When the heat becomes unbearable inside Nicole Darlaston’s Brampton apartment, her son would get into the shower — and stay there.

“He would spend hours in there just trying to be comfortable,” Darlaston says.

Darlaston has lived for about 14 years in a high-rise near Bramalea City Centre. The building has central cooling, she says, but it is often turned on late in the season and does little to make her apartment comfortable. On a good day, her unit might stay around 23 C. More often, she says, it reaches 28 C. She has recorded temperatures as high as 35 C, with high humidity.

Darlaston and her son both have asthma. She says the heat has aggravated their symptoms and reshaped their summers. She saves vacation time so she can leave the apartment during the hottest weeks, sometimes staying with family in northern Ontario.

Cooking adds more heat. Cleaning becomes exhausting. Even opening a window offers little relief when the building has been warming for days, she says.

“It just continues to build and build and build.”

Her son is 20 now, but Darlaston says he has been dealing with the heat since he was about six. And it didn’t always end when he left home.

“He had that problem in his schools as well,” she says.

For children who live and learn in hot buildings, there can be little opportunity for their bodies to cool down. Researchers have warned the effects can accumulate when children spend a hot day at school only to return to a home without adequate cooling.

As students return to classrooms across Peel Region this month and summer weather remains longer than it has in previous years, that raises a basic question: where does a child go when neither school nor home offers reliable relief from the heat?

Inside Peel’s overheated classrooms

Jill Promoli has seen that problem as both a parent and a Peel District School Board trustee representing wards six and 11 in Mississauga, which includes Mavis-Erindale, Creditview, Erindale, Meadowvale Village and Streetsville.

On hot days, she says, some of the classrooms she visits become unbearable, including her son’s.

One of those visits was to her son’s elementary-school portable classroom in Mississauga, which became too hot to use in May 2025, she says. Students from two portables were moved into the school library, the same room meant to serve as a cooling station for everyone else.

“When you are using the cooling station for two classrooms, then that cooling station becomes unavailable for the rest of the school. But if the rest of the school is also hot, then there’s no more space available to give kids that break either,” Promoli says.

Then came two days of extreme heat in June 2025. Promoli says she brought a thermometer with her as she visited the schools she represents, asking principals to show her their hottest classrooms.

“Some of the classrooms were getting up to 39 C, and that’s not manageable,” she says.

Her son still had to attend school for his Grade 5 graduation practice. When Promoli arrived to pick him up, the blinds were closed and the lights were off.

“It was still so hot in the cooling centre that the kids were literally lying on the floor with the lights off, and they were just doing nothing because it was so hot in there. This is not functional,” she says.

Promoli says she heard from other families whose children left school early, stayed home the following day or sought medical care after feeling sick during the heat.

Peel District School Board did not provide the requested breakdown of how many schools or classrooms are air conditioned, or respond to detailed questions from The Narwhal. On its website, the board says every school has a designated cooling station, while some older buildings do not have air conditioning at all. Hot weather measures can include opening windows and doors, using fans, closing blinds, turning off lights and other heat-producing equipment, rotating students and staff through cooler areas and reducing strenuous or outdoor activities.

Heat isn’t only uncomfortable

Children are among the people Peel Public Health considers particularly vulnerable to extreme heat.

Alexa Caturay, the region’s medical officer of health, says young bodies do not regulate temperature in the same way adult bodies do. Chronic respiratory and heart conditions can make it harder to cope with heat as well.

As exposure increases, what begins as discomfort and thirst can progress to dehydration, faintness, a rapid heartbeat and difficulty breathing. In more serious cases, people can become dehydrated enough to require hospital treatment, Caturay says.

Health Canada similarly warns that children with asthma, heart or kidney problems, disabilities, developmental disorders or who take certain medications can face greater risks in extreme heat. Warning signs can include dizziness, nausea, headache, changes in behaviour, rapid breathing or heartbeat and extreme thirst. Confusion, unconsciousness or a high body temperature accompanied by a loss of sweating can signal heat stroke — a medical emergency.

The effect can show up in the classroom in many ways.

A recent U.S. report from a network of school-climate researchers convened with the American Psychological Association found younger children acclimatize to heat more slowly and may be less able to recognize when they need water or should reduce physical activity. It also points to evidence connecting poorly cooled and ventilated schools with increased absences and poorer learning outcomes.

Studies cited in that report found classroom temperatures around 20 C to 23 C were associated with better cognitive performance, while hotter conditions reduced the speed and accuracy of cognitive tasks. Other research found students performed worse on standardized tests on hotter days, with air conditioning reducing some of that effect.

The Peel school board’s plan for heat is tied up in Ontario’s Education Ministry

What Promoli saw that June in her son’s classroom eventually pushed her to take the issue to the Peel District School Board.

Her original motion asked the board to work with Peel Public Health to establish an upper temperature threshold for extreme heat days. It pointed to the board’s existing response to extreme cold and noted that many classrooms in the Peel region lacked air conditioning or other ways to substantially lower the temperature.

Promoli says the goal was to know when a hot classroom crossed from uncomfortable to unsafe.

“If we are hitting a point where it’s no longer safe to be operating, we have to know what those numbers look like and what we should be doing to properly meet the needs of our staff and students,” she says.

In August 2025, they passed an amended motion directing the Peel District School Board to work with Peel Public Health on a plan for extreme heat days, but without the proposed temperature threshold. In general, the health unit’s role is to issue heat alerts to municipalities, hospitals, schools and school boards, which can then activate their own response plans.

Promoli says she has not been aware of updates on that work since the Ministry of Education took control of the board earlier this year. The Ontario ministries of Education and Health did not respond to requests for comment.

Trying to stay cool at home

Tanya Burkart hears the same dilemma repeatedly from renters.

Burkart, chair of the Brampton Centre chapter of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), says members report hot apartments, older inefficient buildings and landlords charging additional fees for air conditioning.

She pointed, in particular, to older rental buildings and says tenants can face another problem when upgrades finally happen: landlords may seek above-guideline rent increases to recover the cost of major work.

The association’s “beat the heat” campaign is pushing municipalities to require landlords to keep rental buildings at no more than 26 C and to help low-income tenants obtain air conditioners. It has also called for cooling rooms inside buildings, free transit to cooling locations on extreme heat days and more transparent tracking of heat-related illness.

At the provincial level, the group wants greater support for electricity costs and broader access to air conditioning.

Without those supports, Burkart says some renters are “being forced to either choose between air conditioning or paying the rent or putting food on the table.”

Yet, heat is already considered one of the top five climate-related health hazards affecting Peel residents, according to the region. The Public Health Agency of Canada says the largely urban region is particularly vulnerable to the urban heat island effect, with that risk shaped by factors such as income, housing, age and outdoor work.

Income can shape how much choice a family has when temperatures climb.

The U.S. schools report specifically notes lower-income families face extra hurdles including lacking air conditioning, nearby cooling spaces or flexible schedules that allow children to avoid the hottest parts of the day.

In Peel, the help available depends partly on where someone lives and what kind of housing they are in.

Unlike Toronto, which provides portable air conditioners to low-income pregnant residents and families with infants, the Peel Region does not provide direct financial assistance to buy air conditioners.

Peel Housing Corporation, which has 75 sites, operates cooling rooms during extreme heat in buildings that do not have central air conditioning and provides tenants with heat-safety information.

The City of Brampton says it has no current plan to provide free air conditioners to low-income residents either. During heat events, it directs residents toward public facilities such as its nine library branches and 27 community centres as well as its pools and splash pads.

In Mississauga, about 57 per cent of low-income children live in areas where additional investment in green space would improve equity, according to Canadian Urban Environmental Health Research Consortium data cited in a 2025 Canadian Environmental Law Association report.

At the July 29 council meeting, Mississauga council approved a motion brought forward by Ward 7 Coun. Dipika Damerla, which asked staff to look at more ways to protect residents of purpose-built rental apartments during hot weather. 

Mississauga council has directed staff to review its current adequate temperature by-law and consider stronger cooling protections for renters, including access to cooling devices, building retrofits and other heat-mitigation measures. Staff are also looking at requiring apartment buildings to provide accessible common cooling spaces kept at or below 26 C, with recommendations expected before next summer.

Currently, the city’s by-law requires landlords who provide air conditioning to maintain indoor temperatures at or below 26 C but buildings without air conditioning are not subject to a maximum indoor temperature requirement.

“We have to recognize that climate patterns have changed in southern GTA at least, and our summers are hotter than ever before. Traditionally, we’ve built our homes and our condos and our apartment buildings around cold weather, because hot weather was rare and that was reasonable,” Damerla says. 

“But I think it’s changed now, and so it’s time for us to look at what are the other cooling options that we can provide for in purpose-built rentals.”

When does hot become too hot in schools?

Ontario does not currently set a maximum indoor temperature for schools.

The Education Act does require principals to pay attention to the “health and comfort” of students, including school temperature and ventilation. But without a maximum standard or equipment capable of cooling a building, advocates argue there is little clarity about when a classroom has become too hot to safely use.

The shortage of broader cooling infrastructure is not small. Ontario’s school repair backlog was estimated at $16.8 billion in 2022, even as the province committed billions toward school construction, repair and renewal.

The Canadian Environmental Law Association has recommended a 26 C maximum temperature for schools, more mechanical cooling and changes to the building code so new schools and major retrofits are designed with hotter conditions in mind. The group says 26 C should be treated as a starting point and revisited as more research emerges, specifically about children’s heat exposure.

There may be relief on the horizon. Ontario’s NDP put forward Bill 123, the Fighting Extreme Heat in Schools Act, which received first reading on May 26, 2026, and was ordered for second reading. If passed, it would require school buildings and school buses to remain at or below 26 C while students and workers are present.

School boards would also have to create annual heat-mitigation strategies and extreme-temperature emergency plans. The education minister would review those plans for gaps and inequities at least once every three years. Ontario’s legislature will return in late October and will likely continue debating this bill.

Rajpreet Sahota is a community and policy reporting fellow. Her position is funded in part by the Canadian Race Relations Foundation. As per The Narwhal’s editorial independence policy, the foundation has no editorial input.

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When the temperature climbs in Toronto’s Oakwood Village neighbourhood, the bottom floor of a former school-turned-community-centre becomes a hive of activity.

Split between a child care centre and community space, it’s where people gather to play music, garden, eat together or simply sit and talk. That includes members of the Oakwood Vaughan Community Organization, which is made up of residents who live in the area, many of whom are seniors, who invited The Narwhal to sit down with them for a gathering in late August.

The seniors describe building their days around the temperature. Some avoid cooking full meals and use toaster ovens instead. They wear cotton and linen, even switching their bedsheets to lighter fabrics. They seek out areas with more trees, stay indoors on particularly hot days and sometimes get on the subway simply because it is air conditioned.

Sharon Wyatt doesn’t have air conditioning in her two-storey house. During extended stretches of heat, the upper floor can become almost unusable.

“It’s like an Easy Bake Oven in very, very hot extended periods,” she says.

Instead, Wyatt moves downstairs and uses fans. 

Barbara Geiger has developed an even more precise routine: “I look at my weather app at least 20 times a day in the summer,” she says.

She checks a digital thermometer inside her bungalow nearly as often, deciding when to open the windows and when to close them before the outdoor temperature rises. When several hot days pile up and the house stops cooling overnight, she heads to the basement, where she has a guest bedroom and craft room. The temperature dictates where she sleeps, where she works and where she spends her day.

But not everyone has another floor to retreat to.

Angelo, another member of the group who asked to be identified only by his first name, says many people in the area live in apartments. The City of Toronto is working on a bylaw to limit maximum indoor temperatures in rentals, but it’s still a ways away from being enacted. 

And the scale of the problem goes well beyond a handful of buildings. City staff estimate about 54 per cent of private-market rental units and 67 per cent of non-market rental units in Toronto do not have landlord-provided air conditioning.

Angelo recalled one member whose building posted a notice saying residents who wanted air conditioning would have to pay an additional $400 a year. After residents contacted their local councillor, he says, the amount dropped to $200.

The tenant still didn’t install one. Angelo says they feared doing anything that could affect their original lease. “It’s not just the cost of the air conditioning, it’s the fear about being unhoused,” he says.

For older adults without a cool place to retreat to, the consequences can go far beyond discomfort — with extreme weather events across the country showing us just how far.

A deadly warning from B.C.

