By Wendy Lamond
Fans of the Amazing Race Canada may recognize Tyler Smith as being the winner of season nine with Kat Kastner, his girlfriend at the time and now fiancé.
The game takes strength, dedication and resilience as teams complete challenges and make their way across the country to different pit stops ending up with one winning team. What fans may not know about Smith is his strength and resilience was acquired long before being on the race, and stems from the worst day of his life.
Smith was one of the 13 survivors of the Humboldt Bronco bus crash on April 6, 2018, near Armley, Sask. when a semi-trailer truck ran a stop sign and hit the bus. Thanks to the Ontario Ministry of Education’s Mental Health Strategy Support and the OPP’s Crime-School Safety Grants, Smith visited with students at St. Marys DCVI March 5 to share his story.
Since the accident, Smith has spoken at more than 200 schools about mental health, grief, trauma and PTSD. He is the founding member of Not Alone Co., providing positive messages to help those most vulnerable and in need of support with how to deal with their emotions.
Smith shared with the students that after the accident, he suffered in silence when it came to his mental health. He does not remember that day and is not sure if one day his brain will wake up and bring it all back. He has come a long way since then, learning how to deal with his grief and the importance of leaning on friends and family. He never saw himself as a public speaker, but by sharing his story, the 16 members of the Humboldt Broncos hockey team and staff who died that day are never forgotten. He also believes if he can help at least one person with their mental health and help them to view things in a different light, then his traumatic experience is worth it.
The three things that have changed most for Smith in the last seven years are connection, conversation and perspective.
“If you have good connections, you will have deep, meaningful conversations that will shift your perspective,” Smith said. I want you to embrace the good in your life, but I also want you to embrace the bad. I want you to embrace that change.”.
From the accident, Smith suffered many injuries including a stroke, a punctured lung, two broken ribs, a broken shoulder blade and a broken collarbone that led to severe nerve damage in his left arm. He also had six inches of his small intestine removed. Even with all of that happening, he still knows to this day it could have been worse.
When he woke up in his hospital room, big names in hockey like Connor McDavid, Don Cherry and Don MacLean were in his room and, as confusion set in, he had no idea what was going on.
One lesson Smith shared with the group was the importance of memorizing at least one phone number and to know it by heart. One never knows when they are going to need it and have to relay it to someone in the medical field.
In the days that followed his accident, Smith had to watch the funerals of his friends on the television from his hospital room. As time went on, the only way he could deal with his grief was by deflecting. He was constantly on his phone and did anything possible not to think about it. It was when he was at the 2018 NHL awards in front of his mentors when he broke down during an award presentation to his late coach’s wife. This happened again when he returned to Humboldt for a banner presentation in honour of all the lives lost. The crying was helpful to Smith, and he let the students know it is okay to feel their emotions. It was staggering the amount of support the survivors and Humboldt community received from across the country. Many signed up as organ donors, gave blood, left hockey sticks on their porch, left flowers, plaques and signed books of condolences.
Smith said 40 per cent of kids feel like they don’t belong. This is staggering and he hopes by sharing his courageous story about grief and mental health that it will encourage some bravery amongst the younger generation, and help them understand they are not alone.
In the Amazing Race, when things got hard and he wanted to give up, Smith said the encouragement of Kastner and the strong belief that his fellow teammates were watching down from above, urging him on, was what he needed to continue and was what led them to win.
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