The long, slow road to healing in Humboldt begins on the ice

Guests: Donna Babbik, Ed Lukasic, Mary Zwane, Mike and Shannon Yager, Kevin Garinger, Rob Muench, Russell and Raelene Herold

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[Music: Amazing Grace]

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: You might remember the power of that moment, that hymn; five months ago families from a shattered community gathered in their beloved arena, the loss of 16 team members and staff -- barely 48 hours. [Arena Sounds] And now that same space is alive with new beginnings -- as dozens of young men, teens, or barely out of their teens, compete to make the team on the final day of the Humboldt Broncos training camp. In the upper rows coaches and scouts scribble notes. And in clusters throughout the arena there are fans talking, pointing, holding their 'Timmies' looking at the lineup on roster cards, anxious for a glimpse of those who will carry 'the green and gold' into a new season. James Fredericks doesn't linger on what happened. He and his brother Jonathan are here to support a team trying to move forward.

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VOICE: Just checking out the team -- see what the year is going to have in store. Hopefully it's good but yeah. Just checking out the team I guess.

[Arena Sounds]

AMT: And of course this time, it is a lot different than the other times. Tell me what you're thinking as you watch these guys.

VOICE: I'm just glad that we got a team back and that we are going to be competing again this year. Because in the winter it's something that the community really looks forward to -- is coming down and watching these games. So it's good that we'll have hockey back.

AMT: And then there are the parents of the hopeful players. Donna Babbik, is laser focused on the ice. She rings her hands while watching her son Mitchell.

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DONNA BABBIK: We came in on Wednesday actually. [Inaudible] had to do fitness training to start with and then the two ice-times per day. So it has been pretty busy.

AMT: And this is you know the start of a new season for the Broncos after what happened in April. I'm wondering what you're thinking as you sit here watching this all go on.

DONNA BABBIK: Yeah, it's really emotional because you know my son has been on buses since he was in peewee. And we knew a couple of the players on the team so it was very emotional. Yeah. It's hard. Yeah very hard. But Mitchell had a chance to play for a team in Edmonton as well but he chose to try out for this one just to bring back, hopefully, put the community back together and help these guys out. And fingers crossed.

AMT: Tell me a little bit about that because you're saying it was a choice he wants to be part of this community.

DONNA BABBIK: Yes. Yep he did choose to come here. They did scout him out and stuff and did get asked, but yeah, it was his choice. This was his number one choice to come back here and try to rebuild.

AMT: Mitchell is not the only one on the ice who deliberately sought out Humboldt this year; listen to Ed Lukasic who's here from Mississauga with his son Andrew.

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ED LUKASIC: He knows he could play hockey in many different places -- and the hockey development, I think would happen regardless. But I think there's a certain sense of him that I think it is far more about being a part of a community and trying to make a difference. And I think he sees this as an opportunity to grow himself and to maybe help other people. If you knew him you would understand.

AMT: As the weekend comes to an end, players gather in a corridor waiting for news about the final roster. Eventually Nathan Oystrick appears for a quick media scrum. As the new coach of the Broncos, he's the man responsible for making life, at least the hockey life of Humboldt, carry on. As a former NHL-er and a Saskatchewan boy, training camp is just part of the rhythm of the year. But he concedes this was no ordinary weekend of hockey and he carries the emotional burden of replacing a well-loved coach, Darcy Haugan, who perished that night in April.

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VOICE: When they went out for warm-ups and the tune started playing, me and one of our scouts kind of looked each other said, 'Whoa! Goosebumps!' You know. That was definitely a cool moment tonight. But every training camp is different in its own way anyway, you know I've been through a lot in my life as a player and as a coach, and they're all different. This one was definitely special. It's one I'll remember for the rest of my life.

AMT: If the Humboldt tragedy resonates with people across the country, it reverberates inside this arena and community centre. There's a cross at the entrance inscribed with the names of the dead. There's a bit of a hush in this space -- with the front desk, and the canteen, and the pictures on the wall, as if people are getting used to something again. From behind the reception desk, Mary Zwane, can't help but notice how all the hurt has affected Humboldt.

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MARY ZWANE: You know sometimes when things are well we feel like -- we just go on with our lives and we don't really think that we need each other that much, but this, I think it made us realize that... we need each other. We need each other for support. We need each other for strength. Like you couldn't just ignore -- like for me suddenly, it was like even if a person passes by it mattered for me to pay attention, to look at that person, because they were not suddenly just a human being passing, they were a part of me. In a weird way, you know. They were part of me -- when I see fathers come here, I felt the pain of a father. When I see a grandma pass, I felt the pain of a grandmother. You know. When a young person passes, I feel the pain of a friend. So something just brought us together in a way that I don't think we did before.

AMT: The green and gold ribbons tied around so many tree trunks in April are sagging a bit now. There aren't even so many hockey sticks on porches -- some are already using those sticks again. But whenever this community comes together in grief or remembrance or determination, it does so in the glare of national and even international attention. Every memorial, every incremental milestone, every fundraiser, attracts the cameras and the microphones. And just down the road from the arena is the unlikely source of a lot of that energy. Even on a rainy Monday in August the place is buzzing. Mike and Shannon Yager's shop is called Spotlight Sport & Corporate Wear -- and fully half of it has now been taken over by Broncos memorabilia. [Chatter and music] They didn't plan this, but in her emotional reaction to the deaths of so many Broncos, Shannon put a phrase on a t-shirt.

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SHANNON YAGER: We Are Humboldt Strong. Yes. That's what I had put initially on a t-shirt. And the first one was printed I think within half an hour. [Smiles] We were expected to go home that day, but we never left.

AMT: They've sold more than 15,000 shirts since that first one -- along with decals, and caps, hoodies, and bumper stickers.

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MIKE YAGER: We have donated over 304,000 dollars to the Humboldt Strong Community Foundation.

AMT: They've also upgraded their machines in the process. And they're quick to acknowledge the uncomfortable tension inherent in seeming success over something like this.