In June 2021, British Columbia showed how deadly the combination of age, health, isolation and inadequate cooling can become. Over one week, a heat dome settled over the Pacific Northwest, pushing temperatures above 40 C in many parts of the province.

B.C.’s chief coroner later identified 619 heat-related deaths. Ninety-eight per cent occurred indoors. Sixty-seven per cent of those who died were 70 or older, while more than half lived alone.

The deaths demonstrated something experts and advocates in Toronto are now trying to prepare for: the danger isn’t determined by the temperature outside alone, but by what happens when someone closes their front door.

And Toronto is expected to face more dangerously hot days.

The city projects the number of days each year with temperatures above 30 C could rise from an average of 10 days between 1971 and 2000 to between 36 and 44 days by the 2050s. By the 2080s, Toronto could experience between 46 and 78 days above 30 C annually, depending on future greenhouse gas emissions.

Kimber-lee Wargalla, the centre’s community outreach coordinator, says another problem in Ontario is knowing the full toll extreme heat is currently taking. The Advocacy Centre for the Elderly has pushed for better tracking of heat-related deaths.

“Without those numbers, how do you prove how big the issue is, other than the anecdotal conversations with the people who are suffering,” Wargalla says. 

Extreme heat can quickly move from uncomfortable to dangerous for an older adult, Stephanie Hatzifilalithis, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health, says. Part of the reason is physiological.

As people age, the body’s ability to regulate its internal temperature can decline, Hatzifilalithis, whose work focuses on extreme heat’s impact on older adults, says. People may not sweat as effectively, blood flow to the skin can change and the body’s ability to recognize thirst and respond to heat may become weaker, she explains.

That means the same temperature can put greater strain on an older body than a younger one, causing dehydration, dizziness, fainting and heat stroke, Hatzifilalithis says. It can also worsen existing cardiovascular, respiratory and kidney problems.

A Toronto community thinking about heat

Oakwood Village sits just south of Eglinton Avenue West in midtown Toronto, next to Little Jamaica. It is a culturally diverse neighbourhood anchored by residential streets, independent businesses and community organizations that have long helped shape daily life in the area.

The city is now studying how the broader Little Jamaica and Oakwood-Vaughan area should grow. Residents consulted as part of the city’s draft planning framework have asked for more trees, public benches and seating, additional green space, greener schoolyards and better community access to school buildings outside school hours.

Eglinton Avenue West, a busy commercial corridor, runs through the Oakwood-Vaughan and Little Jamaica area. The street is lined with shops, restaurants and services, where long stretches of pavement and relatively sparse tree cover leave little relief from the heat. The Canadian Urban Environmental Health Research Consortium’s data shows trees cover less than one-fifth of the total area.

This creates what is known as the urban heat island effect.

For the seniors at Vaughan Road Academy, an air-conditioned school building, a patch of shade or a tree-lined street aren’t simply neighbourhood amenities. They can become part of an improved cooling network.

‘They’re stuck in these small boxes cooking’

For the Advocacy Centre for the Elderly, a legal clinic working with seniors in particular, those stories point to a much larger problem.

Wargalla says the people most likely to fall through the cracks include low-income seniors, newcomers living alone, renters, people in subsidized or seniors housing and those without family or community members checking in on them.

The Advocacy Centre for the Elderly was one of the groups pushing for a maximum indoor temperature standard that would require landlords to provide cooling when temperatures reach 26 C or higher. 

While the City of Toronto’s bylaw is at least a year away, the Ontario government hasn’t committed to introducing one at all. The Ontario Ministry for Seniors and Accessibility did not respond to requests for comment by publication time.

Wargalla says people with mobility limitations or chronic health conditions may not be able to walk to a cooling space in extreme temperatures. “It makes people suffer in silence, and unfortunately, with extreme heat, the suffering in silence can mean death,” Wargalla says. “They’re stuck in these small boxes, cooking.”

Even someone who can access a cooling space eventually has to leave because they aren’t open 24 hours a day.

“Cooling rooms are not a substitute for safe housing,” Wargalla says. “People need cooling in their own homes, and vulnerable seniors cannot spend entire heat waves sitting in common areas or on public transit or at the library.”

Zamani Ra, executive director of CEED Canada, works on climate issues in social housing communities and sees some of those challenges where she works. For residents on higher floors, coming downstairs can itself be cumbersome. And when they arrive, she says, there may be little to do other than sit in the room. Often, the coolest area is the lobby, she says, but there is limited space for people to gather. So residents improvise.

“Some people actually get on the bus and go to the mall,” Ra says. Others go grocery shopping or visit family members with air conditioning. “But for the most part, people stay in place,” she says.

Ra says programs also need to recognize that receiving an air conditioner may not be enough. Some older adults may not be comfortable navigating online applications. Some don’t have family members who can help install or replace a unit. Even the size and type of windows in an apartment can determine what cooling equipment is usable. She says governments should consider providing quality air conditioners, professional installation and potentially vouchers that allow seniors or their families to choose a unit appropriate for their home.

The consequences of failing to address extreme heat have already been seen elsewhere in Canada.

“This is not a marginal problem,” Wargalla says. “This is a housing system problem.”

When heat becomes an emergency — financial and otherwise

Sarah Sanford, a researcher at the Wellesley Institute, recently led a study examining provincial emergency benefits in Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta and Quebec.

Residents eligible for the Ontario Works or Ontario Disability Support Program can receive up to $400 every four years to purchase a cooling device. Other programs in the province can provide electricity credits, emergency help with utility arrears or energy-saving upgrades for qualifying households.

But the study found emergency benefit programs were often fragmented, narrowly targeted or difficult to access. 

“Staying safe can mean paying for air conditioning. It can mean paying for higher electricity bills, transportation to a cool place, food, medical expenses and then any other costs that might be associated with an unanticipated climate-related emergency,” Sanford says. “A senior who’s living on a low income might have to make really difficult choices about whether or not they cool their space or if they’re able to afford to purchase other necessities.”

The City of Toronto has started expanding its response, piloting an Air Conditioner Assistance Program in 2025. The city distributed close to 500 free portable units to low-income seniors with health-related cooling needs living in multi-unit residential buildings.

In 2026, the program expanded to approximately 1,500 portable air conditioners and broadened eligibility to include pregnant people and families with infants, while continuing to serve eligible seniors.

Council voted in May this year to make the program permanent, increasing funding from $200,000 in 2025 to $1 million to expand the program as part of the 2026 budget. This funding covers all costs for the program including program administration, delivery and installation.

Another new effort in west Toronto is trying to identify vulnerable residents before a heat emergency happens.

The West Toronto Ontario Health Team, a network of 44 health and social service agencies, launched a voluntary heat wave registry this summer. Health team director Kashtin Fitzsimons says the idea traces back to the wildfire season of 2023. 

“We realized that we didn’t have a coordinated response as a health system for how to respond to wildfire smoke,” Fitzsimons says. “The more we thought about it, we didn’t have much of one on the topic of extreme heat either.”

That fall, the health team began asking people across west Toronto what the health system could do to help communities respond to climate change. Fitzsimons says Paris, France, helped inspire the registry through a similar, voluntary system that contacts residents during periods of extreme heat and other dangerous weather. 

In west Toronto, people who register by themselves, or through a community group or primary care provider, receive a call from a volunteer when the city issues an extreme heat or air quality warning. Volunteers ask how they are doing, provide information about nearby cooling locations, answer heat safety questions and can connect people with health services. There are no restrictions on who can register, though organizations serving older adults, people living with chronic illness and others more vulnerable to extreme heat are encouraged to share the service.

Because the registry launched in 2026, full data on its impact has not yet been analyzed, but Fitzsimons says the calls are having a great impact and would like to see the approach grow beyond individual neighbourhood programs.

“The dream is to see a coordinated city response where no matter where you live in the city, you know what you can do,” he says. 

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Beena Ruparelia does not need to check a thermometer to know when heat has settled into her northwest Toronto home.

She can see it on her skin.

“You see me sweating,” she says while waving a handheld fan and placing a standing fan right beside her. The temperature inside the rental home she shares with her husband, Peter, near Martin Grove and Albion roads, reaches as high as 40 C during heat waves, including this past July.

The couple does not have central air conditioning. Beena says their home traps heat throughout the day.

“So even having a shower, coming out, you’re literally sweating,” she says. “It’s unbearable.”

At night, the heat rises to the second floor, making it difficult to sleep. Peter, who recently turned 65, says there’s no escape.

“The way the sun is directed in, the morning sun comes right into our bedroom,” he says.

The couple use portable air conditioners overnight, but the units cool only part of the home and increase their electricity bill by about $20 to $30 a month during the summer, Beena says.

When the heat becomes stifling, they retreat to the semi-finished basement.

“We go right down,” Beena says. “That’s the only other place to go.”

The temperature also dictates what they eat. Turning on the stove would add even more heat, so Beena says she relies on sandwiches, microwaveable food and other meals that require little cooking.

The Ruparelias’ experience sits at the centre of a growing gap between provincial and municipal housing rules and the changing climate.

The Ruparelias’ home was built in the 1960s. Like much of Toronto’s rental housing, it was built for surviving winter, when keeping heat in was a greater concern than keeping it out. But as the city gets hotter, low-income renters are among those most vulnerable to extreme heat. 

Renters also have no legal right to a maximum indoor temperature. The City of Toronto will likely take at least another year to institute a maximum indoor temperature by-law, while the Ontario government hasn’t committed to introducing one at all. 

As Toronto experiences longer and more frequent periods of extreme heat, the debate is shifting from whether cooling in rental units is necessary to who should be responsible for providing it — and who should bear the cost.

“Is it on working-class people or is it, in this case, on landlords?” Bruno Dobrusin, co-chair of the Toronto Tenant Union, asks. He has become all too familiar with renters’ stories of frustration and, in some cases, desperation.

“I feel like the main change in the last few years has been mostly the scale: how many more people are going through this and how much more often we hear of tenants just fighting to have some form of cooling in their apartments,” Dobrusin says.

Unlike Mississauga to the west, Toronto does not have a maximum indoor temperature by-law for rental units. Dobrusin says tenants have reported being denied permission to install an air conditioner or being told they must pay an additional $50 to $80 a month to operate one, he says, mostly due to the increased electricity needed to run them.

“Another $50 a month is quite a bit on your budget,” he says.

He says residents often go to Tim Hortons or TTC stations as cooling spaces because they are widely available, require little or no spending, stay open late and allow people to remain for long periods without being disturbed. But they can’t sleep there. 

The lack of cooling cannot be separated from Toronto’s broader housing and affordability crises, he says.

As rents rise, more people are sharing homes. During extreme heat, multigenerational and crowded households can face an additional burden as several people share a space designed for just a few occupants.

Dobrusin says working-class tenants may also spend their days in poorly ventilated or inadequately cooled workplaces before returning to apartments that offer no relief.

“What people are going through are multiple crises that are exacerbated by the climate crisis,” he says.

Toronto was built for a different climate

The city projects the number of days each year with temperatures above 30 C could rise from an average of 10 days between 1971 and 2000 to between 36 and 44 days by the 2050s. By the 2080s, Toronto could experience between 46 and 78 days above 30 C annually, depending on future greenhouse gas emissions.

Climate change is accelerated by greenhouse gases concentrating in the atmosphere from many sources, but primarily from the burning of fossil fuels like oil and gas.

Health Canada data shows 66.3 per cent of the heat-related deaths recorded in Canada since 1981 occurred after 2016. More than one-third occurred in 2021, the year of the Western Canada heat dome.

Extreme heat can cause dehydration, fainting, heat rash and heat stroke. It can also worsen pre-existing health conditions of the heart and kidneys, as well as respiratory diseases. 

Children, seniors and people with existing health conditions can be more vulnerable to extreme temperatures.

And outdoor temperature alone does not determine who is most at risk.

Pavement, concrete and buildings absorb and radiate heat, while neighbourhoods with fewer trees and less vegetation lack natural sources of shade and cooling. This creates what is known as the urban heat island effect.

Karen Smith, an associate professor at the University of Toronto’s department of physical and environmental sciences, helped develop what’s known as a heat vulnerability index for Toronto.

Smith says heat vulnerability considers residents’ sensitivity to high temperatures and their capacity to adapt. That includes whether someone can afford an air conditioner or travel to a cooling space. A resident’s age, health, income and housing conditions can also determine whether a hot day becomes dangerous. 

What the index shows is that the areas with the highest heat vulnerability are also among the city’s lowest-income neighbourhoods, and have high concentrations of immigrants.

