Winnipeg students 'overwhelmed' by help from southern Sask. communities after charter bus collides with semi

A group of Winnipeg students have been overwhelmedby support from two southeastern Saskatchewan communities after a crash involving one of their charter buses and a semi on Wednesday evening, which injured the bus driver.

Three charter buses carrying 136 students and nine staff from Maples Collegiate were heading back to Winnipeg from a music festival in Edmonton when one of the buses collided with the truck on the Trans-Canada Highway east of Sintaluta around 8 p.m. Wednesday, Maples Collegiate principal Scott Shier told CBC News.

Travel was treacherous on many southeastern Saskatchewan highways Wednesday night, after a heavy spring storm hit that area and southwestern Manitoba.

The bus crashed into the back of the semi-trailer, injuring the bus driver. Shier said the students were shaken but unharmed.

Photos posted to a Facebook group Wednesday night showed a bus with a badly damaged front and a damaged semi trailer.

Seven Oaks School Division superintendent Brian O'Leary told CBC News that parents of the students were notified of the incident by phone Wednesday night and a written statement was sent out on Thursday morning.

School staff and the bus company decided to wait for icy and snowy conditions to clear before returning back to Winnipeg, he said.

In the meantime, students have been staying at an elementary school and town hall in the nearby Saskatchewan communities of Wolseley and Indian Head, which have both extended a generous hospitality to the students involved in the crash, said Shier.

The group plans to head back to Winnipeg on Friday morning, he said, but Shier has heard from staff that the students have been "making lemonade out of lemons" from the situation.

"Our students were in classrooms with the elementary kids doing short stories and writing workshops with the students. They did a choir performance and a band performance for the entire school and just kind of integrated themselves into the community," he said.

"Unfortunately, the way it had to happen wasn't the way we would write it up, but it's something they're never going to forget either."

Maples Collegiate will plan a way to give back to the two Saskatchewan communities once they return to Winnipeg, he said.

"They've overwhelmed us with their help and support of our students and we totally appreciate that. I don't know what we would have done without them."