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SHANNON YAGER: I think for the most part, people understand that in order to keep our lights on, in order for us to have our mortgage payment, pay our staff, PR releases on our equipment, we need to have profit. That's part of being business. No one should be ashamed to know that you're in business to make money. Did we make a lot of money when we were giving 20 dollars from every 25 dollar t-shirt? No. We were losing money. But yet we had so many volunteers that came in and helped us. We had people from Saskatoon, people just not even know who they were, 'I'm here to help you.' And without their help we may not have kept our lights on.

AMT: We've seen variations of this phenomenon many times where a tragedy for whatever reason captures the hearts of people seemingly far removed. Shrines materialize. Flowers pile up. Pledges are made. And even by those standards Humboldt stands alone. Millions of dollars in donations from regular people piled up within hours even before the corporate donations reached the GoFundMe page. From there, a little shop in a prairie town of a little under six thousand people, the Yager's watched that wave of emotion wash over everything. Every day e-mails poured in by the thousands.

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SHANNON YAGER: We had one gentleman and I've relayed this story many times. He sent me an email after he received his order and he said, I hugged that package before I opened it. [Chokes up] He said to you it might just be a t-shirt. Sorry. But he said, to me it's so much more. He said thank you from the bottom of my heart for giving me the opportunity to belong.

AMT: But with such a collective outpouring, however well-intentioned, how do individuals grieve? The families. The close friends. Of those who were killed. One mother told us she couldn't bear to speak with us because in five months she feels she hasn't had one moment alone to sit with her own grief.

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KEVIN GARINGER: You know the following are no longer with us.

AMT: There's another voice you might remember from that April memorial. As the President of the Broncos, Kevin Garinger, took on the sorrowful task of reciting the names of the lives lost.

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KEVIN GARINGER: Adam Herold. Conner Lukan. Evan Thomas. Jacob Leicht...

AMT: This summer he stepped away from the role of president, although he's still on the Broncos board. And he has his regular work, director of education for the Horizon School Division.

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KEVIN GARINGER: I was born and raised up here.

AMT: It tells you a lot about this part of the country that his office is not in some grand public edifice, but in the local headquarters of Olymel, a meat and poultry packing company. His office walls are a collage of framed treasures, awards, and diplomas, maps of school divisions -- and up high squeezed in near the ceiling, is an evocative picture -- hockey players in silhouette.

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KEVIN GARINGER: Pardon me 10 hockey players. And the one that is in the front, although you can hardly make it out, it actually is Logan Schatz. And it's a beautiful print.

AMT: Kevin Garinger mourns them all. He was a billet father to Conner Lukan. A long-time friend to assistant coach Mark Cross. There's a painting of Kevin with Mark -- now on the wall.

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KEVIN GARINGER: That picture is a picture of myself and Mark with our arms around each other. And Mark was the type of guy that when you were in a room, when he would come to my office or whatever it was wherever we were, you're the most important person in his world at any time you were with him that way. And so he made you feel like you were the greatest best friend he's ever had or that sort of thing. And he was one of my student's for many years. Eight I guess. And he grew into having an incredible relationship with my oldest son. And they you know [Laughs] they did some crazy things when they were kids but they played hockey together and they were incredible young people. And so having Mark part of this organization was just like having you know a very close connection to home. Having almost like one of your own working in the organization. And when Darcy hired him, he told me about it and I was just -- I was shocked. I didn't even know Mark had applied. And Darcy said, I can't get away from this kid -- Kevin he's just really good, and he told me his name and I said, oh my gosh. [Smiles] He's certainly an incredible young man.

AMT: This is something that affected -- again you know you know you were kind of like a public face through so much of this tragedy, but it also affected your personal family. They're part of this community and part of this team really. Five months long. It's like no time at all really.

KEVIN GARINGER: Yeah. It has been the shortest and longest five months of anyone's life. I guarantee it. And again, you know as I'm dealing with loss and those kinds of things, it's one one-hundredth as difficult as what so many others are. And so, you keep thinking about them. But you know if there's ever anything, as an organization or as an individual that we can do for you -- you're prepared to do that. But it has been, like I said, it has gone by quickly and it's gone by some of it you know it seems like forever. I'm sort of rambling on here a little bit.

AMT: Thank you for talking to me.

AMT: His phone buzzes just as it seems our interview is wrapping up him.

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KEVIN GARINGER: Hey Lorne. Can I give you a call back buddy?

AMT: That Lorne, is Lorne Lukan, Conner Lukan's dad. And that call, brings to mind a story about Conner.

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KEVIN GARINGER: He's out on the ice. We're up, I think about 3-0. I'm watching it online. And he ends up, in one shift, blocking five shots. And there was a shot that hit him in the ankle and just about dropped him, and somehow, he blocked more shots after that. And then he got to the bench and that sort of thing. And he was on the bench, and I'll never forget -- Logan Boulet -- his dad later on told the story about how Conner, Logan was in the penalty box when Conner was blocking those shots, Logan went skating over right away after the penalty was over -- that sort of thing and they got the puck down the ice, and Logan went and grabbed him and he gave him a big bear hug like this and 'thanks Con-Man' kind of thing -- his dad told me and then Conner said, yeah you would do the same for me. And I know that's exactly who those kids were. They were all that way. They would do anything for each other. And even you know our relationship today with Lorne and I and Robin and Catherine you know we just spent time together in Vegas and those kinds of things, just you know our relationship will always be extremely close and that sort of thing. Do anything for each other.

AMT: Even as he tries to guide the Broncos community through tragedy, Kevin Garinger navigates his own deep sense of loss.

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KEVIN GARINGER: Back a number of years ago, when I had cancer, I remember laying on a gurney outside of the operating room and I remember being very anxious. I remember as well that as I was laying there, this little girl started wailing. And I started thinking about her. But at the same time I was very anxious myself because I'm going in for this operation and I just had my oldest son and I was wondering if I was you know... what would happen if the cancer had spread? And there were other issues that sort of thing. So you think a lot about yourself in those situations. And I think what I recall then was that I talked to this nurse who was passing by and I just said, excuse me I said, what's wrong with that little girl? And she told me that, she was blind and she was deaf and she didn't know where her parents were -- and that she was, obviously, very upset by that. And this calmness came over me. And this anxiety that had resided in me from my own concerns and that sort of thing really converted to just a deep desire to want to find out is she going to be okay? You know all those kinds of things and really thinking about her. I think that's what happens in our world when things like this happen. I think that we have this desire to find out how is everyone doing. You know like we put any of our own concerns behind us and we end up focusing on those who are enduring some of the worst things that anyone can ever endure -- the loss of family. And I know for me that experience, helped change things for me. And I had this need to always want to find out about people and who they are and those kinds of things -- and then to try and do you know you try and help in the best way you possibly can.