Overall, she says, city blocks highly concentrated with apartment towers are more vulnerable to heat than the rest of the city. And while a public cooling space may offer temporary relief, it does not necessarily help a tenant who returns to a hot apartment at night.

Toronto Public Health wrote in an email to The Narwhal that it is continuing to work with the University of Toronto to update the heat vulnerability index with additional indicators and more recent data, but otherwise referred questions to the City of Toronto. 

Why Rexdale faces overlapping risks

The Toronto and Region Conservation Authority has identified Rexdale, the area where Beena and Peter Ruparelia live, as a community facing overlapping environmental and socio-economic vulnerabilities.

A 2023 resilience strategy found apartments account for about 61 per cent of the neighbourhood’s housing and most of its housing stock was built before 1980. Jennifer Taves, senior manager of sustainable communities with the conservation authority, says the community also has older single-family homes that have not been retrofitted for central air conditioning. 

The strategy flagged heat stress, limited tree canopy in some areas, food insecurity, transportation barriers and flood risk as additional concerns. It also found that Rexdale has a higher proportion of children aged 14 and younger than Toronto as a whole.

Because of these risks, the conservation authority decided to prioritize Rexdale for climate adaptation strategies, creating a Sustainable Neighbourhood Action Program with help from community stakeholders.

In 2024, residents in three towers received 47 climate-resiliency kits containing things like instant cold packs and temporary window shades, as well as portable air purifiers and purifying plants for days the sky is filled with wildfire smoke. Taves says there are no current plans to expand that program, but some bigger projects involve gardening, tree planting and engagement efforts. 

“We know that heavily shaded neighbourhoods are much cooler than neighbourhoods that don’t have that shade canopy. So investing in that natural infrastructure or [shade] infrastructure is a very important part of preparing for these effects,” Taves says. The official term is shelterbelt infrastructure, which is when a line of trees and shrubs are planted in one or more rows to help lower surface temperatures like at Rowntree Mills Park and areas along Kipling Avenue.

What is the province doing about heat vulnerability

This past July, a three-year-old amendment to Ontario’s Residential Tenancies Act finally kicked in: now, tenants have the explicit right to install and use a window or portable air conditioner when the landlord does not provide cooling.

The change addresses one problem Beena and Peter say they faced for years: being told they were not supposed to use portable units.

The tenant must notify the landlord in writing. The air conditioner must be installed safely and must not damage the property. If electricity is included in the rent, the landlord can raise it to cover higher bills — but rent hikes can’t exceed the actual electricity cost or stay in place when the tenant removes the unit or stops using it for the season.

But even when a charge accurately reflects electricity use, it may remain unaffordable for a senior or another tenant living on a fixed income, according to Dania Majid, a staff lawyer and director of the tenant duty counsel program at the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario. 

Majid says her organization has heard concerns about lump-sum charges, administrative fees and installation requirements associated with air conditioners. Because the provincial provisions are new, many disputes have not yet been considered by the Landlord and Tenant Board.

She’s one of many tenant advocates that want Toronto to pass a legal maximum indoor temperature of 26 C that applies to all rental units, similar to the legislated minimum during colder months.

“We wouldn’t do that to them in the winter,” Majid says. “So why are we doing this to them in the summer?”

But the Federation of Rental-housing Providers of Ontario says a legislated maximum indoor temperature would raise significant logistical and financial questions.

The federation agrees tenants need protection from extreme heat, Marielle Hossack, the federation’s director of policy and regulatory affairs, says. That’s why it supported the  air-conditioner changes to the Residential Tenants Act, giving tenants the flexibility to buy their own. Even so, some older buildings may not have the electrical capacity to power an air conditioner in every apartment at the same time. 

Honouring a maximum temperature could require electrical upgrades, new mechanical systems and other major retrofits, she says. And that work would require time, planning, skilled labour and significant investment.

“Requiring landlords or housing providers to absorb the electricity cost is not a sustainable solution where electricity is included in rent,” she says.

Governments should instead provide targeted energy or income assistance to low-income or medically vulnerable tenants, Hossack says.

The Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing did not respond to questions by publication time.

The long, long road to a maximum temperature for Toronto renters 

Toronto does not currently have a maximum temperature that applies to all rental units.

When a landlord already provides air conditioning, it must be operated from June 1 to Sept. 30 and keep the unit at no more than 26 C. But if no air conditioner is installed when the tenant moves in, no maximum temperature applies.

As of June 1, apartment buildings that don’t offer in-unit cooling must keep at least one existing indoor amenity space at or below 26 C during the summer. This only applies to buildings that are three or more storeys and 10 or more units and does not apply if construction is needed to meet the requirement.

Toronto city council seems to be moving toward a broader maximum indoor temperature by-law, but slowly. In June, the city manager was instructed by council to report back by June 2027 on findings and key considerations for a by-law and implementation plan.

The city has also asked Ontario to establish a province-wide maximum temperature of 26 C and to prevent landlords from increasing the rent above the normal annual limit if the city does pass a by-law. Right now, landlords can hike rent if it’s meant to comply with municipal by-laws.

In an email to The Narwhal, a City of Toronto spokesperson wrote equity is central to the city’s Heat Relief Strategy.

“We continue to explore new ways to strengthen the strategy and help residents stay safe during periods of extreme heat,” it says. 

The city offers cooling spaces at libraries, community centres and civic centres, along with more than 700 park drinking fountains and mobile water trailers. Residents also have access to pools, splash pads, wading pools and supervised beaches, with some pools extending hours during heat warnings.

Toronto is also expanding programs intended to provide and install up to 2,400 air conditioners for low-income and vulnerable residents.

For Beena and Peter, organizing with other tenants has become part of that solution.

After years of feeling that she and her husband were dealing with the conditions in their home alone, they joined the Toronto Tenant Union. She says she wants governments to hear directly from the people living through extreme indoor heat.

“The first thing is that they need to come and speak to the landlords,” she says. “They need to fight on our behalf.”

Rajpreet Sahota is a community and policy reporting fellow. Her position is generously funded in part by the Canadian Race Relations Foundation. As per The Narwhal’s editorial independence policy, the foundation has no editorial input.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

When temperatures drop, people who rent their homes in B.C. have a right to stay warm. Heating is considered an essential service under the province’s Residential Tenancy Act, something landlords must supply.

But when extreme heat hits, it’s a different story. As temperatures soared last month, smashing record highs across B.C., landlords in most parts of the province held on to the power to prohibit their tenants from installing and using air conditioners.

“It’s in my lease agreement,” Nadine Nakagawa, a city councillor in New Westminster, says. 

Summary

• B.C. doesn’t have a provincial law addressing maximum temperatures in rental units.
• In recent years, a number of B.C. municipalities have voted to change their bylaws to protect tenants from extreme heat.
• Local politicians and advocates say better rebates and other support for renters’ ‘right to cool’ must come from the provincial government.

Safety concerns are often used to justify air conditioning bans in rental units, especially in older buildings where electrical systems might struggle in high-demand situations. But that’s not always the case; the building Nakagawa lives in was built in 2019.

Nakagawa knows some of her neighbours flout the air conditioner prohibition, running the risk of eviction when temperatures rise. It’s a risk she argues they shouldn’t have to take.

“Individual tenants being brave really can’t be the answer in a housing market that does make people extremely precarious.”

Cooling devices — air conditioners or, increasingly, heat pumps — aren’t just a matter of comfort. As climate change increases the likelihood of heat waves and hotter summers, access to cool spaces is becoming a matter of life and death. Only 45 per cent of B.C. households report having an air conditioner — well below the national rate of 68 per cent, according to Statistics Canada. And while more than three-quarters of homeowners have access to an air conditioner, just over half of tenants said the same. 

In late June 2021, the Pacific Northwest heat dome made the lack of cooling devices a deadly reality for many British Columbians for the first time. Over one sweltering week, temperatures in many parts of the province approached 40 C. The heat caused the deaths of 619 people, 98 per cent of whom died indoors. Many of them were seniors without access to adequate cooling in their homes, according to B.C.’s chief coroner. 

Many also lived in low-income neighbourhoods where apartment buildings tend to be older. This often means rent is more affordable, but comes with leaky windows, poor ventilation, dated electrical systems and an absence of cooling devices — characteristics that leave their residents vulnerable to extreme weather.

In the years since the heat dome, the B.C. government has taken some steps to protect people from extreme heat, including funding for air conditioning and ventilation in seniors’ homes and long-term care facilities and access to free air conditioners for a small number of vulnerable people. A 2024 update to the BC Building Code requires every unit in new residential buildings to have one room where the temperature does not exceed 26 C, even during summer heat. 

But most B.C. tenants don’t live in new buildings and the province has yet to address their “right to cool,” as policies focused on protecting people from extreme heat are sometimes called. The lack of provincial action has pushed some councillors, including Nakagawa, to tackle the issue at the municipal level. 

“We have known for a number of years that we are going to be having hotter and hotter summers,” she says. “In the next heat dome, we cannot say that we did not know and didn’t expect it. That’s why we have to take action right now.”

Who pays to keep B.C. renters cool?

So far, six B.C. municipalities, including New Westminster, have voted to change their bylaws to bar landlords from banning the use of cooling devices in rented homes. As of this month, that list includes Victoria. Emily Rogers, director of operations with the Together Against Poverty Society, calls the decision “a move in the right direction.”

“It is long overdue and necessary to prevent heat-related injury and death,” she says. “I’ve had this public conversation every year since 2021.”

The society helps renters living in poverty navigate B.C.’s Residential Tenancy Act. When it comes to making the right to cool official, Rogers argues that even though the act currently lacks specific temperature requirements around extreme heat, it already implies rental homes should not get dangerously hot.

“It’s already the landlord’s responsibility to provide safe housing conditions and in this new era of climate change, that includes the right to cooling,” Rogers says.

Many landlords in B.C. are well aware “that cooling is a huge issue,” David Hutniak, CEO of LandlordBC, says.

Our concern is that some of the solutions suggested in these bylaws are ignoring the complexity of the problem,” he told The Narwhal. The organization is working with its members to ensure they understand the new bylaws popping up in municipalities.

“Right now, there’s a fair bit of confusion and uncertainty on the part of owners,” he says.

Hutniak points out that some buildings will require significant electrical upgrades to handle the power demand. Those may be difficult to do quickly and require large investments by building owners, he adds. That’s where planning becomes key. LandlordBC runs the Rental Apartment Retrofit Accelerator, a program that helps landlords plan for energy-efficiency upgrades and access rebates and other financial support from governments.

“We’re chipping away at it here as best we can,” Hutniak says. “It’s a complex issue, but I think over time here we can have some reasonable solutions that will make sense for everybody.”

Provincial support is limited. Free portable air conditioners are only available to people enrolled in home care or mental health and substance use programs, and even then require a recommendation letter from the local health authority. 

In 2025, B.C. broadened its heat pump rebates to include renters and people living in strata buildings. But installing a heat pump as a tenant is complicated and costly, which can be a deterrent. 

Interested renters have to get permission from their landlord. Even landlords that agree might not be willing to pay costs not covered by the rebate — and B.C. allows landlords to pass along the costs of significant upgrades and repairs to their tenants via rent increases. Yet, according to B.C.’s energy ministry, “Since the heat pump is a permanent fixture installed in the building, it becomes part of the property and stays with the unit even if the tenant moves out.” 

Victoria city councillor Susan Kim lives in a rental apartment that will have to lift its ban on cooling devices after the city amended its bylaws. But after reviewing the heat pump rebate program, she decided it wasn’t worth approaching her landlord about it. “You’re subsidizing the landlord by building their equity as well as putting your own sweat equity and labour into it,” Kim says.

Landlords who opt to invest in heat pumps or air conditioners can apply to the Residential Tenancy Branch to raise rents beyond the annual allowable increase. In recent decisions, the branch has allowed the full costs to be recouped. For one multi-unit building, the $145,000 cost of heat pumps led to an additional $41 in monthly rent per unit. In that case, the landlord said the “heat-related death of an elderly resident during a heat wave” spurred the installation.

In another case, the $5,775 cost of an air conditioner for a single unit led to an extra $62 per month.

Rogers points out that income assistance in B.C. is just $1,060 per month to cover all living costs. Even purchasing a $200 air conditioner isn’t feasible for these tenants, she says. 

“Most folks that I speak with are telling their kids that they had enough to eat through the day because they don’t want their kid to feel bad about them not eating dinner with the family, so that the kids can have enough to eat that night.”

