What does forgiveness mean? A Canadian bus crash, five years later.
Because of Jaskirat Singh Sidhu, Christina Haugan’s husband is dead.
But every April 6, she feels tugged toward the inexperienced semi driver who, on that day in 2018, barreled across the Canadian prairie through a blinking rural crossroad stop sign, and collided with the bus of the beloved Humboldt Broncos junior hockey team that her husband coached.
Mr. Sidhu’s moment of dangerous inattention killed 16 people. From the start, the tragedy was experienced as Canada’s – as if it happened to everyone who heads onto the ice, everyone who sends their kids on a bus, anyone who knows what it means to feel Canadian.
Every year on that anniversary, Ms. Haugan feels enveloped by the love of a nation.
But on last year’s anniversary amid the annual outpouring of message after message of support, her thoughts kept returning to Mr. Sidhu, who was sentenced to eight years in prison and is now facing deportation to his native India.
“I was like, I bet you no one ever thinks about them,” Ms. Haugan says of her decision to send off an email to Mr. Sidhu’s wife.
It was short – just to say she was thinking of them, she says: “As much as my life changed that day, so did his. I just think someone needs to kind of remember them on that day, because ... they’ll never be the same either.”
Her defining moment resonates for many as the nation asks itself whether it, too, can find mercy for Mr. Sidhu as he fights against deportation and for a chance to stay in Canada despite what he did.
The collective grieving over the Humboldt tragedy still occupies outsize space in Canadian thought. Many continue to blame the driver who caused it all. Others, including victims themselves, say Mr. Sidhu is serving his time and that deportation is essentially a double punishment, a law etched in a “tough on crime” era that is inconsistent with Canada’s identity as a tolerant nation.
As the fifth anniversary