AMT: A lot of people in Humboldt take some comfort in the ability to share their sadness and in the efforts to move forward. But far from this town are the families of those who lived here only to play hockey. And for some of them, everything now stands still. When we come back, Humboldt's long reach. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current. [Chatter]

AMT: On a walkway that leads to the entrance to Humboldt City Hall they've painted 'Humboldt Strong' sideways in giant green and gold letters. Inside, the Mayor Rob Muench says that in the early days after the crash, with so many dead, the journey towards 'Strong' wasn't clear.

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AMT: You know more than one person has mentioned you in conversations about how you stepped up as a community leader. How, you just really, you were there for the community. Like an instinctive thing almost. Did it feel that way for you?

ROB MUENCH: Well it felt that I wasn't, I guess, entirely sure what to do, as a lot of people didn't really know what to do. And I think in my mind I just tried to do what I thought was right and sometimes that stuff does come instinctively to you as you're trying to make your way through these times.

AMT: How do you process that? What do you think about when you wake up in the morning? How do you think about your job and your responsibility and how you are part of how your community actually finds a way to move forward?

ROB MUENCH: Well I think most people that are mayors of small towns -- you know we tend to deal with potholes, and you know make sure roads are paved, and that you know the community facilities are run the way they're supposed to and that type of thing. So you know sometimes I wake up in the morning and wonder if this is all a dream or something. But you know, especially in the early days, that was true. It's starting to settle in as being something that's going to be you know this way for a while I think. You know it's something we've all gone through together and it's changed a lot of people. It has. We kind of didn't really, like we said, we don't have a playbook or we didn't have something to draw on to try to figure out what to do in these cases. The tragedy didn't happen in Humboldt, so we dealt with the aftermath and the grieving process for a lot of the families and friends and that type of thing so yeah.

AMT: Is it just a difference that will always be -- that shift took place, right? It doesn't shift back.

ROB MUENCH: Yeah and I think that's true. I've talked to some people from Swift Current that you know dealt with 85 crash of their hockey team, and they still talk about it and it's still part of their fabric of their community as well. So I think that's something we're going to have here as well. But I've always said you know we don't want to be remembered as you know sort of a community that had the tragedy but I'm hoping people remember as how we coped with it and how we came through the other side and how we moved on and proceeded with our lives afterwards.

AMT: [Driving sound] As the mayor points out Humboldt wasn't the geographic location of the accident, but it became the natural focus for the outpouring of sympathy. Home to the Broncos team. A place to gather. A place to remember together. At the same time it's far away down long prairie roads that most of the families of the hockey players confront their private grief. Places like Montmartre, Saskatchewan; population 490. Carry on a little further down a gravel road through fields of grain and pulses, and you find yourself at the Herold Farm. Fifteen hundred hectares of durum wheat, malt barley, canola, and lentils. It's the family farm of your imagination. Gently rolling hills of golden crops -- ready for harvest when the rainfall dries up. Everything suggests peace and prosperity. But this is the home of Russell and Raelene Herold -- their 16 year old son, Adam, died in the Broncos crash. The youngest player in the mix, Adam, was promising. He had already been juggling two billets for two teams. He was brought up from AAA Midget. He was signed to the Prince Albert Raiders of the Western Hockey League for this season. And he was pulled over to the Broncos last season just for the playoffs. He was a promising kid. A farm boy. A little brother. And when Russell meets us in the driveway, just moments after we arrive, you can feel the gravity of all of that.

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RUSSELL HEROLD: They grow up on the farm -- they grow up where they work. [Voice softens] So every time you do something... That's a memory. And that's another memory -- like that old truck that I just drove in the yard with, that was like his favorite truck. He learnt how to drive with that truck.

AMT: And he loved this farm, didn't he?

RUSSELL HEROLD: Yeah. And just this morning I was coming down the road and there was a big bull moose just on the other side of my yard here, and that's kind of thing he loved to see. You know we have deer come right in the yard, that kind of thing. You know he loved the farm. And there's just a lot of memories. Harvest has been... well the whole year has been tough. Who wanted to put a crop in the ground even?

AMT: But that's exactly what the Herold's had to do. Adam died just as they were preparing to seed crops. [Indistinct chatter] Boxes stuffed with letters and sympathy cards sit on the kitchen floor. In another room a chair overflows with quilts in Broncos green and gold. All of them hand-stitched and sent from people they've not met.

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AMT: You know the whole country had this outpouring and this response, but you guys live this every day. You and the other parents. What do we need to understand about what you think and what you struggle with?

RAELENE HEROLD: I don't think we're any different than any other parent that's ever lost a kid -- before this accident. I think when you lose a child [Chokes up] for me anyway, everything stopped and everything's changed. So unless you're a parent -- and even you know people have been fantastic to us our community, our neighbors, but still life goes on for everybody else. I think when you lose a child, it doesn't. Like for us nothing is the same. So we have to learn [Cries] what this new normal is and we're not there yet. And that's not saying we won't continue on because I've talked to other people, like not just from the accident because obviously there's 16 of us from the accident going through the same thing. But you know if you look at other people that you know or that we've met just since this accident that come forward to introduce themselves to us or whatever, it's just learning a whole new... like for us everything's different. You know it's almost going to be up till April 6th 2018 and after April 6th 2018. In that split second...

RUSSELL HEROLD: Life changes.

RAELENE HEROLD: Life changed for us immensely. Immensely. And I don't think that's different just because it's this accident, I think it's for anybody that loses a child. I truly believe that. And I know when it's not affecting you continue on. And I'm not saying other people shouldn't continue on. That's life. We know that's how it works and you have to go on. But for us it's just learning that what that new normal is going to be and to learn how to put one foot in front of the other every day and continue on.

AMT: And to take care of yourself.

