Sadly, a look back at sports in Canada in 2018 begins at a wind-swept, icy intersection in the eastern part of the prairie province of Saskatchewan.
On April 6, a northbound passenger bus carrying members of the Humboldt Broncos junior hockey team collided with a westbound semi-trailer truck near the town of Armley.
Sixteen people, including 10 young junior hockey players, were killed and thirteen others were injured.
The crash sent shock waves across a country where hockey is king, voted the Canadian Press news story of the year.
The driver of the truck Jaskirat Singh Sidu, faces 29 separate charges and will be back in court in early January.
The accident came just weeks after a Winter Olympics during which Canadian athletes did themselves proud and what in any normal year would have been the year’s top sports story.
Canada athletes placed third in total medals, winning a best-ever 29, including 11 golds at the PyeongChang Games in South Korea.
That topped the 26 medals Canadian athletes won at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games.
In the absence of NHL players, the Canadian men managed to win bronze in hockey while the women took silver, losing to their long-time arch rivals, the USA.
So good were the Canadian athletes that moguls skier Mikaël Kingsbury was voted the 78th winner of the Lou Marsh Trophy as Canada’s Athlete of the Year.
Other finalists included figure skater Kaetlyn Osmond, golfer Brooke Henderson, who this week won her second straight Canadian Press female athlete of the year award and third in the last four, Edmonton Oilers captain Connor McDavid and curler Kaitlyn Lawes,
Kingsbury doubled up this week by winning CP’s Lionel Conacher Award as Canada’s top male athlete in 2018, finishing well ahead of McDavid/
Other higher profile Canadian athletes competing in individual sports did not fare particularly well in their chosen discliplines.
Tennis players Milos Raonic and Denis Shapovalov had their moments, but those remained pretty far spaced.
Meanwhile, Eugenie Bouchard, once a Wimbledon finalist, saw her stock, game and ranking continue to fall.
It wasn’t a whole lot better for professional franchises in Canada.
No Canadian-based team has won the Stanley Cup since the 1993 Montreal Canadiens and the drought continued, though the Winnipeg Jets made it to the final four. in the playoffs.
The National Basketball Association Toronto Raptors teased Canadian basketball fans by winning 59 regular-season games but folded their collective tent when they came up against Lebron James and The Cleveland Cavaliers in the playoffs.
We’ll see what happens this year now that James has left the Eastern Converence for the bright lights of Los Angeles.
One thing appears certain, this year’s Raptors with the addition of Kawhi Leonard, are a step up in class.
In baseball, the Toronto Blue Jays were horrendous and are now entering rebuild mode. The less said about the Jays the better at this point.
But let’s finish off with a couple of good stories.
The best team in the Canadian Football League, the Calgary Stampeders, won the Grey Cup, deservedly so after playing terrific football most of the year.
The Stamps’ season likely provided a bit of solace for Calgary sports fans who saw they dream of a 2026 Winter Olympic bid voted down in a referendum.
So the Olympics will not be returning to Calgary for a while.
Ah, speaking of returns.
Baseball fans in Montreal got a major shot in their collective emotional arm in December, when ownership of the Tampa Bay Rays appeared anxious to pull up stakes,.
That could–could being the operative word here–open the door to a return to baseball in Montreal, absent since the Expos left for Washington DC in 2005.
But we’ll save that one for 2019.
Bruce Dowbiggin is, among other things, a long-time broadcaster, journalist and author (his latest is entitled “Cap in Hand”), who hosts the not the public broadcaster website.
He joins us every year from his home in Calgary for a look back and a look forward.
Here is our conversation.
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