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Not all fire is bad.
That’s something northwest B.C. reporter Matt Simmons has been exploring: how fire interacts with communities, wildlife and landscapes, and how Indigenous cultural burns can be part of the solution after decades of colonial fire suppression practices.
But then, on Mother’s Day weekend, headlines proclaimed a frightening and early start to the wildfire season. A fire near Fort Nelson First Nation in British Columbia had grown in size, eventually forcing well over 4,000 residents to evacuate. On Sunday morning, Matt’s phone lit up with a text from the nation’s Chief Sharleen Gale, who wanted to alert as many people as possible: “Need support with this while I go door-to-door getting the rest of my community to evacuate.”
Matt knew he needed to jump on the latest developments.
“The plan was, and still is, to bring stories to light about solutions employed early in the wildfire season — partnerships between the BC Wildfire Service and First Nations that employ cultural burning practices,” Matt told me. “But it’s really unsettling to have to drop that for a bit as fires approach the edge of the town.”
It’s not just northeast B.C. that’s on fire this early. Matt and Prairies reporter Drew Anderson took an extensive look at the wildfires currently spreading across Western Canada.
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