Editor’s note: After The Narwhal published a piece about Alberta wildland firefighters forming a peer-support network, we received an email from Matthew Brackenreed. “I’ve been meaning to send this out for a while now — the recent article gave me the courage,” Matthew wrote. Below is what he shared with us.

I spent nearly two decades serving as an Alberta wildland firefighter, responding to some of the most challenging and dangerous situations our province faces.

I am writing because I believe there is an important conversation that needs to happen about occupational post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), cumulative trauma and the realities many firefighters and first responders face after their careers are affected by psychological injuries.

For years, I did what many firefighters do. I showed up for work, responded to emergencies and pushed through difficult experiences without fully understanding the impact they were having on me. Like many in emergency services, I believed I could handle it. Looking back, I now realize that the effects of repeated exposure to trauma were building for years.

Yet despite responding to emergencies and protecting communities from wildfire, provincial wildland firefighters do not receive all of the same legal recognition and presumptive protections afforded to some other first responders in Alberta. It is a distinction I never expected would become so important to me until I became injured myself.

While wildland firefighters can still have occupational psychological injury claims accepted, we do not fall under the same statutory definition of “first responder” used to provide certain presumptive workers’ compensation protections to municipal firefighters, police officers and paramedics. For someone already struggling with the effects of a psychological injury, that distinction can add another layer of difficulty to an already challenging process.

Today, I live with severe PTSD resulting from prolonged exposure to traumatic events throughout my career fighting fires.

PTSD is often associated with a single catastrophic event, but that is not always how it develops. For many firefighters and first responders, trauma can accumulate over years of service. The effects may remain hidden for a long time before eventually becoming overwhelming.

The injury is often invisible to others.

People may see someone who looks physically healthy while not realizing they are struggling with anxiety, panic, nightmares, hypervigilance, memory difficulties, emotional exhaustion and significant disruptions to daily life. Relationships, careers, finances and personal identity can all be affected.

One of the challenges I have encountered is that many systems were originally designed around physical injuries or isolated incidents. Occupational PTSD, especially when caused by years of cumulative exposure, does not always fit neatly into those models.

My concern extends beyond my own situation.

I worry about the many firefighters, first responders and workers who may be experiencing similar struggles but are hesitant to come forward. The culture of emergency services often encourages resilience and perseverance, which are important qualities, but those same qualities can sometimes cause people to delay seeking help until their symptoms become severe.

By the time many firefighters finally ask for support, they may already be facing significant challenges in their personal and professional lives.

I am grateful for the health care professionals, family members and supporters who have helped me through this journey. Their support has been essential. At the same time, my experience has shown me how important it is that we continue improving awareness, education and support for occupational PTSD.

As wildfire seasons grow longer and more demanding, the mental health impacts on those who respond to these emergencies deserve greater attention. Protecting communities is vital, but we must also ensure that the people who dedicate their lives to that work are not forgotten when they are injured.

I am sharing my story because I believe occupational PTSD deserves greater public understanding and because I hope it encourages meaningful discussion about how we support those who serve in high-trauma professions.

What is almost as devastating as the injury itself is the lack of meaningful support available once a worker’s life begins to fall apart. On paper, there are programs and systems meant to help, but in reality I have found myself and my family trapped in a maze of delays, bureaucracy and uncertainty while my health has continued to decline. 

We have spent countless hours fighting for answers, advocating for basic needs and trying to navigate a system that often feels more focused on process than people. When someone is suffering from a psychological workplace injury, they shouldn’t have to fight another battle just to access support. No family should be left feeling isolated, exhausted and without a clear path forward while trying to survive the consequences of an injury sustained in service to their community.

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The Bradley Creek wildfire ignited on reserve lands at nk̓maplqs (the head of Okanagan Lake) on Friday, July 31. More than 30 band members have lost their homes, while around 200 homes and structures belonging to non-band members are also gone. kelsie, who was evacuated and has not yet returned home, shared her reflections in the midst of the evacuation. This story was co-published with IndigiNews.

Saturday, Aug. 1, started like any other day.

I woke up early with my partner. We sat on the front deck, coffee in hand, watching the morning unfold. We talked about the day ahead, my son Skookamina’s graduation party and my grandmother’s 83rd birthday. There was meat to smoke, cakes to bake, tables to set. The day felt like a blessing because we had so much to celebrate.

I checked my phone. A small fire had started the night before, nothing unusual for this time of year. Our Okanagan Indian Band fire department is amazing. I figured it’d be out by noon, so I kept moving.

I seasoned the meat, I lit the smoker, and I sang while I cooked, the way I always do in my kitchen.

But I kept checking my phone, as we had family that was traveling in for the event.