RAELENE HEROLD: Well yeah that's another whole. Yeah absolutely.

RUSSELL HEROLD: I think the shock of how enormous the accident was -- And it wasn't, I mean like she said, people are in accidents or you know that it's unexpected, but they were in a safe place. They weren't out carousing after hours -- drinking and driving, or doing any kind of thing that they shouldn't have been doing. They were on a bus going to a hockey game. They were doing what they were supposed to be doing. And in the span of a second, their lives changed, our lives changed, so many people's lives changed. I mean around the world so many people are connected to those people on the bus. And there was no precursor, no warning -- you were going to a hockey game. This never should have happened.

AMT: Where were you that night? Were you here?

RUSSELL HEROLD: Yeah we were at home. And we don't usually miss a game ever. I mean he played eight of the nine games of their playoffs. And the one game he missed was when he got called to go to Saskatoon and play with the Raiders otherwise he would have been at that game as well. So that's the only other game we had missed. And we weren't going to game five because we had gone to games 3 and 4 in Humboldt. We went out for supper with him afterwards. That's a good thing -- the last meal we had with him. Wednesday we went to Saskatoon and we bought him a birthday present. He stayed there and we spent the day in Saskatoon. And we came back to watch the game and it went into triple overtime and it was after midnight till the game was over. And I had even said, are we going to stay to talk to him? We got over a three hour drive home. Because we hadn't planned on staying overnight that night. And she said, no you go get a coffee and come back and he'll be out of the dressing room. And good thing we talked to him -- it was the last time we ever saw him. So it's Thursday you're pretty tired working around the farm and Friday rolls around, and we were doing some stuff in the yard around the farm and we had dinner -- and I even said to Raelene are we going to go to the game? I said we should go. We're kind of letting the boys down if we don't go. And she said, it's easy to drive there. We couldn't stay overnight because like a farmer I was going to an auction sale on the Saturday -- I had looked at a piece of equipment so we couldn't go and spend a night in Nipawin, which was four and a half hours away, and expect to get there -- so we decided not to go. We said you know it's too far to drive and drive back tonight.

RAELENE HEROLD: And we were watching the game on Hockey T.V. Like you can buy those games.

RUSSELL HEROLD: You could rent. You could rent the games. So we said you know what? We'll just rent this game, and we'll miss this one you know we're not going to go to this one. So we decided to rent the game. My daughter was coming home from university. I had the barbecue going and we were cooking supper. And we were going to watch the game together. I got the phone call at 5:45 that there had been an accident, and that was about an hour after the accident. So that's when life changed.

AMT: Did you drive up?

RUSSELL HEROLD: Yeah we drove up. We phoned our daughter to hurry up and we were waiting for her to get here. And then we made the frantic trip to get up there and you couldn't get a whole lot information. We had phoned. I mean we didn't even realize they were already talking about it on the radio. People had phoned in and said about this. We didn't have any real ideas of what kind of a crash or what it involved but we just knew there was a crash. And driving on the way up we had phoned, Chris, one of the coaches that wasn't on the bus ride. I phoned him and he answered. I didn't realize he wasn't on the bus. And he told us, yeah there has been an accident but I can't get close to the scene, I'll let you know. I think he did know but he just didn't know how to say anything to us at the time. And we would phone him back every once in a while. And then a crisis line was established and we phoned the crisis line and they told us that Adam was in the hospital in Nipawin. So I mean your kid could have been critically injured and you're crying with tears of joy almost that he's in the hospital because you think he's not he's not deceased. And we phoned the Nipawin hospital.

RAELENE HEROLD: And at the same time, I don't think we knew how fatal the accident was. We knew there were some fatalities but we didn't know the magnitude of this accident at that point while we were driving.

RUSSELL HEROLD: So then we phoned Nipawin Hospital and they said, he's not here. And we said no they told us. Then we phoned the crisis line again and they said, no he's there and I said no he's not. So they said just hang on the line -- we'll check. And then they came back on and said just go to the hospital. They didn't give us any report -- if he's alive, dead, injured. You would kind of think the worse already.

AMT: How far away were you? Like you're still driving -- you're going on this highway.

RAELENE HEROLD: In hindsight when we think about it, that was the stupidest thing we ever did. When we first started driving you think, oh it's just a little accident. We had no idea. Because we didn't have the news on. We weren't on the radio. [Talking to Russell] You never saw nothing on Twitter at that point. Yeah, we were working which was maybe a good thing I guess. And then friends started texting us.

RUSSELL HEROLD: Friend started texting as we're driving, oh I hope Adam wasn't on that bus. And pray for him. How bad is this accident? And I mean let's face it, we drove at a high rate of speed. I mean every call you got, that got worse and worse. You drive faster and faster and try and get there.

RAELENE HEROLD: And obviously they didn't want to tell us. I think they knew obviously. So they just said go to Tisdale Hospital because that's what we were closest to at the time. Which makes sense -- they are not going to tell you your son is killed over the phone. But then when we get there -- there was other parents there and they had us all in a room and like you just knew it was horrific because all of us sitting there. I think there was four families.

RUSSELL HEROLD: [Talking to Raelene] We got the news about what 10:30?

RAELENE HEROLD: Yeah it was late.

RUSSELL HEROLD: Something like that. About 10:30 is when we got told. And then when we got officially told from the coroner at about 4:00 in the morning -- that he was identified. That's when he said -- at that time he had said 14 others. So then you realize how huge this accident is. Because when we were told our son was killed and you knew you know three or four others in the hospital were in that same situation you had no idea that 14 and then eventually 16 people were killed in this accident. You don't realize it's that big.

RAELENE HEROLD: Yeah because you don't have the news on. It's a blur.

AMT: And you're on the phone. And you're still driving. And you're trying to help each other.

RUSSELL HEROLD: I mean you couldn't get close to the crash scene. I mean Tisdale is still away from it but I mean you know I asked I had my son been identified and I wanted to go there and they said you can't go to the crash scene.

RAELENE HEROLD: A good thing.

RUSSELL HEROLD: A good thing in hindsight.

RAELENE HEROLD: I mean of course at the time that's what we thought we wanted it -- like the people, the parents, that were driving to the hockey game and came upon that crashing -- I can't imagine. Like there was one dad, he was running around looking for his kid till the cops could tell him, you can't be here until they could make him leave I guess is the proper word. But for us...