Not every method of addressing extreme heat in rental buildings is expensive 

New Westminster adopted a bylaw prohibiting bans on cooling devices in 2025. This spring, the city pushed its right to cool practices further. Now all landlords — not just those with new buildings — must meet the BC Building Code standard that one room in every unit stay below 26 C overnight.

The bylaw sprang from a motion Nakagawa co-sponsored with the aim of putting the onus for maintaining safe temperatures “on the building owner, on the landlord … rather than the tenant.”

The new rule doesn’t dictate how landlords address the issue. Shades and awnings, window glazing, ventilation improvements or even painting the roof white could help bring a building into compliance. So-called passive cooling measures can help reduce or slow indoor temperature gains and have the added benefit of requiring little to no electricity, cutting costs for tenants and working even during power outages.

Those kinds of upgrades, Nakagawa says, could yield benefits year-round. 

“If you have better insulation, it might help it be warmer in the winter as well.”

So far, the new bylaw hasn’t resulted in much conflict with landlords, New Westminster Mayor Patrick Johnstone says. 

“I actually expected there would be more pushback; I’ve been quite surprised.”

It’s up to tenants to alert the city about non-compliance, Johnstone says, and the city’s focus is on working with landlords to make sure their rental units meet the new temperature standard, rather than handing out fines.

“I think by being proactive and being a partner with landlords, we can actually bring people into compliance,” he says.

Nagakawa worries the new bylaw won’t address the problem of pricey appliances or retrofit costs being passed on to tenants. She thinks the province should get rid of that option, at least for upgrades aimed at preventing dangerous indoor temperatures.

“At the end of the day, I also have to live with the idea that I don’t want more tenants in my municipality to die in the next heat dome.”

The right to cool needs to be addressed at the provincial level in B.C. 

Everyone The Narwhal spoke with agreed the issue needs to be dealt with by the B.C. government. Provincial legislation could protect tenants from rent increases related to costs landlords incur to keep buildings cool, while providing support for landlords that need it. 

“If the province is using its own powers to put this in place, they can also use their own powers to intervene and make it doable,” Kim says. 

One approach could be to alter the Residential Tenancy Act to make adequate cooling an essential service, just like heating. The Ministry of Housing and Municipal Affairs did not answer when asked whether it is considering altering the act to protect tenants from extreme heat. A question about whether the ministry is considering preventing landlords from passing along the installation costs also went unanswered.

In lieu of answering The Narwhal’s specific questions, the ministry sent a statement, saying it is in the process of developing additional building code requirements “to address climate change adaptation and mitigation in existing buildings and result in new standards by 2030.”

Hutniak is hopeful that the issue is getting needed attention, but sees downsides to the “piecemeal approach” currently happening. “Because of the scale and scope of the challenge, it will require senior levels of government to be more involved, strategically and in terms of some financial support,” he says. “This is just not something that can get solved through municipalities passing bylaws.”

Until other levels of government are ready to take action, Nakagawa says municipalities can be proactive about understanding tenant needs and local vulnerabilities. “There’s a whole bunch of steps they could take, if they’re not feeling quite ready to bring in the same bylaw that we’ve brought,” she says. For example, the Victoria capital regional district has created a map to help residents understand where heat risks are highest. 

New Westminster has been collecting data on heat vulnerability among renters, part of a move to beef up its tenant protections in recent years, including creating an anti-eviction bylaw. It’s been using annual fire inspections as a chance to gather data about which buildings have “heat challenges,” Johnstone says, after which emergency services and community organizations then helped “identify vulnerable people who were in those buildings.”

But the mayor agrees that the issue is bigger than New Westminster. “We can’t have, across the province, 160 municipalities all with different rules making it up as they go along,” Johnstone says. 

“Ultimately, this is a healthcare concern. Ultimately, this is a housing concern and ultimately, this should be regulated at the provincial level.”

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This summer, Ontarians were warned to stay inside as humidex values climbed to 48 C in parts of the province and wildfire smoke made for some of the worst air quality in the world. But many migrant farm workers were told to keep working.

“I have had more than one heat stroke because there is no shade,” Alicia Anntamara, a migrant worker who is currently off due to an injury, told The Narwhal at a rally in front of Ontario’s Ministry of Labour. “You can’t take water in the field. You have no bathroom in the field.”

And the heat did not necessarily end when the workday was over, she says, with no indoor spaces available to cool down. Anntamara is her middle name, as she asked to keep her surname private. 

Several speakers at the demonstration on July 24 says migrant workers continued labouring in fields, greenhouses, wineries and packing facilities while other residents were advised to limit their exposure to outdoor conditions. And they demanded the province fix the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, which they say brings migrant workers to Canada but fails to protect them.

“There’s nothing natural about dying on the job,” Elizabeth Ha, an executive board member with the Ontario Public Service Employees Union and a member of Justice for Migrant Workers, said. 

“There’s nothing natural about collapsing in the fields. There’s nothing natural about working past exhaustion in extreme heat.”

About 50 people gathered for the demonstration, holding signs, lining the sidewalk and chanting, “No more deaths” as they called for stronger workplace protections and access to healthcare, especially during extreme heat.

Justice for Migrant Workers, an all-volunteer collective made up of current and former migrant workers, labour organizers, community activists and scholars, organized the rally.​

The organization says it learned through workers’ friends, co-workers and community allies that at least eight migrant agricultural workers have died across Ontario this summer.

The circumstances surrounding all eight reported deaths have not been independently confirmed, and they have not all been officially classified as workplace fatalities by the provincial Workplace Safety and Insurance Board.

The board told The Narwhal that from Jan. 1, 2026, to July 28, it had received less than five fatality claims involving foreign agricultural workers. The board did not provide a precise number, saying that figures below five cannot be released due to privacy considerations.

Chris Ramsaroop, an organizer with Justice for Migrant Workers and an assistant professor at New College at the University of Toronto, says the group had heard three deaths were connected to transportation incidents. The group also received reports of heart-related deaths and heard concerns about whether one worker received adequate access to healthcare, he says.

During the rally, Ramsaroop says deaths involving heart attacks, strokes and other illnesses should not be examined without considering long hours, extreme heat, chemical exposure, physically demanding labour and the stress associated with precarious immigration status.

Justice for Migrant Workers calling on the province to explain whether working conditions are considered when investigating migrant worker deaths and how heat-related injuries and deaths are tracked.

Ontario’s Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development did not respond to The Narwhal’s requests for comment by publication time.

For the rally organizers, the lack of complete information is part of the problem. They say deaths involving migrant workers can disappear from public view, particularly when workers are sent back to their home countries after becoming sick or injured.

“It’s a government system that promotes production and profit over the lives of migrant workers,” Ramsaroop said.

Working without water or shade

Anntamara says she is learning to walk again and regain the use of her hand after suffering an injury while working in Canada.

She stood in front of the crowd in downtown Toronto to speak for herself and for other workers who she says have been injured, silenced or sent home.

“We are not animals. We are not garbage. We have a name, and we come here with a name. Because you take our name and call us a number, that doesn’t make us less than human,” Anntamara told the crowd.

Anntamara has been coming to Canada from Jamaica as a migrant worker since 2014. She says she was injured in July 2020 after falling more than nine feet while completing a task she had not been hired or trained to perform. She hasn’t been able to work since.

As the primary breadwinner for her family, she says, her inability to work has affected her children and family who live outside Canada and depend on the money she earns here.

Before her injury, she says, a typical working day could involve long hours without reliable access to drinking water, washrooms or shade.

Anntamara says, after the workday, she would return to crowded bunkhouses without air conditioning or fans. Some of the accommodations are similar to shipping containers and became extremely hot in the summer and cold in the winter, she says.

“When it’s hot, it’s very hot to where you see warts on your skin, like water bubbles on the skin. And when it’s cold, you’re freezing, like you’re getting frostbite,” she said.

Some rooms contained up to eight beds, with so little space that workers had to turn sideways to move between them, she says.

She also described working long shifts without overtime pay or regular time off.

“You have to work every day. You have no day off. You have no time off,” she said.

Justice for Migrant Workers says such conditions make extreme heat more dangerous because workers may be unable to cool down or recover after a physically demanding shift.

The Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety says working in hot environments can reduce concentration and a person’s ability to perform skilled or physical tasks. Heat also places additional demands on the heart as the body works to cool itself.

Physically demanding labour generates additional body heat, further increasing the risk for people working in hot conditions.

Temporary foreign worker program empowers employers

According to Statistics Canada, more than 30,000 migrant agricultural workers were employed under Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program in Ontario last year. Workers are hired from dozens of countries, but the majority come from Mexico, Guatemala and Jamaica, thanks to agreements with those governments.

Many migrant agricultural workers enter Canada with employer-specific work permits, meaning they are only authorized to work for one named employer.

The United Nations General Assembly reports that this creates an imbalance of power because leaving an unsafe job can also mean losing employment, housing and, ultimately, the right to stay in Canada. As well, a 2025 research paper in the Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy found their immigration status and dependence on individual employers can make it difficult to exercise rights such as refusing unsafe work, even though agricultural workers are covered by Ontario’s Occupational Health and Safety Act.​

“You’ve got an employer-driven program. Workers are tied to an employer and provincial and federal laws that work in the service of industry [are] at the expense of workers’ lives,” Ramsaroop said.

For years, Justice for Migrant Workers has been calling on the federal government to grant permanent immigration status to workers when they arrive in Canada.

In an email to The Narwhal, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada says the Government of Canada takes the safety of foreign workers seriously and they have the same employment standards, rights and protections under federal law as Canadian citizens and permanent residents. That includes requiring all employers to provide private health insurance except when workers are covered by their provincial or territorial health insurance system. The department also has a tip line and online reporting tool that allows individuals to anonymously report allegations of wrongdoing. As of publication, they had not provided data on the number of complaints received this year.

Employment and Social Development Canada told The Narwhal the mistreatment of temporary foreign workers is unacceptable and it inspects workplaces to ensure temporary foreign workers are protected. The department also funds the Migrant Worker Support Program, which helps workers understand and exercise their rights, access government and community services, and receive support such as healthcare navigation, language assistance, legal aid and emergency services when needed.

The spokesperson says the program is regulated by the federal government but provinces and territories are responsible for the administration and enforcement of these laws.

At the provincial level, Ramsaroop says agricultural workers need greater organizing rights, improved access to healthcare and stronger enforcement of occupational health and safety and employment standards.

Ramsaroop also criticized the absence of specific protections addressing heat stress and other risks in agricultural workplaces.

“There is little, very little, no protection for agricultural workers from pesticides and chemicals,” he said. 

Wendell, a former migrant worker from Trinidad who asked to only share his first name, first came to Canada in 1998. He says extreme heat made physical farm labour more exhausting, but did not necessarily lead employers to slow production.

Wendell worked on different farms, including vegetable operations where he harvested cauliflower and walked long distances through fields.

He says workers could face pressure from their managers to increase their pace when crops or other products needed to be moved quickly.

“When he’s pushing us like that, he doesn’t care if we get injured. We had to take safety for ourselves,” Wendell said.

He says workers understood that failing to satisfy an employer could mean losing future employment and the income their families depended on.

Wendell is no longer part of the farm worker program and has become a migrant worker advocate instead.

“This is how I feel a little more safe, knowing that these people are trying to protect us and have a way out for these officials to understand what we’re going through,” he said.

Rajpreet Sahota is a community and policy reporting fellow. Her position is generously funded in part by the Canadian Race Relations Foundation. As per The Narwhal’s editorial independence policy, the foundation has no editorial input.

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I used to hate cold weather. I spent years dreading the full stretch between September and May. I despised itchy layers, foggy glasses and early sunsets, and had blizzard nightmares year-round, even in August. But this August, as months of extreme heat in southern Ontario finally ease off, it’s the sun I once longed for that has me depressed. 

This summer has been a bummer. All of my family’s regular camping and cottage trips were marked by the warming world. On one, oppressive heat made sleeping impossible. On another, a friend found a tick — an increasingly common pest that can carry disease — on his kid. A fire ban has taken roasted marshmallows off the menu of a third trip, but at least it’s going ahead now that a wildfire in the Kawartha Lakes is under control. As the smoke travelled over to my home in Toronto, I wondered whether a good parent would send their child to the couch instead of an outdoor camp, a question I’ve asked myself before. 

