They say it is a nightmare.
It isn’t. People wake up from nightmares.
Parker Tobin’s family will live with this for the rest of their conscious lives.
Tobin, an 18-year-old goaltender for the Humboldt Broncos, was one of the 15 people who died in a horrific crash involving the team bus Friday evening in central Saskatchewan.
But for two days, Tobin’s parents — Ed and Rhonda, both natives of Conception Bay North — believed Parker was alive. On Saturday, they and their older son left their home in Stony Plain, Alta., for Saskatoon and the hospital where a number of the Broncos players were being treated for injuries suffered when the team bus was demolished in a collision with a tractor-trailer.
They stayed at the nearby Ronald McDonald house, but most of their hours were spent in a vigil at a hospital room with Parker.
But it wasn’t their son. The young man in the hospital bed was actually Parker Tobin’s teammate, Xavier Labelle, an 18-year-old from Saskatoon.
A spokesman for Saskatchewan’s Ministry of Justice says authorities at the coroner’s office mixed up their identities, in part because the players all had blond-dyed hair and similar builds.
But it also gives you an idea of the violence of the crash and the extent of the trauma experienced by those on the bus.
People all over have been trying to grasp the extent of the heartbreak that has come with the tragedy. But what the Tobins must be experiencing is unfathomable.
For some context, here is a transcript of part an interview that “Hockey Night in Canada” host Ron MacLean gave to national Sportsnet Radio about the visit he and Don Cherry made to the Saskatoon hospital over the weekend and, specifically, their encounter with the Tobins.
“You know the story now,” MacLean said. “Parker Tobin, the goaltender from Stony Plain, Alta., … we thought (he) had survived.
“In fact, it was Xavier Labelle.
“But as we looked at who we thought was Parker Tobin, the mom — so imagine, the mom and dad and the brother, they don’t know that they’re not looking at their own boy … he’s so severely cut and hurt that they actually think it’s possibly their boy.
“And I can remember her … the mom, saying, ‘He’s beginning to look more like our boy.’
“Can you imagine? And it wasn’t, of course, their boy.
“And the dad saying, ‘When Parker was a child he had chicken pox, and there was this one scar on his forehead, and thankfully this seven-inch gash will make that immaterial.’”
And then all the thankfulness for a son’s survival and hope for his recovery was left in smithereens.
On Sunday night, the Tobins were informed about the misidentification.
On Monday, Drew Wilby, a spokesman for the Saskatchewan Ministry of Justice, said the Tobins have been understanding under the circumstances, but he acknowledged, “That was a tough phone call.
“I don’t think enough can ever be said,” continued Wilby. “All I can do is offer our sincerest apologies, our sincerest condolences and sympathies, in particular to the Tobin family on the news that they would have received yesterday.”
Wilby says dental records are the best way to identify deceased, but those can take days to track down, especially given that the hockey players were from all over Western Canada.
He says the coroner’s office was following a standard procedure to identify the victims, but it was challenging.
“A lot of these boys looked alike,” Wilby said, noting all the members of the team had dyed their hair blonde for the playoffs.
“They’re very similar builds. They’re all very similar ages and they’re very athletic, of course.”
He said the families had been involved in identifying the remains of the bus crash victims at a makeshift morgue.
Wilby said he couldn’t say what led to the discovery of the mix-up due to privacy legislation. It also prevented him from commenting on the condition of the victims.
However, in his Sportsnet Radio interview, MacLean said in addition to lacerations all over his body, the player who turned out to be Labelle had broken vertebrae, ribs and hip, as well as a lacerated liver.
Former Port de Grave MHA Glenn Littlejohn, a lifelong friend of Ed Tobin — the two grew up together in Bay Roberts and were roommates at Memorial University — had been speaking with the Tobins and was told it was “easier to say what isn’t broken,” when it came to the injuries that were suffered.
That was before the news of the mix-up came out.
Wilby says the coroner’s office followed standard procedure, and he did not believe the initial identifications of Tobin and Labelle were rushed.
“The families needed information, they needed information about who their loved ones were and what state they were in,” he said.
Wilby said officials are now confident all the other 14 victims — nine other players, two coaches, the team broadcaster, team statistician and bus driver — have been properly identified.
As has Labelle, meaning in the midst of all the tragedy, there is something positive for one family.
“He’s got all those injuries, but can you imagine the joy in that one scene?” said MacLean as he thought about the information that their son was alive being passed along to Labelle’s loved ones.
“And then the frickin’ devastation I feel for the Tobin family.”
With files from the Canadian Press and Sportsnet
