The outpouring of support after the horrible Humboldt Broncos bus accident that killed 16 people and left 13 more injured has been unprecedented.
People from not only across Saskatchewan and Canada but indeed, from around the world, have sent money and condolences.
Tonight, the GoFundMe page that originally aimed to raise $10,000 and is about to pass $15 million and is the second highest fundraiser in GoFundMe history will be shut down so that organizers can transition to distributing the funds.
There is a long list of interconnected reasons why this tragedy has resonated in the public consciousness.
A writer and labour activist named Nora Loreto waded into the fray to say that the maleness, youthfulness and whiteness of the victims were three major reasons the response was so significant.
This tweet (part of a longer series) has provoked much outrage and also defenses of her point so I’m not going to rehash the arguments for and against her.
Instead, I’ll say that I fully support her right to say what she wants, agree with it in principle (I notice Loreto and I have 24 Facebook friends in common which indicates we share at least some friends who have a similar worldview.)
But I also recognize that whether you’re far left like Nora Loreto, far right like Laura Ingraham or anywhere in between, you can also face pushback and consequences for your comments, whatever they are. (Of course, threats of rape and other violence aren’t exactly the mark of a well-reasoned response and a lot of the vitriol directed at Loreto was completely over-the-top and inappropriate. Ironically, many of those attacking her said they were just exercising their right to “free speech” even as they tried to shout her down.)
My own take on what she said is that, even if there was truth to it and she has every right to comment, it was her timing rather than what she said that was incredibly inappropriate.
The best analogy I can come up with is she did the equivalent of going into a funeral of someone she doesn’t even know and loudly pointing out that the coffin was made by slave labour in China. Even if it’s true, it’s not the time or place.
The Briarpatch article that’s defending her manages to indirectly point out how inappropriate her series of tweets was by recapping the progression of what she wrote.
One of her first tweets about the tragedy was…
Except that she *did* end up having a lot more to say and again, though that’s absolutely her right and though there is obviously truth to what she was saying, I would hope that someone who makes part of their living as a writer would be more conscious of how those words would be interpreted, especially at that highly charged, sensitive moment less than forty-eight hours after the tragedy had occurred when kids were still literally being misidentified about whether they were those who were still alive or those who had died!
(I also wonder about her purpose – did she *really* think her tweets would change anyone’s minds or was it, in some ways, a bit of a performance for her like-minded Twitter followers? Another person I know who is probably close to Loreto in their worldview even has a clever term for this type of display – “Granholier than Thou”.)
Of course, as a blogger and as someone active on social media, I had my own moment of wanting to “tell it like it is” right after the tragedy.
As an atheist, I wasn’t surprised to see how many “thoughts and prayers” wishes were being posted. I know it’s meaningful to a lot of people and in my mind, I see “thoughts and prayers” sort of like I see Christmas – something that has some roots and loose connection to religion but has become a secular expression as much as anything, especially those who aren’t religious but want to say something weightier than just “Thinking of you”.
I saw one person tweet “So horrible! All I can do is send thoughts and prayers” and I wanted to scream back in all caps – “NO! THAT IS *NOT* ALL YOU CAN DO! DONATE MONEY! DONATE BLOOD! SIGN YOUR ORGAN DONOR CARD! SIGN A BOOK OF CONDOLENCES! THERE A MILLION THINGS YOU CAN DO!”
But you know what?
I sat on my hands and decided not to post anything. If I did, I knew I’d be unlikely to change that person (or anyone’s) mind, I’d be making the response about me and my beliefs, and I’d probably get some (well-deserved) pushback (though again, I acknowledge I’d be much less likely to get rape and death threats which I think is part of the larger point Loreto was trying to make – that white and/or young and/or men get many advantages that others don’t – but not something that’s well-understood, at least to people not regularly exposed to leftist politics.)
So I didn’t post anything about the religious aspect of the response because it was just the usual “thoughts and prayers” and pretty easy to ignore.
But then it got a lot more overt.