There’s no escaping the fact that my once-favourite season has become a health hazard. I tried to stay grateful navigating it all, given what others are facing. From Vancouver Island, B.C., to Annapolis County, N.S., one community after another faced wildfire evacuations this summer — at least 12,000 households in Manitoba alone. Meanwhile, I still got to swim in three Great Lakes: Huron, Ontario and Erie, the last full of waves that had my kid shrieking with delight. 

Summers in Canada are on track to be even less fun — hotter, smokier, more dangerous — unless we do something about it. I’m grateful that every day, people across Canada and globally are working to turn this nightmare around. Many are dreaming of a world where our great-grandchildren can have summers that feel carefree again, even if today’s kids have to check the lake for toxic blue-green algae before diving in. The sadness that brings is inescapable, but lately I’ve been thinking it’s time to push it aside and tap into anger instead. 

In Juice, novelist Tim Winton focuses his rage on the architects of climate change 

In May, it was already 30 C in Calgary, where Narwhal reporter Drew Anderson lives. As we discussed the inaccuracy of calling any temperature “unseasonable” anymore, Drew mentioned his obsession with the novel Juice, by the Australian author Tim Winton. It’s a futuristic climate dystopia, which I wouldn’t usually read given how much time I already spend staring into that particular abyss. Drew insisted that’s exactly why Juice would be cathartic. 

The book’s narrator has always lived on a sweltering planet, where the only way to survive summer is to stay underground in the dark. Yet Winton’s anti-hero isn’t initially despairing. Like any child, he experiences his life as normal, because it’s all he knows. Then, as a young adult, his worldview shatters. He learns that the world used to be different — greener, bluer, cooler, friendlier — and that fossil fuel barons knowingly destroyed it. 

He also learns their descendants live in hidden luxury, scattered across secret, air-conditioned bunkers in the farthest reaches of the burning planet. As his disbelief turns to fury, he’s offered a chance at revenge. The invite is to join a secretive force that roots out the progeny of those who ruined life for everyone else — and kills them. 

Drew was right. Winton’s fictional assassinations were a satisfying emotional release. The author called the novel an outlet for his “grief and rage” and the nightmare he paints is one I share. In Juice, there are barely any plants or wildlife. There’s barely any society, just individuals and small families eking out survival, their skin scarred from third-degree sunburns. As they march through deserts to find their targets, the vigilantes keep their energy up by chanting the names of the corporations that built fortunes big enough to allow generations to hide from accountability: “Aramco, Gazprom, Exxon!” 

All stifling summer, I’ve been thinking about that laser-sharp focus. Oil and gas executives are not now, and have never been, unaware they are actively victimizing billions of people. The bunkers Winton imagines are not imaginary: those that profit off of human suffering are well aware it pisses people off, so much that alleged CEO assassin Luigi Mangione became a heartthrob outlaw last year. Celebrating death is ugly, but so is purposefully ignoring it. British Columbia saw at least 600 deaths linked to extreme heat in 2021 alone. If we know the cause yet don’t prevent it, that sounds a bit like murder, too. 

Climate action for everyone: start talking about it

As billionaires prepare for a boiling planet, the rest of us have to as well. That starts with acknowledging that global warming is here, now, already stealing our chances to enjoy the natural beauty Canada says it’s so proud of. We have to adapt quickly and fairly. We have to work hard to make it stop.

Time and again, polls show the majority of people in this country want climate action. Yes, there are real differences of opinion about what those actions should be. That means there’s a way for everyone to join in — step one, as atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe says, is to actually start talking to each other about the reality of what we’re all experiencing.

If we spoke our fears out loud, we’d overcome how isolated they make us. We’d also realize there’s a lot of agreement about what to do. For example: most people agree that companies should shell out to clean up their own mess, whether abandoned oil and gas wells on farmlands or all the carbon in the sky. Climate change is expensive enough, so it’s confusing why governments make taxpayers subsidize that cleanup while businesses prioritize multimillion-dollar salaries ahead of desperately needed changes their customers are actively asking for. I have heard enough about fiduciary duties to shareholders — those are pretend, while our moral duty to other human beings is real.How silly it was of me to resent winter. How ignorant, to dismiss nature’s need to quietly regenerate, to incubate seeds for the plants that clean the air and build up the snowpack that used to stave off drought. By the time I became determined to appreciate snowy days, they began to disappear. Now, the root of my winter sadness is that it isn’t cold or wet enough. 

But I’m also trying to take a cue from the fires burning across the whole wide world: they’re raging and maybe we should be, too. If anger doesn’t drive you, then try love — for all the living beings on our wounded, beautiful home.

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When Hurricane Helene hit the U.S. southern Appalachia region in September, my social media feeds were inundated with photos of the devastation: crumbling roads, washed-out bridges, entire blocks of houses swept away. I grew up in rural Virginia, near communities hit hard by the storm. I’d never seen anything like Helene in the 20 years I lived in Appalachia or the 20 years since. It seemed impossible these remote mountain communities could be so vulnerable to a hurricane. But here was tangible evidence of what I already knew to be true: a changing climate meant a new scale of weather-related disaster and no community was invulnerable. 

In the days that followed, another kind of story began to emerge online: one of neighbours helping neighbours. People were looking out for one another: sharing food, clearing debris, taking each other in. The tightly knit social fabric of these communities — the thing that made me want to run away to the anonymity of the city as a teenager — became the foundation of the recovery process. 

I thought a lot about my life in Vancouver as I read these stories. Now, as an adult with two small kids, I long for more community in my life. I am lucky to have close friends in the city but I couldn’t tell you the names of more than three or four people who live in my building. I like my neighbourhood but I don’t feel especially connected to the people around me. Beyond my nuclear family, I’m not totally sure who I would turn to if disaster struck. When I’m in the elevator of my building, studiously avoiding eye contact with someone who lives down the hall, I wonder if they feel the same longing for connection. 

In the past couple of years, the Metro Vancouver region has seen extreme rain and flash floods from atmospheric rivers, wind storms from bomb cyclones, heat waves, fires and even a tornado. As extreme weather becomes more common, I wonder if this infamously lonely city has the kind of social connections we need to support one another. 

In her book A Paradise Built in Hell, Rebecca Solnit chronicles the many ways people come together after disaster. She argues that, despite the very real trauma of these events, disasters often create a renewed sense of solidarity. People turn toward one another and take charge of their communities in ways that are generous, resourceful and imaginative. “Disasters provide an extraordinary window into social desire and possibility,” Solnit writes, “and what is seen there matters elsewhere, in ordinary times.” 

It’s hard to feel like these are ordinary times, given we know extreme weather events are only going to increase in the years to come. But Hurricane Helene does offer a visceral lesson in “social desire and possibility.” I think about the lesson this way: the loneliness I sometimes feel in my apartment building is really a longing for a different kind of urban life — one where we acknowledge that we need one another, because, as it turns out, we do. 

Building social infrastructure is a form of climate resilience

This need isn’t theoretical. The heat dome in June 2021 killed a staggering 619 people in B.C. alone. The majority of those who died lived in the Metro Vancouver area. More than half lived alone and many lived in what researchers call socially deprived neighbourhoods: places characterized by fewer close social connections. In many ways, these deaths are a product of two overlapping crises: extreme weather brought on by climate change and high levels of social isolation.

It is easy to feel overwhelmed by the sense that we are facing not two but many overlapping crises right now: problems that are environmental, social, political and economic. Historians have a term for these times: polycrisis. But they are also moments when immense change is possible. 

A statistic I frequently come across in climate writing is that 75 per cent of the infrastructure we’ll use in 2050 has yet to be built. This number is often cited to inspire designers, urban planners and policy makers to dream big about building communities that are more just and more resilient in the face of a changing climate. Rethinking our roads, transit systems, green spaces and energy grids is essential. But, in this moment of flux, we also have the opportunity to build a more robust and resilient social infrastructure.

With Hurricane Helene, we saw how an entire region’s physical infrastructure can be destroyed in a day. But social infrastructure is far more durable — and arguably more critical. Instead of waiting for a disaster to renew our sense of solidarity and interdependence, we would benefit from considering how to create that shared sense of community and belonging now.

How do we inspire neighbours to look out for one another?

To figure out exactly how this might work, I spoke to Stacy Barter, executive director of the non-profit Building Resilient Neighbourhoods and co-director of the Hey Neighbour Collective, two organizations devoted to creating social connection in British Columbia. 

Barter said over the course of her career in community development, one question continually puzzled her: “Why, when things get hard, do some communities respond proactively while others really struggle?” 

She and her colleagues began investigating and found community resilience often came down to relationships at the level of a single city block or apartment building. “Your neighbours are your first responders,” she explained. “We need to know folks right next door.” 

In 2018, Barter and her colleagues launched the Connect and Prepare program in collaboration with the City of Victoria. Since then, it’s been piloted in Vancouver, New Westminster and North Vancouver. The program uses facilitators to bring neighbours together with the goal of creating emergency preparedness plans. The program is designed to work at the intersection of increasing climate pressures and increasing social isolation.

In many ways, Barter sees the two issues as fundamentally inseparable: social connection boosts our resilience, and the act of preparing for crises deepens our sense of community and connection. Participants typically come out of the process with projects and action plans in place. But, Barter said, “it is the process of actually coming together and building those relationships that makes the big difference.” People meet their neighbours and start looking out for one another in small ways. They start to feel a sense of shared responsibility for their collective well-being.

Michelle Hoar, who directs the Hey Neighbour Collective with Barter, cites Connect and Prepare as an example of multi-solving, explaining that in times of polycrisis we need solutions that solve multiple problems at once. Another example, she explained, is designing an apartment building with a shared central courtyard; it provides better temperature regulation in extreme heat and it creates a shared social space where neighbours can see and connect with one another. Both Barter and Hoar agree small interventions like these can have surprisingly significant impacts, but figuring out how to create social infrastructure on a broader scale is a more complicated question. 

Can we create social connection at a broader scale?

In a city like Vancouver, which struggles with both affordability and a dearth of housing supply, it can be difficult for residents to feel settled. Making the time and energy to invest in your neighbours is hardly going to be a priority when you’re struggling to pay rent. Creating a durable sense of connection — especially among the region’s most vulnerable — requires policies that can substantially improve the cost and availability of housing. 

This is where Hey Neighbour’s collective impact model comes in. They work to connect multiple partners with the shared goals of building community and social connectedness, especially in multi-unit housing where neighbours are the least likely to know and look out for one another. They bring local and regional governments together with housing providers, researchers and health authorities. “Our partners work on different parts of the problems in different ways,” Hoar explains. This kind of comprehensive approach can help mitigate some of the fragmentation that often exists between different interest groups.

Ultimately, building social connection requires a culture change: one where we shift the norms that put privacy and self-reliance above collaboration and interdependence. This may be the piece of the social connection puzzle that takes the longest to solve. Despite my own longing for community, I can sense an internal resistance to turning toward others and asking for help.

When the heat dome struck in 2021, I was five months into a high-risk twin pregnancy. I’d seen the warnings about extreme heat and pregnancy, but I assumed I would be able to tough it out. Eventually, though, the thermometer in our apartment climbed to 34 C, and I felt a level of exhaustion I’d never before experienced. I gave in and texted a friend to see if I could come over and lie on the couch in her basement, which was a few degrees cooler. I still think fondly of that long nap in a (relatively) cool, dark room. Now I wonder: why was I so reluctant to send that text? And what would it take to make asking for help easier? 

This kind of culture change feels daunting to me, but Barter disagrees. She believes it’s easier to shift our norms than we think. Sometimes all it takes is a few people behaving differently: that sense of warmth and connection can ripple outward and change an entire community. 

The biggest challenge to programs like Connect and Prepare might be funding. Both Hoar and Barter point out that social connection has long been thought of as something that is nice to have, but not urgent. But a dawning awareness of the health impacts of extreme weather is starting to shift our priorities. Barter explains that, when it comes to social infrastructure, scaling means thinking both up and deep: “Part of what I’d like to see more of is institutions recognizing the importance of ensuring that there is support down to that micro-micro scale.” This means funding those building or block-level interventions while also shifting policy. 

Barter says part of the value of a program like Connect and Prepare is that it functions as a kind of Trojan horse to legitimize asking for and accepting help: “We’re naming that community matters and that we’re thinking as a collective, not just our individual households.” It gives people a reason to knock on their neighbours’ doors, to share their vulnerabilities, and to see their collective strengths.