Mid-morning, we decided as a family to move the party from the beach in town to my uncle’s house in the community. Some of our family had community obligations they’d need to tend to if the fire got out of control. We wanted to be close.

Everyone was there. My grandmother sat in her chair, full of joy as each person arrived. Skookamina was surrounded by his cousins, and the sound of our family filled the air, aunties laughing loud, making outlandish jokes, the familiar banter of people who know each other’s rhythms.

For one hour, we were just a family celebrating, living our lives the way we always do.

Then, one by one, family members started picking up their phones.

Some stood up. They’d been put on evacuation alert. They had to go home, pack, and wait. I watched them go, first one, then another, then a handful until the room thinned. The laughter quieted and my grandmother sat in her chair, watching her grandchildren leave, one by one. She didn’t say much, she didn’t need to, she knew this dance, she’d done it before.

Eventually, I had to leave too.

We packed the rest of the food. We hugged. We said “see you soon,” and we meant it. Then everyone went home. My father had to evacuate with only minutes to spare. I raced to my dad’s house and we helped him pack what we could as the fire grew at an alarming speed toward him. He was evacuated two minutes from my house, so I knew I was next.

By the time I got home, our family friends were already there, packing for me. They’d already been evacuated without time to take anything with them. Now they were saving us while their own home burned behind them.

One minute I was laughing with my son. The next minute I was grabbing what I could carry. I was not thinking about taking what was valuable, I only grabbed what was irreplaceable. Old ceremony blankets, medicine necklace materials, baskets, photographs, my computers with language recordings and the eagle feather my son gave me. Everything else I left.

On my way out, I looked back, and the smoke was climbing toward us. Flames moved over the ridge toward my house, and the sky was turning black. I felt an overwhelming need to just get out, this fire had taken on a life of its own. I could tell this fire doesn’t know our names the way our cultural burns do. It was consuming everything equally, the sacred and the ordinary, the medicine plants and the invasive brush. 

But, even as I watched the fire consume everything in its path, I realized this is exactly what my people prepared me for. This is why they taught me about grief.

They taught me that grief is not a destination, it’s like a creek — you don’t stop it. You discipline yourself to sit beside it, make kin with it, let it flow, and let it carry away what it needs to carry.

They taught me that grief has a shape. They taught me that grief is so special to us that it has its own ceremony, its own songs, its own prayers for specific losses. I was always told, “Name your grief, give it boundaries. Tell it, I see you. You are welcome here. But you will not take me with you.”

They taught me that the deeper you love, the deeper you grieve. That grief and joy are not enemies. That you can weep and laugh in the same breath. That you can feed people even when you can’t eat yourself.

My people taught me that a community that grieves together stays together. To suppress grief is to go against our own syilx intellect, against the very way we are made to commune with the world. Feeling is not weakness, we are to honour that it is our Way of Knowing. It is the thread that connects us to what we love, to cut it is to sever ourselves from the land, from each other, from the truth of what we carry.

My people taught me that grief is not something to outrun. It is something to sit beside, to name, to sing, to let drip into each other’s minds, drop by drop, until a shared truth emerges. The image of that process is enowkinwixw, the syilx word for a gentle way of coming to understanding together. The word itself conjures liquid being absorbed drop by drop through the mind, filling in gaps, softening resistance, building a common picture. The process is about finding clarity, where each person is offering what they know, no matter how small, until the whole circle sees more clearly. That is how we hold the loss in the centre of the circle and face it together.

So now I think about that morning. Coffee on the deck, with my partner beside me. The sun rising over the valley. I didn’t know it would be the last ordinary morning for a while. I didn’t know I would spend the next few days learning what my people have always known, that you can lose everything and still have everything that matters.

Okanagan Indian Band Chief naspəpʕásəs Dan Wilson confirmed as of Aug. 5, more than 30 band members have lost their homes to the fire, and numerous other structures are also gone. Some families have been contacted directly, and others are still waiting, still hoping, still not knowing if their homes are standing. 

He told IndigiNews, “Our loss is measured in the family histories that have been lost — especially the Elders who have lost their homes. The old pictures, the memorabilia; the Salish baskets.”

As I write this, it’s Aug. 6. I wash dishes in someone else’s sink. I cook without my grandmother’s tools. Today, I am learning to grieve the way my people taught me, by sitting with it, and letting it flow like the little creek that runs beside my house.

Tomorrow I will wake up and make coffee. I will stand on whatever deck I am given and be grateful for it. I will look out at whatever sky is above me and I will remember that I am grateful to be sqilx’w in these times, I am blessed to be syilx, and I am proud to be from the Okanagan Indian Band, proud to have called it home my entire life. Now, I have both the responsibility and the profound honour to continue dreaming, as we have been directed by our Creator to do, and that does not end when the smoke clears.

