those who are permanent residents — a status Sidhu was granted just a month before the crash — a stint in prison automatically triggers a process that sets you on a course for deportation.

Those in favour of that policy argue that non-citizens who commit a crime have forfeited the right to stay and thrive in their adopted country. Opponents see it as a stigmatization of people who have often spent years building a life here.

Not only was Sidhu convicted of a serious crime, but he was sentenced to more than six months in prison, which is one of the benchmarks of what the government calls serious criminality. Last year, the Canada Border Services Agency recommended Sidhu’s case be referred to the Immigration and Refugee Board, which all but assured that he’d be ordered out of the country, given the length of his sentence.

The officer who evaluated his case acknowledged the humanitarian argument for letting him stay — Sidhu had no prior criminal record, has expressed regret for his actions and is unlikely to do something like this again. Curtis Barry wrote in a final report that those considerations don’t outweigh the seriousness of what he did — as he put it, “the loss of life, level of bodily harm, and collateral grief are catastrophic.”

Still, Sidhu has been seeking a way to avoid deportation. He and his lawyers asked for the case to be reviewed by the Federal Court — claiming Barry’s decision was “unfair and unreasonable” — which could then task a different CBSA officer with re-evaluating the case, and would open the door to Sidhu applying to stay on humanitarian grounds.

The government, meanwhile, has countered that the border service’s decision to refer the case to the immigration board was “reasonable,” given “the importance of public safety and security in such matters.”

Sidhu won a reprieve this past week. The Federal Court has agreed to review the decision, and a hearing has been scheduled for July.

Church bells in Humboldt, a town of roughly 6,000 east of Saskatoon, rang out earlier this month at 4:50 p.m. on April 6 to mark the fifth anniversary of the crash. The bells at St. Augustine Church tolled 29 times, once for each person on the bus that day.

The anniversary was also marked by a service at the local arena, which included videos and photos of the team. The planning committee included several family members of those killed. Among them was Celeste Leray-Leicht, who told The Canadian Press at the time that she feels better any time she can honour her son. Jacob Leicht was 19.

Jacob was funny, played pranks and had a dry sense of humour. He was a gritty kid who worked hard, she said, and he was a wonderful son.

It is a difficult day for families and surviving players, she said. Many take the time to be at home with their loved ones and want privacy. “Especially this week, I still feel this weight in my chest of sadness,” she said.

When Sidhu was sentenced, the judge noted that “the impact of this catastrophe will reverberate across Canada for years to come.” Victim-impact statements spelled out the many consequences of this pain — families suffered financial losses, were plunged into mental health struggles, endured relationship breakdowns and substance abuse.

Former NHL player Chris Joseph, whose son Jaxon, 20, died in the collision, was one of several Broncos family members who wrote letters asking for Sidhu to be deported, arguing that the laws are there for a reason.

“The Government of Canada (CBSA) has spoken and we support their decision,” Joseph said in a text message to The Canadian Press back in March 2022.^[3] “Justice is served.”

Yet others mourning family members lost in the crash have supported Sidhu.

Scott Thomas, who lost his son Evan, 18 — a “good kid”^[4] — has spoken with Sidhu and has said in news reports that his son would have wanted his father to offer forgiveness.

In a letter submitted to the court, Scott and his wife, Laurie Thomas, argue that Sidhu’s time in prison “served as an adequate consequence for his inaction” on the day of the crash. “It is clear to us that Jaskirat is indeed a broken and suffering soul,” they wrote.

“There has been enough suffering for everyone involved in this tragedy. We do not need any more.”

(Sidhu keeps a pendant given to him by the Thomas family next to his prayer book, calling it “very, very precious.”)

The players — those who survived and those who didn’t — and their families loom large in Sidhu’s mind, he says. Sometimes he purposefully sits down to think about them, sometimes he’s abruptly transported to thoughts of them, by a word in conversation or other triggers for his memory. He says he sees himself in the courtroom, he sees the faces of the people he talked to and the pictures of the deceased players provided in the victim-impact statements.

