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 of the catastrophic crash approaches, the notion of forgiveness – as Canada weighs whether it will find a place for Mr. Sidhu or reject him outright – remains a fraught value. Exalted for its healing potential, it can also amplify grief and blame.

“It is such a tragedy because both sides are so compelling,” says Alice MacLachlan, a philosophy professor at York University who studies apologies and moral repair. “I have a mystified admiration for parents who have forgiven him and complete understanding for those who haven’t. 

“At the same time,” she adds, “this is someone who did something unbelievably awful but took full responsibility for it and accepted the harshest possible sentence ... and because of his citizenship status, which isn’t anything about who he is as a person, is much more vulnerable to the state as a result.”

Mr. Sidhu had only been on the job as a semi driver for three weeks as he rolled through the flat landscape of farms and prairie, loaded with 900 bales of peat moss. He’d gotten his commercial license to help put his wife, Tanvir Mann, through dental hygienist school – and the crash happened during his first week driving alone. 

There is no question of fault. As he drove toward the intersection with Highway 35, where the Humboldt team was heading to playoffs, he was fixated on the tarps behind him, flapping over his cargo, and failed to notice – in clear afternoon daylight – five signs signaling the intersection, including the 4-foot-wide stop sign itself, with a flashing red light.  

As Mr. Sidhu crossed into the highway intersection, the Humboldt bus, which had no stop sign, could not avoid the collision. In addition to those killed – the youngest just 16 years old – 13 others were injured. Some still can’t walk today.

Mr. Sidhu was convicted of 16 counts of dangerous driving causing death and 13 counts of dangerous driving causing bodily harm. In giving him eight consecutive years in jail – an unprecedented sentence for a collision that was not deliberate or involving impairment or distraction like using a cellphone – Judge Inez Cardinal said she was accounting for the magnitude of harm done. 

“The loss of those killed and injured is staggering,” she wrote in her decision.

The crash generated an immediate global outpouring. A local hairdresser in Humboldt started a GoFundMe page; within days it generated $15 million (Canadian; U.S.$11 million), one of the largest sums in crowdfunding history. The little town of Humboldt amassed so many letters of love, hand-stitched blankets, children’s thick crayon drawings, and signed hockey jerseys – totaling 11,000 items – it mounted everything in an art gallery (on the second floor, to allow community members to avoid reminders).

Anita Dahlgren’s son Kaleb sustained a traumatic brain injury and survived. From her tidy home in Saskatoon, her petite goldendoodle, Murphie, on her lap, she reflects on the support in the wake of the crash. She recalls “the compassion and the love ... and just feeling surrounded with goodness.”

Several years later, many question if “goodness” should be shown today to Mr. Sidhu.

He is not a Canadian citizen but a permanent resident. So when he was sentenced to a term of imprisonment of more than six months, his chances of staying in Canada were put at risk. His immigration lawyer Michael Greene is fighting back.

Mr. Sidhu, who arrived in Canada in 2013, has stood as a sympathetic character from the start. He pleaded guilty to all charges laid against him, to avoid a trial and more harm to the families, even though he could have had an opportunity to plea-bargain, Mr. Greene says. 

Families recall Mr. Sidhu’s clear remorse as he looked them straight in the eye when they read their victim impact statements – amid tearful descriptions of lost potential and rage, during which the notion of forgiveness on both sides took center stage.

“I despise you for taking my baby away from me,” one father said in a transcript published in the Saskatchewan press. “You don’t deserve my forgiveness.” Ms. Haugan, who publicly forgave him at that hearing, recalls the way he held his head up and looked each family in the eye. “It didn’t matter whether it was one like mine, ... or one that was incredibly angry and telling him he basically didn’t deserve to live,” she says. “I think it was just to me, it was so respectful.”   

Mr. Sidhu, who was granted day parole in July, and his wife Ms. Mann declined an interview request through their lawyer, in part because they’ve been criticized for doing more harm when they speak to the media and because of ongoing civil litigation against them, Mr. Greene says.

Ms. Mann, now a Canadian citizen, started an online campaign in August to help fund their legal fight to stay in Canada, calling her husband “the best man I know.” It has generated about $45,000 (Canadian; U.S.$36,600) – and some backlash. “Canada does not want you here and the fact that people are contributing to this is absolutely ridiculous,” reads one comment.

But most leaving donations from $20 to $500 have left the couple messages of support: “I cried that day, like every other Canadian. ... No one will ever forget that day ... but forgiveness is a gift you give to yourself.” “Stand firm with the knowledge that there are Canadians who have compassion.”

In March 2022, the Canada Border Services Agency referred Mr. Sidhu to the immigration board to proceed with deportation without the right to appeal. Mr. Greene is now requesting leave in the immigration case – or a chance to argue in federal court to appeal the decision. “Leave” is granted in only a minority of cases, he acknowledges.