It may be this sense of ourselves as part of a collective that matters most going forward. Climate change is, after all, a collective problem — one that can’t possibly be solved by individual solutions. Our relationships offer an essential sense of belonging — to our communities and to the world around us — and, within that belonging, a sense of possibility that, despite everything, the future can be a place we want to live, a place we can build together.

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Spring in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley is usually a time of optimism. In the province’s fertile agricultural hub, April and May mean blossoms on the valley’s fruit trees and bud break in its many vineyards, signs of the growing season ahead. This spring was different.  

“At the end of the day, when it was blossom time, there were no blossoms. That’s when you realize, well, the soft fruit was dead.” 

Pinder Dhaliwal, a third-generation farmer in Oliver, knew his orchards were in peril all year. In January, a cold snap dropped temperatures across the Okanagan down to nearly -30 C degrees from unseasonable highs. The extreme fluctuation damaged grape, peach, nectarine, pear, plum, cherry and apricot plants across the region. In the spring, Dhaliwal realized his 12 acres of orchards had lost all their soft fruits, save for 30 per cent of the farm’s cherries. It was only the first loss of several.  

At the end of July, the BC Tree Fruits Cooperative, an 88-year-old organization that provided packing, storage, marketing and sales services for roughly half of the Okanagan’s 600 tree fruit growers, announced its closure. It was just a week before Dhaliwal was set to harvest his summer apples and the news left him and many other farmers scrambling. 

“It’s kind of a specialty apple,” Dhaliwal says of the sunrise variety that dominates his orchard. The co-op had given him an estimate of how much of his fruit it would take. “The co-op had all its clients and buyers lined up for that apple, so [the closure] made it very difficult for me.” Half of Dhaliwal’s crop was left hanging on the trees. He couldn’t find enough private buyers to take it, nor labourers willing to wait between workdays as he secured clients. 

Dhaliwal’s story is only one among many similar experiences B.C. tree fruit growers have faced in recent years. Apple growers have been especially hard hit. Pummelled by increasingly frequent extreme weather events, rock-bottom prices, a fractured local economy, increased competition with international markets — and minimal government support — the province’s apple farmers have been left to fend for themselves. 

Okanagan tree fruits contributed $162M to B.C.’s economy in 2019

Tree fruits have been a part of the Okanagan since settlers first planted orchards in the area in the late 1890s. Eighty per cent of B.C.’s tree fruits are grown in the North, Central and South Okanagan as well as in the Similkameen and Creston Valleys. The region’s varied climates, warm, hot summers and historically mild winters have allowed orchards to prosper. In 2019, the tree fruit sector’s contribution to the province’s gross domestic product (GDP) was $162 million.

Apples are an integral part of the industry. The valley grows more than 12 different varieties, and apple orchards account for 50 per cent of the more than 12,000 acres of fruit trees in the area. In the fall, roadside stands and markets are lined with gala, ambrosia and honeycrisp, enticing in all their red, green and yellow glory. 

Yet as costs have increased alongside a competitive international market and retail consolidation, the industry’s mostly small-scale growers have struggled to stay afloat. 

According to research out of the University of British Columbia, in 2022 B.C. imported nearly 80 per cent of its apples from other countries, a 30 per cent increase from 2018. Almost 60 per cent of imports came from Washington state, where producers have similarly favourable growing conditions, but also cheaper land costs, larger-scale operations and government subsidies. Chain grocery retailers have long favoured apples from across the border, say B.C. farmers. 

Over the last few years, growers have also faced damage caused by the 2021 heat dome, rising summer temperatures that have impacted labour conditions and two winters of cold freezes. The dissolution of the BC Tree Fruits co-op was only the last chip to fall in a game that already seemed determined.

The BC Tree Fruits Cooperative was formed in 1936, as a way for farmers to consolidate operations and power. The co-op provided growers with bins, packing services, cold storage facilities and marketing and sales. Farmers who worked with the co-op would arrange contracts early in the season, promising a certain portion or the entirety of their crop. For many, it was a way to ensure transparency. 

But over the last decade, private packing houses have emerged as competition, with offers of marginally higher returns tempting some away from the co-op as it buckled under various pressures. 

“We were members, but about 20 years ago I left. I just got kind of frustrated with the management,” says Peter Simonsen, a Naramata-based apple, peach, pear and nectarine farmer and president of the BC Fruit Growers Association, an independent members’ organization. 

Simonsen and other growers The Narwhal spoke with describe the co-op’s issues as multifold: the difficult economic realities of the industry, as well as climate challenges producing lower yields. But the co-op was also suffering from mismanagement and infighting between the board and members. One former grower says there had been complaints around lack of versatility and innovation for nearly 15 years before its dissolution. 

Simonsen has sent his fruit to private packing houses or sold to private clients for the last two decades. It’s not always a safe bet.

“We deliver our fruit into this system and it is unaccountable. I don’t know what they’re selling it for, and I don’t know what they’re charging me,” he says of the private packers. 

The system operates on an annual payout, with growers receiving their cut after the packer has sold the apples. 

“Six months later they’ll say ‘I sold all your fruit, prices weren’t very good, and here’s all your money,’ ” says Simonsen. “And you’ll go, like, ‘Why isn’t it more?’ ” The most trustworthy packers, he adds, have full rosters and aren’t accepting new farmers. 

The Narwhal reached out to two of the Okanagan’s largest packing houses but didn’t receive a response from either. In 2021, the Tyee reported some growers paying 30 to 35 cents a pound to produce their apples, while packers were offering as low as 12 cents a pound in return. 

The co-op announced its closure in an email to members on July 26, citing “extremely low estimated fruit volumes” after the winter freeze and “difficult market conditions.” It was more than $50 million in debt. The business filed for creditor protection two weeks later, and all its assets, including several processing plants and cold storage facilities, are currently up for sale. While former members have called on the B.C. government for assistance, the NDP said it was unable to intervene on behalf of a private business that had moved into the court system.

The co-op’s dissolution has left many apple farmers desperate. Dhaliwal believes nearly all growers have been able to secure clients this fall, but the closure has raised serious questions about the future. 

“We’re fourth and fifth generational orchardists here,” Simonsen says. “This industry, it’s a beautiful thing. It really is a beautiful thing. We grow fruit in the best place in North America to grow fruit, and it’s just so tragic.” 

Farmers say B.C. government offers less support than other provinces and nearby Washington state

Government neglect has fanned the flames of an already-precarious situation. 

“I’m just so disillusioned with how we’ve been treated by the NDP government. We just haven’t been listened to,” Simonsen says. “We have gone to them to say ‘Look, all the other provinces in Canada support their agriculture: the US is getting direct subsidies and competing with us.’ And they have just ignored us. It seems so strange that something as important as agriculture would be considered so flippantly.” 

Simonsen is not alone in his disillusionment. Many growers blame the current government for the situation tree fruit farmers are in. British Columbia has more fruit farms than any other province in Canada and the agriculture sector contributed $2.25 billion to the province’s GDP in 2022. But according to the BC Agriculture Council, the province only reinvests 2.5 per cent of that contribution back into the sector. It’s the lowest reinvestment figure in the country, where the national average has historically been closer to 12 per cent. This low investment has meant the sector has missed out on opportunities for federal dollar-matching. 

Simonsen says the government is also neglecting the increasing, unpredictable effect of climate change. After the 2021 heat dome cooked and sunburned many of the province’s cherries and apples, the government paid out $17 million in heat claims to businesses: $11.9 million went to tree fruit growers — or about 0.8 per cent of the province’s agricultural GDP contribution. In Saskatchewan, which had a provincial agricultural GDP of $6.8 billion in 2022, the government paid out roughly $2.4 billion for crop insurance claims, about 35 per cent. 

In Washington, the federal government sent growers emergency funding after the same January cold snap, and has offered farms low-interest loans to recover from an equally challenging 2023 season. Washington’s apple growers also received direct federal payments during the pandemic.

B.C. does have a crop insurance program called AgriStability that growers can access if their annual yields fall below 30 per cent of their historical records. In August, Premier David Eby announced the province would invest $15 million into the program for 2024 and increase compensation rates for crop losses from 80 to 90 per cent. This announcement came on top of $5 million for a Tree Fruit Climate Resiliency Program that will help farmers purchase equipment to deal with future climate events. In March, the province also announced $70 million to help grape, berry and tree fruit producers replace dead or diseased plants with more climate-resilient varieties. 

But growers say it simply isn’t enough. Crop insurance assessments often only factor in quantity of a harvest, says Simonsen, but quality has also been a problem when weather events result in smaller or damaged fruits. And replanted trees take several years to reach full productivity. More immediate solutions are needed.The Ministry of Agriculture told The Narwhal it was unavailable for comment as a result of the upcoming B.C. election. 

Consolidation of Canada’s grocery industry makes it difficult for apple farmers to negotiate prices

Everyone agrees: the situation and solutions are complex. But, says Simonsen, one issue is an undeniable contributor: “When you have an open border and five buyers, you don’t have to be very business-savvy to figure that one out.”  

The five buyers he’s talking about are Canada’s biggest grocery retailers. Nationally, there are Loblaw (which owns No Frills and Your Independent Grocer), Sobeys (which owns Safeway and Ontario’s Longo Brothers), Costco and Walmart. In B.C., Pattison Foods is the fifth main buyer, while Metro joins the pack in Ontario and Quebec. These retailers command nearly 80 per cent of the market share, making it difficult to negotiate. 

“Often we sell for less than the Americans because we just basically rely on what the retailers say, like that they can get fruit from Washington for $25 a box,” Simonsen says. 

The solution he and other growers are banking on is a marketing commission. It would allow growers greater control over three key elements, including regulating the quality of the product. Another is the ability to data-share between farms and with the Canada Border Services Agency to learn the price of apple imports. The last is promotional services, which would also bring opportunities for provincial and federal dollar-matching. 

Commissions allow individual agricultural producers to consolidate, with the aim of providing fair, stable incomes for farmers and high-quality products for consumers. Dairy and poultry are managed under similar federal commissions, which allow eligible industries to intervene in national policy related to their product. Under B.C.’s Natural Products Marketing Act, certain agricultural commodities are already eligible, and vegetables and cranberries are regulated under provincial commissions. 

“It also shames the retailer into buying our fruit,” Simonsen says “Right now they have no real reason to buy our fruit, [and] they say it’s because people just care about cost. We can advertise our apples and educate people about our apples and why they’re the best. We’re organic growers [ourselves], but most of the apples in the valley are pesticide and residue-free.” 

Washington has an apple commission, and several other key growing regions across the United States and Canada have them in place for agricultural products. The B.C. apple commission would throw a wrench into the current system of private packing houses, and Simonsen says some private packers are already pushing back, but he and other farmers see it as one potential route forward.   

Start a cidery, rip out an orchard: how B.C. apple farmers are coping

For the time being, B.C.’s apple farmers are making do. Nearing retirement, Simonsen maintains hope that his children and grandchildren will be able to continue his family’s multi-generational farming legacy. Since 2018, his daughter Annelise Simonsen and daughter-in-law Kaleigh Jorgensen have used a small portion of the orchard’s annual crop for their on-site cidery, Creek & Gully. 

“We started the cidery so we could use our own apples. We kind of had a ‘can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ approach,” Jorgensen says. It allows the next generation to have something of their own, she explains, while making use of lower-quality fruit and diversifying revenue streams. 

More recently, the family has started offering non-alcoholic cider, dried fruit and wedding bookings.“You have to get creative and evolve or you just can’t farm anymore,” Jorgensen says. 

She’s saddened by the crisis the industry is in. “You see people chopping down their orchards. All these trees. It’s depressing and scary. This is food. We’re not an airline, we’re not an oil and gas company.” 

In Oliver, Dhaliwal is preparing to rip out his sunrise apple orchard. He doesn’t foresee any future for the crop without the controlled-atmosphere storage the BC Tree Fruits Cooperative offered, which significantly extended the apples’ three-week shelf life. 

“I just see that a lot of other packers don’t want to take [the apple],” he says. “They want to streamline everything, make it efficient, make it cost-effective. It’s a summer apple, so they don’t want to run around every three weeks and make sure everybody gets it. They don’t care if the consumer wants it. They’ll say, ‘OK, we’ve got winter apples.’ There’s less stress there.” 

Dhaliwal’s other fruit trees are also suffering because of the damage from the heat and cold events of recent seasons — many are dying, while others are no longer strong enough to fight off insects. Like B.C.’s apple industry, they’ve fallen victim to a domino effect: “When something gets weak, other things start collapsing.”  