During the Humboldt vigil on the Sunday after the tragedy, I got pretty frustrated that the person who was easily the most powerful speaker was also the most religious. Which meant he wasn’t shy about basically saying that people who didn’t find Christ would be lost or sharing how the coach of the team had asked him to help the boys find Jesus “build character.”
What will you do with one breath? Each breath that you have left, what are you going to do with it? Will you seek the God who has walked and who has died to show his love and his concern and his care for you? Or will you get bitter and angry and frustrated? Come to the God of comfort.
I was *really* close to tweeting or posting on FB to say how incredibly *inappropriate* I found his comments – how he was basically taking advantage of a rink full of emotionally vulnerable people not to mention the millions watching at home – who would presumably represent the entire range of beliefs and non-beliefs found across our country – to try to not just commemorate those who were gone and help people make sense of the tragedy (if that’s even possible) but also to convert people to his brand of Christianity.
I was going to post something but instead, I sent a private message to a friend who’s a very outspoken atheist to see what his take was. And what he wrote back was simple and direct.
“The vigil was planned by the churches so what can you do? It’s tough to be an atheist in Saskatchewan.”
So rather than wading unhelpfully into the mire with my strongly held opinions which I know are politically charged and controversial at the best of times, I decided that it wasn’t the time and I would hold my tongue.
Nora Loreto choose a different course of action.
After saying there was nothing to say, she went on to say a whole lot on Twitter (has *anyone* had their mind changed by anything posted on Twitter?) while the shock was still fresh for thousands and indeed millions across Canada and beyond.
(It’s another hypothetical but I wonder how this would’ve played out if she’d shared her views on a platform that focuses on longer, more thoughtful content like Medium, instead of Twitter where it’s easier for people to focus in on a single tweet?)
Anyhow, by even saying this, I know some people out there will think that I’ve been duped by the “right wing rage” machine who attacked her (and really, some of those attacks were beyond disgusting) but I’m honestly trying to come at this from a more conciliatory place – as I keep saying, I fully support her right to say what she did, that she could use the outlet she chose, and that I even generally agree with her point.
Okay, so that was a much longer preamble than I meant to do for this post where I wanted to talk about the *many* reasons the Humboldt tragedy resonated so strongly with so many people. So let’s do that now, starting with Loreto’s original three…
1. Youth
Loreto pointed out that part of the response was the victims’ youthfulness and I agree 100%. But I think what gets missed is that *every* society feels its more tragic when a young person dies than someone who is older. If a bus tour of senior citizens had met their fate on the way to Branson, Missouri, people would be sad but most would say “They had a long life.” and there likely wouldn’t be a multi-million fundraising campaign.
2. Maleness
Would a team of 17-21 year old female hockey players in a similar accident have raised a similar amount of money? Honestly? Probably not so her point is a fair one. But I think there would’ve *been* a response and it would’ve been a big one though it’s weird and morbid to even try to contemplate how those two tragedies might “weigh” against each other.
3. Whiteness
Again, there is truth to this too and it’s unlikely that a team of 17-21 year old Aboriginal male hockey players in a similar accident probably wouldn’t have raised the same amount of money or prolonged attention. But again, I think there *would* have been attention and fundraising and it’s weird to think about this those as things that indicate the relative value of lives lost.
Ultimately, by focussing on these three things to the exclusion of all else, I feel like Loreto is missing so many other factors.
Here’s a few of them…
4. Hockey
Hockey is Canada’s most popular sport which many people – of all ages, races and genders play. So an accident like this feels especially tragic because so many of us feel a connection to the players. To put it another way and use one last morbid analogy, I think a similar disaster with female or Aboriginal hockey players *would* have gotten more attention and fundraising than say, a team of white male basketball players. That’s a pretty extreme claim and obviously impossible to test (thankfully!) but my own take is that it was the connection to hockey, more than anything else, that made the reaction so strong.
5. NHL Hockey
Beyond that, the accident occurred at a time when so many fans, hardcore and casual, were thinking about hockey with the Stanley Cup playoffs starting less than a week after the accident. Again, it’s all hypothetical but I highly doubt that a similar accident would’ve gotten the same response if it happened in October. As well, Saskatchewan produces the most NHL players per capita so it’s clear that hockey, at all levels, is an extremely important part of our province.
