Benefit game raises $55,000 - Humboldt mayor says town grateful
April 24, 2018, 1:45 am
Kara Kinna
After all hundred hockey players had left the rink, after the silent auction was closed, and donation boxes gathered up, a benefit hockey game held in Moosomin on Friday, April 13 had raised $55,000 for the Humboldt Brocos.
Rob Muench, the Mayor of Humboldt, spoke to the World-Spectator last week. He said he was grateful for the support.
“You pass our thanks on to everyone in Moosomin,” he said. “We really appreciate what you did. We appreciate everything they are doing, and it’s amazing for a small community to raise those kind of dollars. Good on you guys.
“I thought it was really touching. I watched a video of the game, and just seeing everybody there filing into the rink, it’s one of those things that kind of tugs on your heart strings. The support we are getting from everybody, from all over, it’s just amazing.
“A lot of it is coming from small towns such as Moosomin just getting together. I think that’s because everyone can relate to it. You had so many junior players come to your benefit game there. Those players have all done very similar things in their lives and I think that’s why everybody relates to it. Everybody’s been on a bus and everybody’s travelled to a game. Just the way we are getting support from all over has been kind of overwhelming for us.
“We’re a small town as well. Even though we call ourselves a city by Canadian standards, everybody sees us as a small town, and I think we have a bigger connection to places like Moosomin than we do to places like Toronto.”
Muench says the it’s not surprising that Humboldt is getting support in the wake of this tragedy, but the sheer amount of support is surprising.
“Just the scope of it is a surprise,” he says. “You see this in Saskatchewan all the time, just on a smaller scale. We see it in our community as well on a smaller scale every day. This has just been times a thousand bigger than what people are normally like. This has just sort of gelled everybody together and it’s something that they can rally behind.”
Nothing can bring back the players and the people lost in the bus crash, but does support from events like the one held in Moosomin help?
“That’s what we will find out going forward,” says Muench. “I feel we are a stronger community for it. Just the way everyone has pulled together, I can’t imagine a bigger tragedy than this, but it certainly has brought our community closer together, and I think the province and the country as well.”
“Everybody seems to want to do something just to reach out to do what they can, and some things are just a quick phone call or a text message, and then you have something like Moosomin where they got together as a community and raised a tremendous amount of money for the size of the town. That really speaks to how this has affected everybody.”
When the World-Spectator spoke to Muench last week, he had just arrived home from a funeral in Edmonton and was heading to another funeral that afternoon. He said the community was trying to stay strong.
“We’ll get through this as a community,” he said. “It’s just a matter of pulling together and helping each other out. We’re like that in this community. We tend to rally behind things and this is one more thing—it’s on a greater scale than we’ve ever seen before, but we will pull together and we will get through.”
How to donate
The Go Fund Me page that was set up for the Broncos was taken offline on Wednesday, April 18 after raising $15 million, however donations can still be made to the Broncos. A general donations account with Conexus Credit Union has been set up. All funds deposited in this account will go directly to the Humboldt Broncos organization and future needs of those affected by this tragedy.
To make a donation to this account, people can visit one of the Conexus Credit Union branch locations, or mail a cheque or money order payable to Humboldt Broncos to:
Conexus Credit Union
Humboldt Branch
PO Box 480
Humboldt Saskatchewan
S0K 2A0
The funds donated through the GoFundMe campaign will be transferred to a newly created non-profit corporation known as “Humboldt Broncos Memorial Fund Inc.” to be allocated for their intended purpose. An advisory committee is being established to make a recommendation for the allocation of these funds, which will be held in trust until that allocation occurs.
In order to accommodate incoming funds from individuals and groups wanting to make donations, or holding fundraisers to support their organization, the Humboldt Broncos, together with legal counsel Robertson Stromberg, have launched the HumboldtStrong Community Foundation.
The mission of the HumboldtStrong Community Foundation will be to support Humboldt Broncos’ players, employees, families, and volunteers, as well as first responders and emergency services personnel, teams, athletes, related organizations and communities affected by the crash of the Humboldt Broncos team bus on April 6, 2018, and the aftermath thereof.
