Tom Reardon is accustomed to raising money for others.
He certainly never expected others would do the same for him.
But an explosion and fire Feb. 6 that left him badly burned and homeless pushed friends and neighbours into action. They took an annual charity hockey game he initiated and turned the proceeds over to him.
The 26th Battle of the Little Big Puck, along with auctions, a social and raffle, held Feb. 22 in Maple Creek, Sask., raised about $24,000 for Reardon.
“I’m just absolutely amazed by it all,” Reardon said from his mother’s home in Medicine Hat, Alta., where he is staying while his burns are treated. “I’m partly embarrassed and yet truly grateful.”
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Reardon was lighting the propane furnace in his home at Meyronne, Sask., when it exploded and set him on fire. He suffered burns to 20 percent of his body mainly to his head and hands. It could have been worse had he not managed to get out of his basement and into a small snow bank.
He wasn’t able to attend the fundraising events. Eighty-five percent of his burns are second-degree open wounds and infection is a risk.
Aside from his injuries, Reardon lost an entire house full of rodeo memorabilia and his tack. He is well-known in rodeo circles as a historian and writer.
As a pasture rider in the provincial community pasture program since the 1980s, he had taken his custom-built tack into the house for safekeeping.
He lost photographs and arrowheads and other irreplaceable items in the house where he had lived for four years. Yet, when presented with the idea of receiving the money, he was surprised.
“I thought surely to God there’s somebody else who needs it more than I do,” he said.
Joe Braniff co-ordinated the fundraising.
“You have to understand what Tom Reardon means to this community,” he said.
Reardon spearheaded the original hockey game in 1979 after a mid-July conversation in a bar with some other cowboys. Two of them were First Nations members.
They decided participants in the Battle of the Little Big Puck had to have either a rodeo membership or a treaty card. The teams representing the cowboys and the Nekaneet First Nation each played the third period in traditional dress.
The teams split the first two games and raised a bit of money for the local hospital. The game was on hiatus for a few years and then revived to become an annual event to raise money for the nursing home, Telemiracle, the skating rink, the local rodeo committee and other causes.
When Reardon did some research a few years ago, he couldn’t even find the score for most of the games.
He said some people find the idea of a “cowboys and Indians” game racist but it is exactly the opposite.
Braniff said everyone has respect for the event, although both teams want to win. They also have respect for Reardon and his involvement in the hockey game and as chair of Maple Creek’s pro rodeo, to be held in May.
“I’ll be there and have a visit with absolutely everyone,” Reardon said.