“As long as I’m alive, I’m going to think about them,” he says.

He was diagnosed with anxiety and depression not long after the crash. While incarcerated it wasn’t easy always to access treatment, particularly during COVID. During lockdowns, he was often unable to even speak to his wife or his therapist. He began meditating. He would eventually lose 20 pounds.

That’s one of the reasons he says he’s fighting to stay in Canada — it’s taboo, he says, to speak of mental health struggles in India and he’s not sure what help he’d be able to access.

“Nobody talks about mental health in India,” he says. “It’s hard to convince somebody there’s a mental health problem, because for them they see you physically; you’re fit and fine. There’s nothing wrong.”

But in some ways, his argument also hinges on the desire to build his own life, to stand on his own two feet with his wife, he says.

His family owns a farm in northwest India, where they grow rice and wheat near the small town of Urmar Tanda, less than two hours from the border with Pakistan. But Sidhu was educated in boarding schools, and hasn’t lived on the farm since he was a child, and it’s not something he knows well, he says.

“I think that farming is not something that you just suddenly start on,” he says. But it’s also something his family has struggled to make a lot of money with, he adds. Why would his parents want him to carry on that struggle?

Then there’s his wife. They’re not quite high school sweethearts but almost — they met just after graduation. Mann says she was drawn first to his calm nature, his unwillingness to show off, unlike so many on the cusp of adulthood. “He’s very gentle. And I really liked how he chose his words.”

They moved to Canada in the hopes of furthering their education and building a new life. Two months before the crash, they travelled to India to be wed. What came after wasn’t something most people would fathom putting their life partner through, Sidhu says, and yet she has stood by him, calling him multiple times a day when he was incarcerated and, even now, doing her best to pull him back from the precipice of his worst flashbacks.

“When he was away, the time was very difficult,” she says, seated next to her husband on the couch. “I was doing everything myself alone, dealing with all these legal matters and interviews alone,” she says. “Now I can discuss everything with him without any time frame on the phone.

“He’s my support system.”

Sidhu’s situation is a darkly unique one. There are very few people who can truly understand what it means to be responsible for so much devastation.

As Sidhu puts it, no one dreams for their life to be shattered in this way — by shattering the lives of others.

“Our dream to stay in this country to build our future over here. And I know I have done something wrong, which has caused this whole destruction,” he says. In conversation, Sidhu maintains steady eye contact, but when he mentions the crash itself he closes his eyes, his hands clasped, his head tilted slightly to the right.

“But she has never done anything. All she has done is support me.”

Their plan had always been to live in Canada. While Sidhu was in prison, his wife was working long hours at a dental clinic while studying to have the nursing degree earned in India recognized here. If her husband is deported, that future could disappear yet again. She has said she would go with him, but plans to fight it to the end.

“I see myself as an individual, and I have dreams — and I have dreams with him,” she says, gesturing to Sidhu. “Canada is our home. We will fight for home.”

The two had also hoped to have children, but that has been on hold while Sidhu’s future is determined. But he says any kids they have won’t have to Google him to learn his story. He’ll tell them what happened, and what it has meant. To him, this is a story of forgiveness. He discusses the idea of forgiving himself with his therapist — if nothing else, to be less of a burden to his family. But he isn’t there yet, he says.

“We can tell them ourselves that ‘This is what we’ve been through, this is how we came out of it, and how generous people are, especially in this country.’”

The part of himself that he would like to share with any future children is the part that when you do wrong, you own it. “Normal people do not want to go out and do wrong but if something happens, be truthful,” he says.

“I can hide from people, I can hide from society, OK, I can put myself in a room — but I cannot hide from myself.”

With files from Nicholas Keung

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References

1. ^{^} collided with the bus carrying the young members of the Humboldt Broncos junior hockey team, (www.thestar.com)
2. ^{^} was released on day parole (www.thestar.com)
3. ^{^} back in March 2022. (www.thestar.com)
4. ^{^} a “good kid” (www.thestar.com)
5. ^{^} Code of Conduct (www.wellandtribune.ca)