RUSSELL HEROLD: I mean we...

RAELENE HEROLD: I think that image would be in your head forever. And we have enough bad images.

RUSSELL HEROLD: Yeah. They told us to go home then about 4:30. I mean at 4:00 o'clock when they told us he was one of the very few to have his ID with him, in his pocket, one of the very few to have his on his person -- and I said to my wife well I know exactly why that is? Because the weekend before I had gone to games one and two in Nipawin and he says we will go for dinner to Tim Hortons. And when we went for dinner he said, the team came over to Tim Hortons but I didn't get anything to eat. And I said why is that? And he said, well I forgot my wallet. And I said, why don't you carry your wallet with you? Don't be so silly. Like have your wallet with you. Well, next weekend he listened to dad. He had his wallet with him. So that's why he got positively identified.

RAELENE HEROLD: Yeah I think he was one of the first ones.

RUSSELL HEROLD: Yeah one of the first ones. So they basically said you're not going to see him tonight or tomorrow or maybe even not the next day you might as well go home.

AMT: That has to be hard too, when they say that.

RUSSELL HEROLD: So we drove back through Regina to let my elderly mother know what had happened. And we got home and we were home maybe half an hour and we got a call to be in Saskatoon at 1:00 o'clock to identify the bodies.

RAELENE HEROLD: They wanted all the parents there. That was horrific. Because you go to this giant funeral home room and they had every family you know -- everyone was in shock and they would call you in once they thought they had your kid. And then you'd have to go and you know into rooms -- to another building actually.

RUSSELL HEROLD: Yeah to another building.

RAELENE HEROLD: And you would have to go and...

RUSSELL HEROLD: Yeah that image, it'll never leave.

RAELENE HEROLD: And I mean obviously it was Adam. He was Adam. But for some of those parents and kids like the news said they weren't identifiable. It's just something you never would wish on your worst enemy, let's put it that way. That was the worst.

RUSSELL HEROLD: And just to have all that time to think. So you get in a vehicle and we're three and a half hours from Saskatoon. We're obviously not driving -- someone else is driving us. But you're thinking all the way there, you're going to see your dead son. And then to see him and then to drive all the way home and have that thought... [Chokes up]

RAELENE HEROLD: It's just such a horrific situation. Even now like Russell said. Choosing a graveyard. Headstone. [Chokes up] Like do you ever think you're picking that for your kid. Like never once did. We don't even discuss that for our parents. I've never asked my mom and dad what would you want. I mean I think I know what they would want. We've never discussed that between the two of us, where would you want to be buried? You know we're just -- I'm 49 and he's 51. So who thinks to ask your 16 year old kid what would you want to know?

RUSSELL HEROLD: We're burying where he can -- like our land surrounds it. So he can watch us work.

RAELENE HEROLD: It's just one stupid thing you have to do -- It's just something you shouldn't have to do.

AMT: That pain and frustration is embodied in a lawsuit the Herolds filed against the driver of the transport truck involved, the trucking company, and the bus manufacturer. They're seeking an undisclosed amount of damages.

SOUNDCLIP

RUSSELL HEROLD: Through all of it. Through anything, what we're doing -- you want to see change made and you want to see better regulations, better training, and just changes so this never happens again.

It's the right thing to do and no one should have to go through this -- whether it be in Saskatchewan or anywhere in Canada. No one should have to go through this. And that's kind of the goal.

AMT: He had a lot of promise. I mean you talk about what could have been -- you know there was a lot of promise for him career wise.

RUSSELL HEROLD: Well there was. I mean whether it would be in the sports world or in the business world. He was a high academic student on the honor roll. Whether it was back at the farm. He was a bright person. Very smart. Very talented. He could have came back in and ran a very successful farm. He very possibly could have made the NHL. It was his draft year coming up next year in the NHL. He would have been playing in the WHL this year with the Prince Albert Raiders. You know he has played at an elite level all the way through. Always been at kind of the top curve of his group. And like if it wasn't sports or wasn't the farm -- he had the potential who knows what he could have been. Just before the accident, only about three weeks before, we had actually talked about the road ahead with Adam. You know where the farm is going to position itself going forward. And we had talked about possibly expanding the farm -- because of the costs are so high in this day and age so you know to make it feasible for the farm to work. When was he going to be back? You know we thought 5-10 years -- when was he coming back depended on I guess if he got a pro career or not. So where does it go now? Now we talk the other direction. Now how do we manage the farm by ourselves.

AMT: You said something about being out in the fields yesterday at a certain part of the field. What happened?

RUSSELL HEROLD: Well we were harvesting in a field that I'm right beside -- where there's a cemetery and we're going to bury our son in that cemetery. And as you pick up the swaths all day and you're harvesting the crop you get to look at that cemetery. That's what you're looking at. And you're thinking that's where your son is going -- that's where he's going to stay for the rest of his life. And meanwhile on the other side of the fence, your neighbors are harvesting and their sons are helping them take the crop off and it's quite a difference thinking your son is going to be buried in the ground and right across the fence is his friends, his neighbors going on to have a life.

AMT: Russell and Raelene invite us to see Adam's room. Full of his childhood treasures and their joy.

SOUNDCLIP

[Indistinct chatter]

RUSSELL HEROLD: The thing with him like I was saying, he's so genuine. I guess his cousin came and said, why does he still have this? I made him this I think in grade 4. Why would he have this? But it must have meant something to him I guess. He must have thought that that was a nice gesture or something so he kept it. When his Pat Canadian team -- they all came, so I said you know go down to his room. Look at his room. So when they came here I said, he would be so mad if he knew you guys were in here. He is 17 and he's 6 foot 2 hockey player.

AMT: He says 17 because Adam's Birthday was six days after the accident.

SOUNDCLIP

RUSSELL HEROLD: And he still doesn't care. Those are the books his mom used to read him you know when he was a little guy -- he made no bones about it. He wasn't like you've got to get that stuff out of here I'm a big hockey player. His tractor collection that he got for Christmas all the time.