 If you are a member of the Okanagan Indian Band and are struggling, help is available through the OKIB Mental Health and Wellness team at 250-540-7416. Resources are also available from First Nations Health Authority and Interior Health.

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I am standing in my kitchen in a grey cotton robe, holding my baby — 12 weeks old today — swaying back and forth as he sleeps on my chest. I am acutely aware that my heart is right under his head, that he can hear my heartbeat, a source of comfort and regulation. No matter how calm I look on the outside, no matter how slowly I sway, he can probably still feel it beating quickly. Too quickly.

I feel anxious looking at the eerie scene out the window. Our entire home has an orange glow. I noticed it as soon as I opened my eyes this morning, the light already wrong before I was fully awake. It’s familiar now — other parts of the country, other parts of the world, have lived this many more times than Toronto has. But even here, we know the scene: orange skies, a bright sun hazed over in the distance, headlines that Toronto has the worst air quality in the world, because fires are raging in northern Ontario. On Tuesday, it felt like 47 degrees outside. A couple of weeks ago, the same. We’ve been under multiple heat domes and heat advisories this summer.

When I found out I’d be giving birth in the spring, I was excited. I imagined parks, walks with friends; a summer spent outdoors. And yet over the past many weeks, it has often been too hot or too smoky to leave home — and I am aware, even as I say that, of how much safety our heat pump and well-insulated walls buy us. Not everyone gets to wait this out indoors. Right now, tenants across this city are stuck in apartments with no cooling at all, no way to open a window and feel relief, because our governments keep letting rent climb while doing nothing to guarantee a liveable indoor temperature. Toronto already legislates a minimum indoor temperature for winter. There is still no equivalent maximum for summer, even as doctors warn heat is causing excess deaths among seniors and that any delay in a bylaw will cost lives.  

A friend told me that her kids didn’t even question the N95 mask she wore to water the garden this week. They’ve grown up with summers like this, and to them it barely registers as strange. Yet when I called my dad to warn him about the air quality, he said, “Oh, that’s why it looks weird outside” — he had noticed the sky but hadn’t connected it to smoke. “But there aren’t fires here,” he said, as if that settled it. He described seeing ash on his car but wasn’t concerned because he doesn’t feel it’s affecting him. But the particles in this smoke are small enough to slip past the body’s defences, working their way deep into the lungs and bloodstream, where they can inflame and damage organs whether or not you ever feel short of breath. The distance between my friend’s kids’ understanding of this and how little urgency my dad feels is a reminder of how quickly the baseline is shifting, and how differently each generation is being asked to carry our reality.

Last night, when my baby was struggling for a few hours, I kept my nervous system calm, telling myself: let’s just sway a little, rock a little, walk a bit around the house. Sure, we can’t go outside, but there’s so much we can do in here. We can bounce. We can listen to music — his favourite song at the moment, Pump Up the Jam, discovered by my partner during a particularly stressful diaper change. It was manageable because a friend was over. It was also manageable because I knew it would end. My calm could regulate his nervous system, which he still borrows from mine, because I knew it would end. He eventually calmed down and went to sleep.

This morning, I changed him, fed him, played with him on the floor for a while — that orange cast still hanging over everything, a low hum in another room, there, but not yet something I could afford to feel. It was only once I’d gotten him down for his first nap, once I was standing in the kitchen swaying with him against my chest, that it actually landed: what that smoke actually is, and where it’s coming from. Here in Toronto, many of us can close the windows, turn on the air purifier, wait it out. 

In Namaygoosisagagun First Nation, there was no waiting it out — residents had only minutes to reach boats as fire jumped the rail line behind their homes, evacuating without the support of emergency services. And this is the summer our government chose to scrap emissions targets, support a new oilsands pipeline with public money and accelerate LNG projects — decisions that will likely make summers like this one more frequent, more severe and harder to survive for the people who have the least power to protect themselves. I am standing here trying to calm my own anxiety so my baby can keep sleeping, aware that my heartbeat alone can unsettle him, while people who hold so much more power than I do are making choices that will shape the rest of his life.

Baby Z, I don’t know yet how I am supposed to show you the beauty of the world, and everything there is left to save, everything there is to fight for, without burdening you with the grief of everything we have already lost, and all the things I experienced that you never will. Someday you’ll need to know all of it — who made these choices, and why, and what it cost — and I hope you’ll be someone who fights back. But for now, my job is to keep swaying, to keep the room calm, to let you sleep a little longer before any of this is yours to carry. 

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