On Friday April 6, people across Canada were heartbroken to find out about a late night bus crash which took the life of 16 people and left 13 more injured. Here are some tools which are consolidating support for the families and community in Saskatchewan:

1. Arbor Memorial’s locations in Prince Albert, Regina and Saskatoon are collecting messages of condolence for the victims, which will be printed into 30 books and given to the team and the 29 victims’ families.

2. Right after the crash Sylvie Kellington, a resident of Humboldt Saskatchewan, started a GoFundMe page to support the families impacted by this crash and the hockey community.

There are also actions like #putyourstickout, wearing hockey jerseys to show support, vigils and other actions to show that we are mourning this loss.  It is beautiful to see the outpouring of support.  While there is nothing that can replace the loss suffered by these families, it is good to know that people across Canada, and indeed the world, care.  

As we look at this outpouring, most organizers would ask “how do we bring this attention to communities which need our support but have not grabbed national attention.” There have been countless heartbreaks which have passed unnoticed by the nation. If you read through this article by Mathieu M-Perron, you will find a list of relatively unnoticed issues and his list is just a beginning.  

This toolkit is meant to amplify your work and share the tools you create in order to harness the support of the rest of Canada.  Send an email to [email protected] explaining what you are doing and sharing links to reports, petitions or other tools you have developed. Obviously, you as organizers do the heavy lifting but we can play in small part in amplifying your work. It is an incremental fight to try to make sure that all grieving families and communities are one day as supported or, at the very least, seen.