AMT: And through all that pain, I hear the pride of a father who raised a kid -- who was man enough to still be a boy.

SOUNDCLIP

RUSSELL HEROLD: So many people will say that. They'll text you and message and say, you know you raised such a good kid. [Chokes up] And I guess there is a comfort in that but there's also the heartache of that. How good a kid he was and he's not here.

AMT: Our trip to Humboldt was produced by Geoff Turner. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current stay with us.

Author of NYT op-ed critical of Trump was right to stay anonymous, says lawyer

Guests: Mark Zaid, Paul Musgrave

AMT: Hello I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current. We're really switching gears now.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: We are tracking a breaking story out of the U.S. The New York Times has just published an anonymous opinion piece describing a "resistance inside Donald Trump's administration."

VOICE 2: This is stunning op-ed in The New York Times. But this person saying that they do not agree with the president -- they are staying on in their job in the administration to help thwart what the president wants to do in order to essentially save the nation from the president.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Nobody has ever done, in less than a two year period, what we've done. So when you tell me about some anonymous source -- if the failing New York Times has an anonymous editorial, can you believe it? Anonymous. Meaning a gutless editorial. We're doing a great job and The New York Times is failing. If I weren't here, I believe The New York Times probably wouldn't even exist.

AMT: Well, just some of the reaction from the media and the U.S. President yesterday after The New York Times went live with an anonymous op-ed column written from inside the Trump administration. President Trump later tweeted 'treason' in capital letters -- as well as other tweets that are going on early this morning. The author claimed to be part of a resistance, a quiet resistance, while the right wing Drudge Report website described the author as a saboteur. Hero or a villain, the anonymous author, seems to be bolstering the reporting in a controversial new book by veteran journalist Bob Woodward. It claims senior Trump administration staffers not only take a dim view of Mr. Trump but often work to undermine the president to limit the damage he does. Nevertheless the author's choice to remain anonymous and to write a column at all is sparking debate across the political spectrum. Mark Zaid is a Washington based attorney who handles cases involving national security. He also represents government whistleblowers. And we've reached him just outside of D.C. in North Bethesda, Maryland. Hi.

MARK ZAID: Good morning.

AMT: Well what did you think when you read that opinion piece in The New York Times?

MARK ZAID: Well I was stunned but in a positive way. I am one of the -- I'm not sure how many there are of us, because as you said in your introduction it's amazing what the negative reaction has been. Although I see the negative reactions on both the left and the right -- and when I see that, that tells me that something actually good happened, when both sides are complaining. And the way I look at it I am not an ideologue or partisan but I am by no means a fan of President Trump. Most of my work is frankly always against whoever is in power in the United States but in particular this president I have some serious problems with. So when I see an op-ed, no matter anonymous, coming from someone on apparently the senior inside level, raising these type of concerns -- I applaud it because we need resistors on the inside.

AMT: How surprised is it though to learn that there is a member of this so-called anti-Trump resistance so high up in the administration?

MARK ZAID: I am not surprised. I think there's going to be a lot of evaluations and analysis of this administration obviously not very long after it ends or even as it is ending. And there definitely could have been better ways to do this. I mean this op-ed writer talks about how it appears cabinet level officials were concerned that perhaps President Trump should be removed under the 25th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution for being unfit. Now that raises some real concerns. I would love to know who are these cabinet members? How many cabinet members? If they felt that seriously, what did they do about it? And right now obviously it looks like they didn't it.

AMT: Can you clarify for our Canadian audience what is that amendment? Is that the impeachment amendment?

MARK ZAID: So the 25th Amendment allows -- I don't have the language right in front of me so I don't know by heart, but allows a procedure to remove a president that can be for impeachment of high crimes and misdemeanors but it can also be when the individual is unfit for office. We've never had that in the history of our country. Lots of movies and television programs have removed presidents from office for being unfit. So it's not entirely clear how it would work out. Though the Congress has to actually formally approve it. I think it's two thirds, if I'm remembering correctly, to remove the president. So there is a procedure and you could imagine that if you had a majority of the cabinet come forward publicly as a group that that would bear a lot of weight. We don't have that for whatever reason and I think there's going to be a lot of people going forward after this administration who are going to be held account and have to explain themselves to the American public and their families, why they didn't do more. But at least this person is doing something.

AMT: Well there may be someone who might have to explain themselves to Mr. Trump. The president has called it 'treason' with capitals. And this comes in the midst of the outrage of the Bob Woodward book. He's on a very active hunt, we know this, to find people who spoke with The Washington Post reporter. As someone who represents whistleblowers does that active hunt alarm you?

MARK ZAID: Yes and no. I've been here since 1993 in the Clinton administration, so a quarter century, every administration no matter the party is plagued by leaks. And they are always every time never fails to put out a call to expose the leakers and go out on some sort of effort to try and expose them. And in this case from what we're hearing is, they're doing computer searches, taking very significant or unusual wording in the op-ed trying to match it up with other people's words. If this person is caught, this person should and will be fired. That's just the way the system works. They won't be prosecuted. They didn't commit any crime. The president tweeted out to The New York Times that The New York Times should turn this individual over, in a very authoritarian way as if somehow they would be -- I don't know, what? Executed. Thrown up against the wall. Tortured. It's unclear what he's referring to. But it would depend on what the effort is. If they check government cellphones, if they check government emails, that's all appropriate. If they start going around the White House or senior officials inside the government and say, I want to see your personal cellphone -- give me the password to your personal email account, then we start to go far more into a real authoritarian regime that we've seen in history.

AMT: You tweeted that your law firm will represent anyone in the White House pro bono if their security clearance or their employment is threatened as a result of what you call 'the witch hunt.' Why are you making that offer?

MARK ZAID: I am far more concerned about actually the innocent people within the system. Now anyone who is there -- there can be an argument and I'm sure I would take some flak, well why should I help anyone who is complicit and enabling the president? Because I'm looking beyond just what these specific individuals may be doing or may be suffering -- we're talking about principle and whether a president of the United States -- what they can and should do by way of their authority. So if he does go on an actual witch hunt, and in a witch hunt we know just historically lots of innocent people get burned along the way until the true culprit can be found. Security clearances are supposed to be used to protect the United States, not as a weapon to go against political opponents. So that's why we made that offer. We are here to protect whistleblowers. We also have an organisation called Whistleblower Aid that I helped found where we go pro bono free legal assistance to whistleblowers and it extends beyond this administration and politics. So there are principles at stake here that we're out to protect.

