[MissTeeks]

Originally Posted by Huntingwhale

I believe he was involved in the bus crash in 1986 the Swift Current team was involved in. He knows first-hand what they are going through. He was interviewed on The Fan 960 recently regarding the crash and he made it known he was heading down there to do whatever he could to help.

Great great human being.

Eric Francis had an article on the weekend about the 86 crash survivors that were going to help and what they went through after their crash:

https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/...e-help-denied/

Early Sunday morning they started a Western Canadian journey not unlike the one they’d shared so many times as junior teammates in Swift Current.

Sheldon Kennedy, Bob Wilkie and Peter Soberlak boarded a Saskatoon-bound flight from Calgary, dropped into a local hospital and then made a 100-kilometre drive to Humboldt, Sask.

Their mission is to help, something Graham James wouldn’t let people do following their team’s tragic bus crash.

That’s not to suggest the people of Swift Current and throughout Western Canada didn’t do everything humanly possible to wrap their arms around the survivors of the 1986 crash that killed four teammates.

However, what came to light many years later was why their coach – James – steadfastly refused to allow players professional counsellors. He feared such introspection would unearth his history as a sexual predator.

“When Sheldon stood up and finally outed Graham (in 1996) it all became clear why we weren’t able to get help after the bus crash,” said Wilkie, whose life was so dominated by the trauma of the crash he wrote about about it in a 2013 book called Sudden Death: The Incredible Saga of the 1986 Swift Current Broncos.

“We weren’t allowed to talk about it for fear his dirty secret would come out. My mom wondered for years why we were never given any of the resources we needed to cope with it properly. Those who wanted help were told ‘no’ by Graham. Now we know why.”

As Wilkie’s mother, Judy, said, “Thank god there’s no Graham James in the middle of all of this because he wouldn’t allow them to get the support they needed. These boys will.”

Kennedy agreed.

“We need to be there, doing anything we can,” he said. “The number of victims involved goes far beyond the survivors.”

And even though they aren’t armed with counselling certificates, these lads can help because they’ve lived it.

They know what’s coming next.

“It’s going to be dark for a while. It’s going to be sad and consuming and frustrating and none of it makes sense,” said Wilkie, whose quartet will attend Sunday night’s vigil in Humboldt with thousands of others.

“As hard as this is going to be for a while they will be much stronger. They will be inspired and more driven and once they get to the other side it will be OK.