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It’s only halfway through summer but the world has already experienced its hottest day ever — twice.

On July 21, the global average temperature nudged past the all-time record 17.08 C, set a year ago. The next day was even hotter, reaching 17.16 C, where it hovered for another day.

Before 2023, the hottest day on record was 16.8 C, set in August 2016. As of July, that temperature has been exceeded 59 times in just over a year. July also marked the 13th month in a row to break global temperature records.

“We are not prepared,” United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in a call to action last week, urging governments to address the threat of extreme heat.

“Deadly heat is becoming commonplace.”

Extreme heat is among the world’s most deadly natural disasters, killing nearly 500,000 people worldwide every year. In Canada and the United States, extreme heat kills more people than any other weather event.

But unlike other natural disasters, it is a largely invisible emergency: it comes on slowly, targets vulnerable populations and kills behind closed doors.

As a result, “policies to address extreme heat so far remain scattered, disjointed and underfunded,” Guterres said in the United Nations report.

According to Manitoba Public Health officials, messaging and education are key to keeping the community — especially vulnerable populations — safe.

As Manitobans sweat out a late July heat wave, Public Health released a bulletin advising outdoor workers and their employers to take extra precautions and be aware of the signs of heat stress.

“The key thing is that basic messaging and people can take action based on what activities they’re doing and how they’re planning their day,” medical officer of health Peter Benoit said in an interview.

But a rise in frequency and severity of heat waves in Canada is prompting a new perception of extreme risks among policymakers and the public alike.

“It’s become rightly recognized as something much more serious and potentially devastating,” Sarah Miller, adaptation research lead at the Canadian Climate Institute, said.

“We no longer see heat waves as something fun that happens in the summer where you go to the beach to cool off; we’re starting to take it seriously.”

Extreme heat is the deadliest natural disaster. Public warnings are critical

“Termed the ‘silent killer,’ extreme heat dwarfs the impact of more visible weather hazards,” Guterres said.

It’s estimated nearly 500,000 people died as a result of extreme heat each year from 2000 to 2019.

Manitoba does not collect data on heat-related mortality, but public health officials say they’re exploring options for it. According to an analysis of Canada’s disaster database, which tracks the impacts of severe weather events stretching back to 1900, heat waves caused more than 2,000 deaths between 1900 and 2020, representing 40 per cent of all natural disaster fatalities in that time.

That figure doesn’t include the 2021 heat dome that killed 619 people in British Columbia — the deadliest natural disaster in Canadian history.

Older adults are most at risk, with the United Nations reporting an 85 per cent increase in heat deaths among the demographic in recent years, compared to the early 2000s. Children, people with pre-existing health conditions, employees in outdoor or poorly ventilated workplaces and athletes also face more prescient heat-stress risks.

But according to the World Health Organization’s Global Heat Health Information Network, “almost all deaths directly due to excess heat can be prevented” provided governments develop intersectional heat action plans and early warning systems.

As Miller at the Canadian Climate Institute explained, timely heat warnings are key.

“One of the best practices is clear and consistent heat warning systems that clearly differentiate between heat warnings and extreme heat emergencies,” she said.

The goal is to help the public understand when a heat wave is severe — for example, when temperatures are far higher than normal, don’t fall at night and stick around for a prolonged period of time — “all of which really ratchet up the severity of health implications,” Miller said.

What triggers a heat warning in Manitoba, and what does it mean?

Though it does not differentiate between heat warnings and heat emergencies like Ontario and British Columbia, Manitoba has had a public health plan for extreme heat for more than a decade, Jennifer Chiarotto, the province’s executive director of population and public health, said in an interview.

This year, that plan was refreshed and compiled in a Heat Alert and Response System guide, which makes recommendations to government departments, municipalities and other agencies to develop a comprehensive response to heat waves.

In Manitoba, as in other provinces, Environment and Climate Change Canada takes the lead on early heat warnings, Benoit explained. The provinces work with their federal counterparts to track forecasts and be on alert for weather that exceeds the extreme-heat threshold.

Those thresholds differ across jurisdictions. Extreme heat warnings are issued in southern Manitoba when forecasts predict two days with either daytime highs above 32 C and nighttime lows above 16 C, or a humidex over 38 C — that’s Canada’s measure of how hot a day will feel when humidity is taken into account. In northern Manitoba, where temperatures tend to be cooler, that threshold is a few degrees lower.

Once a heat alert is triggered, the province puts out messaging to residents, municipalities, health-care facilities and other agencies advising the public — particularly vulnerable populations — to take precautions, and put localized heat response plans in motion.

“We want people to be cool and have access to the tools that they need for that — we want people to be able to drink water, attend green spaces and so forth,” Chiarotto said. “The function is very much focused on prevention.”

Preparing for extreme heat means protecting vulnerable populations

Unlike other natural disasters, heat does discriminate.

​​“Heat targets the most vulnerable in our society,” Peter Kimbell, an Environment and Climate Change Canada warning preparedness meteorologist, said in an interview.

Hot days are even hotter in urban centres, where the heat generated by human-driven activities, such as vehicles, transportation networks and mechanical systems, combined with the heat-absorbing properties of asphalt and pavement, can increase air temperatures by 3 C in the day and up to 12 C at night.

That leaves low-income neighbourhoods, particularly those with little tree cover and green space, to experience the worst of this heat-island effect.

A 2023 Statistics Canada study found less than half of those living on the Prairies have access to air conditioning, compared to a national average of 61 per cent.

Among racialized and lower-income groups, 37 per cent had access to air conditioning. For non-homeowners, access fell to 35.5 per cent.

"It's seniors in apartments without air conditioning who are most vulnerable,” Kimbell said.

In Winnipeg, emergency management coordinator Mike Olczyk said response plans are tailored to protect the most vulnerable.

Since 2022, the city has installed a handful of hydration stations — effectively water bottle filling stations — in high-need areas. This year, the number of stations increased from three to eight.

Several community centres also open their doors to provide respite, bottled water and information to help residents identify heat-related health symptoms. Other public facilities, such as libraries, swimming pools and spray pads, can offer relief.

The city worked with an extreme weather response group made up of shelters and other community agencies serving vulnerable populations to decide where to locate hydration and cooling stations.

“We try to get as close as we can to some of the shelters,” Olczyk said.

The city’s emergency response also focuses on helping residents understand the risks of extreme weather, urging people to check in on family, friends and neighbours who might live alone or lack air conditioning, or encouraging parents to keep their children and pets hydrated and out of the sun during the hottest hours of the day.

“The more we can get messaging and information out there, the more they can internalize what applies to them and adapt their behaviours accordingly,” Olczyk said.

Extreme heat is becoming an urgent crisis for emergency planners

Canada is just beginning to treat extreme heat with the urgency it does other natural disasters, Miller said.

Emergencies such as floods are much more dramatic, not only due to the images they produce, but also in terms of financial impacts to individuals and governments, Miller said.

“It’s easier to talk about the severity of those disasters and then plan for them … I think just because of the visibility of those disasters and the massive price tag attached, whereas the impacts of extreme heat are primarily on people’s health.”

And more specifically, on the health of vulnerable people — often in private or at home.

“Those factors combine to make extreme heat more of an invisible emergency,” Miller said. “That has hindered the flow of funding and the visibility of it as a disaster.”

But the perception is starting to change.

"Economic growth is reduced, labour productivity diminished, water supplies exhausted, energy demand increased, precious crops decimated, school days missed, key infrastructure degraded and homes made uninhabitable, all of which puts more pressure on already-stretched public services and may overwhelm humanitarian assistance," the United Nations said in the call to action on extreme heat.

Labour productivity drops as the mercury starts to climb above 24 C, according to the United Nations. Beyond 34 C, productivity is cut in half. The International Labour Organization estimates the economic losses from heat stress at work is expected to rise to US$2.4 trillion by 2030 — equivalent to losing 80 million full-time jobs.

WorkSafe BC found heat-related workplace injuries increased 180 per cent during the 2021 heat dome, including a significant increase in claims from indoor workers such as kitchen and warehouse staff. Many workplaces closed or cut hours, predominantly those without working ventilation or air conditioning. Ten of 12 public school districts in the Lower Mainland closed. It's estimated workers lost more than $205 million in income.

Meanwhile, the heat dome cost B.C. $25 million in agricultural losses and put intensive strain on the provincial hydroelectric grid, causing several local outages, according to an analysis by the Canadian Climate Institute.

The heat dome exposed weaknesses in provincial heat response systems and prompted government to put more emphasis on early preparedness to protect both people and the economy, Miller explained.

"Preparedness in advance is a really important tool that until recently was a missing piece of the puzzle,” she said.

BC Hydro recently implemented a program offering free portable air conditioning units to low-income residents and people with medical needs. The government is starting to stock air conditioners for institutions like prisons, long-term care facilities and subsidized housing units that may lack access to cooling devices.

Municipalities are also starting to think about increasing tree cover, particularly in low-income urban neighbourhoods, and adapting building codes and bylaws to protect residents — particularly renters — from the impacts of extreme heat.

Governments have started developing clear guidelines for employers to have heat plans at work, and have invested in programs to support the agricultural sector in keeping livestock cool, Miller said.

Manitoba’s public health officials are trying to be more proactive by issuing safety messaging early in the summer before heat waves hit, which can help normalize heat-safe behaviours like packing extra water or staying in cool locations when temperatures rise, Chiarotto said.

The province is continually adapting its messaging to better respond to heat risks. Longer and more severe heat waves might require a different approach to public health messaging or community-wide adaptation, Benoit said.

So far in Winnipeg, Olczyk said the focus on early warnings and persistent messaging has had an impact.

“Anecdotally, I would say people are adapting their activities,” he said, be it outdoor workers taking more breaks or athletes shifting their daily run to the cooler hours of the day.

“With the effects of climate change and seeing more frequency and intensity of events, I think the perception of this hazard is growing.”

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Christian Leardini has been a roofer since he was 14 — his first and only job for 22 years and counting. He’s figured out how to deal with heat, whether from the blowtorches he uses to install tar roofs, the heavy-duty boots he wears for protection or the sun. 

As the owner of Bellissimo Roofing & Exteriors, Leardini can’t take time off, but he can take breaks in Ottawa’s Rideau River. That’s what he did when the humidity made a mid-June heat wave feel like 40 C, or higher. On really hot days, he also has his team start at the crack of dawn and finish early in the afternoon, before the temperature peaks.

“We have ice cream. We have water … We have ice packs,” Leardini said. “And if the guys are too hot, we all have a mutual agreement: we take a break.” 

“As roofers, we tolerate the heat.”

But the season for doing so is starting earlier and lasting longer. 

During the June heat wave, Environment and Climate Change Canada used a rapid extreme weather event attribution program for the first time to measure heat. Officials said that temperature records were “shattered” in eastern Ontario: the heat wave reached a peak temperature of 29 C, which is 7.4 degrees above normal.

The high temperature is symptomatic of the climate crisis, officials said: excessive burning of fossil fuels has increased heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere and made the June heat wave two-to-10 times more likely. According to Ontario’s first climate change impact assessment, released last February, the province is set to climb from an annual average of 16 days over 30 C now to as many as 60 days of extreme heat by 2080 if nothing is done to curb emissions. 

That kind of heat will make many jobs more difficult, both indoors and out. In schools and long-term care facilities, a lack of air conditioning will make indoor spaces inhospitable, as will machinery that adds to the heat on poorly ventilated manufacturing floors. The scorching sun will also beat down on construction sites, farms and people whose jobs keep them out of doors. In 2021, a Quebec construction worker fainted and died from heat stroke after a day felling trees in 30 C weather. 

The heat is a hazard that many workers simply cannot escape. 

But Ontario doesn’t have occupational health and safety regulations that specifically address heat stress. The Workplace Safety and Insurance Board offers liability to those who might experience personal injury on the job due to sunstroke or heat exhaustion. But largely, individual employers are left to determine what is the best safety protocol for their workers. 

Last August, the Doug Ford government proposed an amendment to the provincial Occupational Health and Safety Act — which dictates workplace protection — to add “a stand-alone heat stress regulation.” This would require employers to create heat management programs such as providing water and breaks, and recognizing and responding to heat-stress symptoms. 