AMT: And you talked about other administrations you've seen. Is the Trump presidency different from other White House administrations in how it goes after people it believes are leaking information to the media?

MARK ZAID: Well they're definitely very different. I think any Washington insider and I think anyone who is just even watching or observing from wherever they are in the world that they know U.S. history, we've not seen anything like this before. The closest at least in our lifetime people were refer to President Nixon. And there definitely are similarities between the individuals as men, personalities, actions, except that Nixon did most of his efforts and undermining in private and it never came to fruition were as Trump just publicly pushes for it. I don't think I would say yet that I have seen any difference in this administration by way of how they're going about going after people or searching whether it legitimately or not for a leaker. And I won't even use the term leaker really because we usually talk about that when we're referring to the leaking of classified information which would be [inaudible] and that's sort of one of the terms to call this person but they haven't done that at least.

AMT: It's interesting because I am looking at a New York Times piece this morning. First of all the information in Woodward's book came out Tuesday afternoon and then this came out yesterday. And The New York Times is writing some of his top aides worked the phones to figure out who was leaking or who might have spoken -- and his daughter Ivanka Trump and other advisers tried to quell his distress. So they're still leaking. Like we're talking about all these leaks there's still like a...

MARK ZAID: It's not going to stop. It has never stopped in any administration. Washington D.C. even though it's city is actually kind of a small town and a lot of people know each other and especially when you're in the government at this kind of level. Now what is different about this administration, and this is not necessarily a bad thing substantively but it hasn't worked out very well I don't think, is so many people were brought in with no government experience to shake it up I suppose. And there are people in the United States who applaud and absolutely love that, but the system doesn't do very well when you have that type of chaos and inexperience -- there's something to be said about when mainstream Republicans and mainstream Democrats come in and out of the administration from private practice as the party switch to give the country a level of stability that we're used to and generally need.

AMT: Mark Zaid I want you to stay with us. I'm going to be really transparent here, we had booked someone who is a very vocal Trump supporter who seems to have gone a-wall. But we do have somebody else also waiting who has a different view of what this means and whether this should have happened. So Mark Zaid Washington based attorney who specializes in national security issues and represents government whistleblowers. I'm going to keep you with us as I introduce Paul Musgrave. He feels this development plunges the U.S. into a full blown constitutional crisis. Paul Musgrave is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. And he's in Amherst. Hi Paul.

PAUL MUSGRAVE: Hi Anna Maria.

AMT: First of all let's get your view, am I characterizing that correctly?

PAUL MUSGRAVE: I would only add one thing, I wouldn't say that this op-ed has plunged us into a full blown constitutional crisis, I would say that this intensifies the crisis of governance and American institutions that we've been living with for now 18 months-20 months.

AMT: And so when you read this op-ed what did you think?

PAUL MUSGRAVE: Well I though a few things. First of all like everyone I was stunned to be reading this. I appreciate Mark's point that Washington is a small town and everybody leaks, but on the other hand there's a reason why nobody can find a precedent for this sort of behavior. It's because like so many things in this administration, there are no precedents -- or the most extreme precedent, the thing that may have happened once a 100 years ago, is the only thing that anybody can find. So it has really been a fascinating experience to see how different people have reacted. For me, what's telling about this is not that this is just a leak, it's a proud proclamation of routinized disloyalty by somebody who is presumably operating in an appointed or a staff job and was selected by the president or someone nominally loyal to the president. And that speaks to a kind of rupture of the culture within the administration -- it goes beyond what we've seen, I would think anything but the Nixon administration in the depths of Watergate or possibly the Reagan administration in the very absolute Iran-Contra. And what this has done is it's really put the president himself into this position where he has been saying for more than a year that the deep state, some sort of shadowy nebulous network, has been trying to frustrate his ambitions and he has been blaming members of his own government for not be able to do all the things he promised on the campaign trail. And now in fact we have a member of his administration saying in The New York Times, the bastion of what conservatives see as liberal media, that in fact they are trying to frustrate parts of his agenda -- that the president can't be trusted, and that anything that is good that has come out of the administration is due ultimately not to the president but to these unnamed officials.

AMT: Well in fact you know he has tweeted this morning again, Mr. Trump, he has actually said, the deep state and the left and the fake news media are going crazy -- they don't know what to do. He also says, I'm draining the swamp and the swamp is trying to fight back -- but he appointed this person.

PAUL MUSGRAVE: Well this is a great irony. So it fits into the president's presentation and his theory, it's wrong right? But President Trump lies all the time, misleads all the time, but the general idea that he campaigned against was that there was some sort of governing elite that didn't trust the American people. And if you view it from that perspective this exactly fits what he has been saying since he came down the golden escalator in the summer of 2015 and launched his campaign. Now I don't agree with any of this. I think the president is dangerous. I think the president is as the op-ed writer said, amoral and impetuous, and petty. And I think that we knew all of these things. In fact I think that one thing that we need to get on the table here is that, there's nothing new in the op-ed besides a very public confirmation of what everybody who has watched this administration closely has known. And that's what's dangerous.

AMT: Well let me ask you about that then. Because the person who wrote, I am part of the resistance inside the Trump administration, says, because they are basically working against what he sometimes wants -- here is the quote, the result is a two track presidency. What does that say for democracy in the U.S.?

PAUL MUSGRAVE: What this is, really, the horns of the dilemma here. In a democracy, ultimately, some big part of sovereignty is supposed to rest with the people's choice in an election. And American presidential elections are notoriously undemocratic. President Trump received 3 million fewer votes than Secretary Clinton but because of the Electoral College, because of that institution, he won. And there is a presumption built into the Constitution, and American practice, that the person who wins the Electoral College and becomes president has at least some sort of a mandate to carry out policies. And that people working, especially within the executive branch, have the option of following that program or of resigning and explaining why. This isn't quite cabinet responsibility but it is a simple principle. By going out and saying that the administration is working against the president, but not telling us why, not telling us how, not telling us what the stakes have been -- there's very few details about what's going on here. So we have no way idea how severe this crisis really is. All that's happening is that we know that there's no easy way for us to have public scrutiny and accountability for the government's actions. And that's why this is an intensification of that ongoing crisis where we knew the institutions weren't working and now we don't even have a way to deliberate publicly about how they aren't working because we now know that we just don't know what's happening.