6. Weekend
The accident also happened on a Friday evening maximizing the time that people had to give it attention over the next couple days, reading social media and reading news sites for the latest updates. This means the GoFundMe got a big initial push that helped it gain momentum that it might not have otherwise.
7. Proximity
This relates to Nora Loreto’s three factors as another reality of our world, whether we like it or not. I once read something to the effect that “1 death in your city feels the same as 10 in your province feels the same as 100 in your country feels the same as 1000 somewhere else in the world.” Many people brought up that a bus accident in India around the same time killed a similar number of people but wouldn’t raise a similar amount of money or get the same amount of attention. That’s tragic too but thousands of years of tribalism has ingrained humans with a natural bias towards empathy and care for those closest to us, both geographically and also racially (not saying that’s right but I do think that’s reality.)
8. Familiarity
Even for those who didn’t play hockey, a tragedy like this resonates because almost everyone has traveled for sports or school trips or other activities when they were young so its very easy to put yourself in the shoes of the young men on that bus.
9. Saskatchewan
I think this resonated in Canada because Saskatchewan has a reputation that portrays us as some of the nicest people in Canada which many envision as some “mythical heartland” full of salt of the earth farmers and other good folk. To put it another way, I don’t think we’re as polarizing of a province as Alberta or Ontario or Quebec.
10. Rarity
I think the fact that this accident even happened in a province which has the most miles of highway per capita in the country with a relatively small population makes people think – what are the odds this would even happen? – and makes the shock greater. (Of course, the flip side of this is Saskatchewan, due to everything from our number of grid roads to high rates of drunk driving, actually has the highest or second highest number of road deaths per capita of anywhere in Canada. Even the crossroad where the accident happened apparently already had six crosses from an earlier accident.)
11. Non-political
Unlike the other events that garner huge numbers of donations on GoFundMe relating to everything from school shootings to women’s marches, this event was decidedly non-political (I mean, other than in the sense that “everything is political” which is part of what I think the point Nora Loreto was trying to make) and got attention from everyone from arch-conservative, Don Cherry to activist musician Tom Cochrane.
12. Hockey People Are Competitive
I’m not sure when it happened – after the first million maybe? – but at some point, I think the GoFundMe became a competition for people who not only wanted to show their support but also who wanted to somehow “beat” other GoFundMe fundraisers (and having just passed $15 million as the closing point of midnight approaches, they essentially did just that by becoming the most successful GoFundMe in Canadian history and the second most successful GoFundMe of all-time.) People also forget that the GoFundMe is just one outlet for giving but there are hundreds of thousands and possibly millions more raised by NHL teams donating 50/50 proceeds and auctioning off jerseys and hundreds of other initiatives big and small that will greatly increase the final total raised.
13. Helplessness
I think many people felt helpless in the wake of such a massive unexpected tragedy and just wanted to do…something. Donating to GoFundMe was a quick and easy way that people could feel like they were helping in the moment.
14. The Internet
The previous worst sports transportation-related accident in Canada was in 2008 when thirteen young basketball players were killed in New Brunswick. According to Wikipedia, that accident had a National Day of Mourning but as far as I can tell, it didn’t have the same prolonged response, fundraising heights, or sense of connectedness across Canada and around the world that the Humboldt crash did – all of which were present for the Humboldt tragedy in large part due to the ubiquity of the Internet.
15. Kindness
When people are suffering, I think it’s a natural instinct for most people to help – period. For example, Canadians have donated large sums to international aid, disaster relief and all sorts of other good causes over the years.
16. Good Comes From Bad
As horrible as this tragedy was, it has led to all kinds of amazing positives – from the huge increase in people signing organ donor cards to the realization that hockey has helped people as far away as Uganda to the words of the mother of one victim who acknowledges how she wants the loss of her son to help change the world, and specifically that of First Nations people, for the better.
I would hope that’s something that even Nora Loreto who lists her location on Twitter as “traditional territory of Huron-Wendat, Abenaki, Wabanaki Confederacy, Wolastoqiyik & Haudenosaunee (à Québec)” could support.
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