The right of appeal in deportation proceedings was curtailed over the past two decades. Under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act of 2001, any foreigner receiving a sentence of two or more years lost the right to appeal, and then under the Conservative government of Stephen Harper in 2013, the threshold was reduced to six months. That’s a low ceiling that could include an offense as minor as smashing a window during an anti-globalization protest, says David Moffette, a professor studying the intersection of immigration and criminal law at the University of Ottawa.

Under criminal law, a person can’t be punished twice. Deportation is legally classified as an administrative procedure. But in reality it is understood as punishment, argues Dr. Moffette: “It’s a form of exile as a criminal punishment.” 

He believes this case could become a test in which the country examines the fairness around the appeal system for foreigners. The process has received scant attention in part because it affects so few people, Dr. Moffette says. Roughly 1,000 removal orders are issued for serious criminality a year, according to government data. So it’s simply not been on the radar, he says, until now. 

“I’ve been practicing now for close to 40 years, and this is probably the most difficult case on many levels that I’ve had,” says Mr. Greene. “I think forgiveness and second chances are a big part of our history and our culture. And I would like to see that reflected [here].”

Forgiveness is a process, but sometimes it can be encapsulated in a single moment.

For Scott Thomas, that moment came in the back office of a makeshift courtroom at a community gymnasium in Melfort, Saskatchewan, where families of the Humboldt tragedy read aloud their victim impact statements in 2019, almost a year after the crash.   

Scott and Laurie Thomas lost their son Evan in the collision. Their suburban Saskatoon home is a sanctuary to a child they remember as selfless with a sophisticated sense of humor. The landing on their stairwell is decorated with the first pair of skates he ever wore on the ice at age 2 – and the last, at age 18. 

“I walked into the [courtroom] space, and Jaskirat immediately fell down on one knee and grabbed both my hands and just started weeping like a little baby. He was just bawling,” says Mr. Thomas, a chiropractor who cuts a large figure. His arms are tattooed with signs of Evan, including an inky handprint that was stamped at the funeral home so that the father would have a “piece of him alive” forever. 

“I don’t know how long I let him stay there,” Mr. Thomas recounts. “But then I just grabbed him by the shoulders and picked him up, and we hugged each other. ... It felt to me like a father hugging his son. And as I was hugging him it was like, ‘Dude, what did you do? You should have known better’ type thing, right? It felt like I was hugging my boy and my heart broke for him, and I know his heart was broken, too.” He even handed him his cellphone number in case Mr. Sidhu ever needed it.

The Thomases haven’t spoken to Mr. Sidhu since. But when his lawyer, Mr. Greene, asked them to submit a letter to help fight deportation, neither hesitated.

Mr. Thomas calls deportation “the easy way out” for the nation – its politicians and the trucking industry. In fact he often imagines taking the stage with Mr. Sidhu – the two fighting together for safer roads and stricter rules for truck drivers. 

Mandatory training for commercial drivers, for example, was not in place in the province at the time of the crash.

“I’d like to get in front of some decision-makers and have him lay out how ridiculously easy it was for him to get behind that truck, and then for me to kind of take over the conversation and say, ‘This is the result of that decision.’”

The couple know that they are on a journey different from that of many other “angel families,” as they call themselves. They can hardly explain it, except that they have a deep conviction that it is Evan himself guiding them, and that the freeing nature of forgiveness, for them, must mean they are on the right path, says Ms. Thomas.

It’s enabled them to put all of their energy into their son’s legacy.

“Part of why we forgive is because we can hear him telling us that this is the right thing to do,” she says. “I think the hardest part for me is five years later, I don’t want people to forget how great my kid was.”

But forgiveness is an unwelcome conversation among many in the group – and no place more so than in Humboldt.

On a frigid night last November, locals gather in the noisy brightness of the Elgar Petersen Arena to see the Broncos face off against the Notre Dame Hounds. Most of the Broncos come from elsewhere – as is the case on rosters of junior teams across western Canada, full of aspiring university or professional players. 

Each season the players become part of the fabric of this 6,000-strong community, billeted in family homes, working at the local Boston Pizza and supermarket, and the youngest players attending the local high school. They help shovel snow, organize floor hockey for community members with disabilities, and walk shelter dogs weekly.

The tragedy remains front and center here. At the entrance to the ice, banners with the names of the victims hang from the pillars. The team jerseys were redesigned with the word “Believe” on the sleeve – a nod to late coach Darcy Haugan’s motto that he hung on a yellow kick plate in the locker room before the 2018 playoffs (a banner that then-assistant coach Chris Beaudry took to the hospital when the boys were recovering, sending it home only when the last player was released 11 months afterward).

Like the 2022-2023 team, the community focuses on moving forward because the subject of Mr. Sidhu is divisive, says Humboldt Mayor Michael Behiel. 

“We don’t have as many of those discussions in public because they’re such controversial subjects. Everybody has an opinion, and it goes both ways. It ends up creating more controversy and more hard feelings than it’s resolving,” he says. “So it’s more important that we focus on healing.”