AMT: Mark Zaid what do you think?

MARK ZAID: Yeah we probably would have had a more robust conversation if the Trump supporter had been, because Paul and I are, pretty much I have a feeling, in agreement on a lot of this. And the differences are going to be where reasonable minds can differ about what the person should have done going forward -- should they have attach their name to it. Should they have been a little bit more specific and there is room on both sides.

AMT: I mean should they have resigned -- I mean should they have come clean to say who they were if they felt so strongly. What are they doing in there?

MARK ZAID: At this point I think there is greater value to that they didn't do that. There have been a number of high level resignations, mostly in the State Department at the ambassadorial level and honourable resignations, career public servants, but it didn't accomplish anything because of Trump's base could care less. The president could care less. I think if the individual had put their name on it at this point we would be talking all about who this person is, what their history was, where they go to school, what work they did prior, how did they get to this point. Whereas right now we're talking about the substance of what's in the op-ed -- and I totally agree with Paul there's really nothing new in there, what is new is that we're having a official acknowledgment from someone so senior. There is going to be a time, there will have to be a time, where this person comes forward whether they're exposed or they do so voluntarily. And I'll just say finally I know there has been criticism that this person, ' wow this is self-serving op-ed, they're just doing it so they have a soft cushion when they leave the administration' I point out historically we celebrate Deep Throat here in the States, this whistle blower for The Washington Post for Woodward and Bernstein out of the Nixon administration and Watergate -- and when we learned that it was Mark Felt, a senior FBI official, you know we learned that some of what he was doing was for very selfish reasons to preserve and posture himself to be able to try and be the FBI director. So there is going to be you know reasons that are good, and bad, and personal, and more objective, and we'll have to assess it later on as to whether or not this was the right way to go. I think so far it is.

AMT: It's interesting. So any way you look at it depends on how much information you have. What the public can do to judge. I actually found it really interesting last night that I looked at The New York Times -- the letters to The New York Times were toping 4000 which I hadn't seen before. I woke up this morning they were toping 8000. But a lot of people said that even though they weren't Trump's supporters, they were wary of Trump, they really felt that this was wrong -- that this person should do this anonymously, should be working against the president of the United States. Paul what you make of -- and those were regular readers, as far as I know.

PAUL MUSGRAVE: Anna Maria this is where I think that Mark and I disagree. At however slightly it is on this philosophical point where I agree that if we knew the name of this person we would be speculating a lot more about his or her motives, about why they chose to do it at this time. But that person would have also been able to have made a much more compelling argument because they would have been able to say what were the events that caused the cabinet to think about using this 25th amendment process to temporarily remove and then bring up what is essentially a form of impeachment to remove the president. That's a huge revelation. We would all have known that people have been talking about it outside the administration, but my gosh, they are talking about it inside. The other thing is on the one hand yes, Mark Felt, the Deep Throat person, who feed Woodward and Bernstein so much information during the Watergate investigation was trying to get back at Nixon by smearing him in the press. But there were other people during the Nixon administration who resigned when they were given a policy directive that they found to be so unconscionable they couldn't follow it. And these are men like Attorney General Elliot Richardson, deputy attorney general William Ruckelshaus and they resigned rather than fire the special prosecutor during the Saturday Night Massacre. And that was the instance at which, you know for many people, Watergate went from being a nuisance to a national crisis. And their resignations and their public justification of their resignation really triggered a national conversation in a way that we're not seeing. We're seeing a big national conversation -- but it's about this question about whether this is a fine thing to do in the beginning. Removing the anonymity would remove the doubt about that.

AMT: Okay so what do you make of the fact that the two Mikes, Pence and Pompeo, have felt the need to go public and say, it wasn't me.

PAUL MUSGRAVE: You know one of the tragic comic elements of this is that if you're a cabinet member who hasn't been asked to deny it, does that make you feel better or worse? So you know Vice President Pence I think is unlikely to have written this -- you know Secretary Pompeo the same. These are public [inaudible] of loyalty and it's the sort of thing that you have to do in order to maintain your standing with the president who prizes loyalty above all other qualities. But I think that what this is also showing is that even if there is no immediate dramatic payoff to all of this kerfuffle about the op-ed, there is a huge tax being imposed on the U.S. government in terms of presidential time, staff time, official time, dealing with this sort of thing instead of dealing with you know the number of pressing issues including of course Chapter 19 that the U.S. government could be talking about.

AMT: And of course the midterms are coming up.

PAUL MUSGRAVE: Well you know we all thought that a lot of dramatic revelations during the 2016 presidential election in the homestretch would have changed things, but at this point if you're like me I feel that our memory has shorten to a week or even a couple of days, so I'm not even sure if something this dramatic will have a lasting effect on the midterms.

AMT: It's interesting to see the polarization. Thank you both for weighing in on this. Good to hear your thoughts.

MARK ZAID: Thank you.

PAUL MUSGRAVE: Thank you.

AMT: That's Mark Zaid, Washington based attorney. He specializes in national security issues and represents government whistleblowers. He's just outside of Washington D.C.. And Paul Musgrave, assistant professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. We reached him in Amherst. Let us know what you think tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook. Go to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. Let us know about anything you're thinking as you listened to our program today from Humboldt and this latest twist in the Trump presidency. That is our program for today. Stay with Radio 1 for q. Tom Power is hosting a special song circle of Canadian country musicians from the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville today so stay with us to listen to him. And after spending an hour on the program today with the people of Humboldt, Saskatchewan we're going to end with some music that was dedicated to them after the tragedy there this spring. Country musician Paul Brandt was in the q studio in April and recorded this special version of his song Small Towns and Big Dreams for the community of Humboldt. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thanks for listening to The Current.

[Music: Paul Brandt "Small Towns and Big Dreams"]

The Current Transcript for September 6, 2018

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