“Heat stress is a significant cause of occupational illnesses that may also lead to death,” the 11-page government proposal reads, adding that prolonged exposure to the sun, especially when combined with protective wear and physical work, could result in fainting, heat exhaustion and heat stroke. “Due to changes in our climate, extreme heat events are a growing health risk to workers in Ontario.”

But the province has done little beyond this proposal. According to the Ontario Federation of Labour, there have been no updates since consultations ended last September. To try and push things along, the federation has launched a campaign to “demand climate action on workplace heat.” The National Farmers Union is asking the same.

Justice for Migrant Workers, an advocacy group, also demanded stronger protections this month, finding that farmworkers are 35 times more likely than the public to die from extreme heat. “The province should not wait for a tragedy to happen before it passes legislation to protect the foundation of Canada’s food system: farm workers,” the letter states.

Ontario Labour Minister David Piccini did not respond to questions from The Narwhal. 

Other countries are also thinking about the issue. The United States recently unveiled a proposed federal workplace standard for extreme heat that would require employers to establish heat safety coordinators, provide extreme heat safety training, create emergency heat response plans and increase access to water and temperature-controlled break rooms. If passed, the new standards would mandate paid 15-minute breaks every two hours on very hot days. Individual American states have also enacted requirements, including California, Oregon and Washington. 

As Ontario experiences a long, hot summer, workers are already feeling the heat.

But ultimately, there is no total escape from the heat. “We got bills to pay, and we got families to provide for, so we got to do what we got to do,” Leardini said. “I can’t take time off at all.”

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It’s going to be another hot, dry summer for many Canadians. Most of the country is expected to experience above average seasonal temperatures over the next few months, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada. Less rain than usual is expected to fall on both the east and west coasts, potentially increasing the risk of summer wildfires.

This week, a “heat dome” has settled across parts of Ontario and Quebec, driving an extreme heat wave in the Ottawa-Gatineau area. While daytime temperatures are expected to reach the mid-30s, humidity could make it feel like 40 degrees Celsius or hotter in many areas.

Intense heat comes with health risks like high humidity, UV exposure and wildfire smoke. Already this year, more than 30,000 Canadians have had to leave their homes due to wildfires in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Smoke from those fires blanketed much of Alberta earlier this month.

As the climate changes, some of those risks are becoming more intense or popping up with more frequency. Human-caused climate change makes heat domes more likely, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis by Environment and Climate Change Canada. In July 2024, B.C. and Alberta saw heat records smashed as temperatures soared to more than 40 C in several regions.

2024 was the fourth-hottest summer on record in Canada and 2023 holds the record for hottest ever — at least for now. 

In other words, it’s time to get serious about heat.

The federal Environment Department concluded climate change, driven mostly by rising greenhouse gas emissions, is causing more extreme weather events like heat domes and contributing to increasingly frequent and ferocious wildfires.

Four years ago, in June 2021, B.C. experienced a heat dome with temperatures up to 20 C above normal and set the highest temperature ever recorded in Canada: 49.6 C in Lytton on June 29. (The town was destroyed by a wildfire the next day.) The extreme heat killed 619 people, according to the BC Coroners Service, making it the deadliest weather-related event in Canadian history. Most were older people living in the urban Lower Mainland.

All of this can make summer feel more like a time for fretting than for fun. It also raises questions: how do we measure the health risks that are becoming a feature of Canadian summers? What do tools like the humidex and air quality health indexes tell us? Read on.

How hot does it really feel? Check the humidex

People in Eastern Canada love to complain about the stickiness of humidity in the summertime. Sure, the West is having a heat wave too, they say — but it’s a dry heat. It’s not the same. And while heat is heat, there’s also a kernel of truth in there. Humidity can make high temperatures harder for human bodies to handle, causing us to feel even hotter and sometimes leading to health problems.Why is humidity during a heat wave a health risk? 

Humidity makes it more difficult to cool down. Normally, we do it by sweating. When we perspire, moisture seeps out onto our skin and evaporates, taking with it some of the heat from our bodies. But humidity short-circuits that process: sweat won’t evaporate if the air is already too wet, so the heat sticks around too. That raises the risk of health problems related to high temperatures, like heat rashes and heat-stroke. Humidity also plays a role in many of the deaths caused by heat waves. 

Prolonged heat waves or heat dome events — when a large area of stagnant, hot air becomes trapped near Earth’s surface — can be even more stressful on the body because the sauna-like conditions can stick around for days at a time. If temperatures don’t dip below 20 C at night, your body can’t get respite from the stress of heat and humidity exposure, which is especially dangerous if you have underlying health conditions, like heart diseases or asthma.

What is the goal of the humidex? 

Experts have come up with various formulas over the years — including the U.S. National Weather Service’s heat index — to try to quantify the danger of high moisture in the air. Some meteorologists factor in humidity for the “feels like” temperature listed in forecasts, which describes how we experience the weather rather than what the thermometer reads. 

Environment and Climate Change Canada uses a tool called the humidex. Meteorologists began using it in 1965, combining measurements of heat and humidity to get a rough estimate of how hot it really feels outside so we can gauge how much the weather could affect us. 

For example, during the June 2024 heat dome that hovered over Eastern Canada, meteorologists forecast temperatures of 30 C to 35 C degrees in Toronto, with a humidex around 40. Although the mercury maxed out at 35 C, it felt about as hot as it would have been if the air were 40 C and dry.

A humidex rating between 20 to 29 means people might experience a bit of discomfort, though everyone responds differently to different weather conditions. At the other end of the spectrum, people should avoid exerting themselves when the humidex hits 40 to 45, according to Environment Canada. Anything above 45 is classified as dangerous, coming with a “considerable risk” of heat-stroke. That’s when core body temperatures exceed 40 C, affecting the central nervous system and causing symptoms like nausea, seizures, disorientation and confusion — and sometimes even loss of consciousness or coma.

What doesn’t the humidex tell us? 

The humidex doesn’t account for everything — if a summer breeze by the water might cool you down, that’s not part of the equation. And many other factors, like the clothes you’re wearing or your age, might influence what a temperature feels like for you. Even so, experts say the humidex matters because it’s a way to warn people about humidity so they can find ways to cope with it and protect themselves.

People tend to be more familiar with the humidex in Ontario, Manitoba and Quebec. But once in a while, it will pop up on the forecast in parts of Alberta and Saskatchewan, when a mass of hot, wet air wafts north from the Caribbean or the Gulf of Mexico.

Trying to avoid sunburn? It’s time to learn about the UV index

The UV index measures the strength of ultraviolet rays from the sun. Scientists working for  Environment and Climate Change Canada created it in 1992, and it quickly took off. Within a decade, a revised version of the scale officially became a global standard for weather forecasting, used to warn people to protect their eyes and skin from intense sunlight, which can age skin and cause sunburns, eye cataracts and skin cancer.

How to read the UV index

The UV index starts at 0 and doesn’t technically have a top limit, though the maximum ever recorded in Canada was a 12 (other places to the south have recorded higher values). Southern Ontario tends to experience the highest UV values in the country, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada. In general, the higher the number, the stronger the UV rays and the more precautions you should take. 

Experts generally recommend wearing sunscreen, sunglasses and a hat if you’re going to be outside, but the risks become much higher once the UV index hits six or seven. In the eight to 10 range, experts recommend reducing your time in the sun between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. A UV index above 11 is considered extreme, with Environment and Climate Change Canada warning unprotected skin can be burned or damaged within minutes. (The agency’s full breakdown of what each rating on the index means can be found here.) Snow, white sand and other white surfaces can also reflect UV rays and increase your exposure, even if the UV index for the day isn’t very high.What makes ultraviolet rays stronger or weaker? 

The index calculations are based on a few factors that naturally filter the amount of UV light we receive. First, cloud cover. Second, the angle of the sun: the atmosphere absorbs some UV rays, so the rays tend to be weaker when they take a longer path through the atmosphere, such as when the sun is close to the horizon. On the flipside, UV rays are stronger when the sun is directly overhead, with the rays taking the quickest and most direct path to the ground. 

The third factor is the thickness of the ozone layer in Earth’s upper atmosphere. The ozone layer shields the planet from most of the sun’s UV rays, but not all. Its thickness can vary depending on atmospheric conditions and where you are. The ozone layer is also recovering from years of industrial pollution: scientists in the 1970s found some industrial chemicals were thinning the ozone layer, to the point where holes had formed. In response, 197 countries agreed to phase out those harmful chemicals. 

The ozone layer is recovering, and a 2022 United Nations assessment found the hole over Antarctica is expected to stop forming around 2066. 

How heat waves can increase air pollution

When ozone forms at ground level, it can irritate the lungs and cause significant negative health effects, including throat and lung irritation, coughing and shortness of breath. Long-term exposure is linked to heart and lung problems. 

Ozone forms when heat and sunlight combine with nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds, which are found in industrial and vehicle emissions. Lightning strikes and decaying biological matter can also generate ozone. If you’ve ever noticed the sky looking hazy on a hot day, it’s likely to be ozone created by the heat.

How is air pollution measured?

In the 1970s, the United States Environmental Protection Agency introduced the Air Quality Index (AQI) to help communicate the severity of air pollution to the public. The index scale runs from zero to more than 500, based on the highest concentration of one of five types of air pollutants: ground-level ozone, particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and sulphur dioxide. (Particulate matter can include smoke, soot, dust, pollen and spores, as well as chemical particles.)

An air quality index value of zero to 50 is considered “good,” with no health concerns. A range of 151 to 200 is when some people may experience negative health effects such as coughing, throat soreness, chest tightness or chest pain when taking a deep breath. People who are especially vulnerable — including older adults, children and those with chronic conditions — can experience serious effects such as asthma attacks and bronchitis. 

Air quality index values above 300 are considered hazardous for everyone.

What is the Air Quality Health Index and what does it measure?In 2005, Health Canada and Environment Canada launched the Air Quality Health Index (AQHI), designed to help people better understand health risks stemming from air conditions. It was first used in B.C. and is now the preferred scale for communicating air quality in Canada.

The health index uses a colour-coded scale of zero to 10+, based on concentrations of ozone, particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide — the pollutants found to have the greatest health impacts. A 2021 Health Canada report estimated there were 15,300 premature deaths and 8,100 hospital visits due to air pollution in Canada in 2016.

The higher the health index score, the greater your risks and the more precautions you may need to take to stay safe and comfortable. 

The health index also recognizes some people are more vulnerable to air pollution than others. People with cardiovascular and lung diseases are more likely to experience negative health effects, such as shortness of breath, at lower health index levels. Seniors and children are also more vulnerable to poor air quality conditions.

At “moderate” health index levels of four to six, most people won’t experience any health effects and can continue their regular outdoor activities. Those at higher risk may experience coughing or throat irritation and should consider skipping or rescheduling strenuous outdoor activities like hiking or running. 

High health index levels range from seven to 10, signalling everyone should consider skipping strenuous outdoor activities. When the health index hits 10+, the risk of negative health effects is very high. (You can check your local health index conditions here.)

The worst health index reading ever recorded in Canada was in Kamloops during the wildfires of 2017, when the index hit 49.

As high-risk air quality events happen more often, Environment and Climate Change Canada has changed its communications to better reflect the risks of smoky air. In 2024, the agency began issuing a new type of air quality advisory to warn people about the potential health effects of 10+ AQHI scores and urge people to seriously consider cancelling outdoor events.

What are the risks when summer becomes smoke season?

Hotter, drier summers have made wildfires more common across much of Canada during warmer months. In 2023, the country saw the most destructive wildfire season ever recorded, with about 6,550 fires burning more than 184,900 square kilometres in parts of B.C., Alberta, the Northwest Territories, Nova Scotia, Ontario and Quebec.

Those fires created massive amounts of smoke that drifted across the continent, exposing millions of people to hazardous air quality. Wildfire smoke is a mix of particulate matter, volatile compounds and gases. Particulate matter is the main cause of the darkened skies and poor visibility on smoky days. The more particulates in the air, the hazier it becomes.

Air pollution particles are classified according to size. Coarse particles measure from 2.5 to 10 microns in diameter while fine particulates are less than 2.5 microns in diameter (and typically referred to as PM2.5). There are 10,000 microns in a centimetre — a human hair is about 70 microns. Fine particulates can travel deeper into the lungs than larger ones, posing greater threats to human health. A 2021 study by researchers at McGill University estimated that 4.2 million premature deaths globally every year, including 5,900 deaths in Canada, are attributable to PM2.5 air pollution that causes strokes, heart disease, lung cancer and other lung diseases.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.