And many have put their efforts toward just that – advocating awareness about organ donations or for stricter rules for roadways and the trucking industry. When another tragedy befell Saskatchewan last year in a nearby Indigenous community – 11 people were killed in a knife rampage just 75 miles north – two of the mothers who lost sons in the bus crash quickly mobilized, delivering donated paper products, meats, and vegetables out of people’s gardens. 

Broncos survivor Kaleb Dahlgren wrote the book “Crossroads: My Story of Tragedy and Resilience as a Humboldt Bronco,” a national bestseller and tale of resilience that he has taken to stages across Canada. He also founded an advocacy organization called Dahlgren’s Diabeauties for children diagnosed with diabetes, as he was. He had to give up dreams of playing competitive ice hockey – he can’t even jog across a street to make a walk light anymore – but he says he never asks himself “why.” 

That’s not to say it’s easy – he talks daily with teammates from the Broncos who haven’t recovered from brain injuries. And he carefully avoids the subject of “forgiveness” because it’s too hard on some families. 

“It took me a while to accept and understand that nobody heals the same way and that’s OK – that it’s completely OK to heal your own way and there’s no right or wrong way,” Mr. Dahlgren says.

The value of forgiveness is often considered crucial to moving forward – a belief as old as the Bible that took particular hold in public discourse during the 20th century. 

But it can sometimes compound grief.

In Humboldt, under the media spotlight, it almost felt like a tool of coercion to some parents. Many refused interview requests by the Monitor, particularly on the subject of forgiveness, which they say paints Mr. Sidhu as the victim and themselves somehow as the ones at fault.

“Not all the parents were against forgiveness. But not all the parents were on board either,” says the Rev. Joseph Salihu, the priest at the Roman Catholic parish of St. Augustine’s in Humboldt at the time of the crash. “And it was difficult for them. They were not prepared, and no one should place a value judgment on that.”   

The expectation of forgiving is not always applied equitably, says Dr. MacLachlan, the philosophy professor.

“We are uncomfortable with the idea of an unforgiving victim, because it’s almost like there’s something wrong or problematic or a sort of failure to be self-actualized in remaining angry,” says Dr. MacLachlan. “There’s much to admire about forgiveness. There can be something really important in refusals to forgive.” 

It gets even more complicated when multiple families are involved, says Everett Worthington, a professor of psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University. 

He says forgiveness is just one way that those grieving can reduce what he labels the “injustice gap,” but it’s not the only way. That gap can be reduced with justice, divine justice, forbearance, and acceptance, too.

“Forgiveness is a choice that we can make, and is only one of the ways that we can deal with this lingering sense of injustice,” he says. “What I always say to people is not everybody has to forgive, and that takes a lot of the morality out of it ... because people feel very resentful if you suggest that they have to forgive. They may not want to forgive.”

He adds, “We shouldn’t expect them to be in the same place.”  

Those speaking out against Mr. Sidhu’s deportation say they worry about the pain it causes others. Mr. Beaudry, the assistant coach who was behind the bus in his own car when the crash happened and continues to work to overcome trauma, says that he faced Mr. Sidhu at his sentencing. They hugged each other. “And then he broke down, and him and I just hugged. And his wife came in, and hugged us, and we just held each other. And it was like I knew when I let go of him. He was going to jail. ... I was going back to my mind that was still angry and in pain and stuff. But when we were holding each other, everything felt safe.”

He says he knows these words might directly anger some families, but the stakes of the deportation are too high to keep silent, he says: “I don’t want to see them in pain. It’s never my intention. But I cannot not say what’s real for me. I’m not going to keep my voice quiet.”

Ms. Haugan, whose two boys were just 9 and 12 when they lost their father, remembers feeling plenty of rage. Her first victim impact statement was essentially an angry rant. But then, sitting at her kitchen table, she put her pen down midsentence.

Guided by faith, the values she and coach Darcy Haugan instilled in their household, and by her sons whom she didn’t want burdened by anger, she committed to forgiveness. “It was like this huge weight was lifted off me, like I didn’t have to find a reason, I didn’t have to find someone to blame.”

At first forgiveness was a daily choice: “For a while, I had to kind of think about it consciously. And I had to say it every day: ‘I’m not going to be angry. I’m not going to go down that road.’”

Eventually she understood she wanted to distinguish between the commitment she made to forgive and putting it into action. That’s why she’s offered, in whatever way she can, to help Ms. Mann and Mr. Sidhu find a happy future – in Canada.

“It’s easy to say that you forgive him. But it’s maybe a little bit harder to actually, genuinely want good for him and want the best for him and to be able to live that out,” she says. 

“My personal opinion is that deporting them does no good. What purpose does it serve? It doesn’t serve a purpose. Like Darcy’s gone. We’re trying to live our lives the best we can. And that’s what I want for them, too.”