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.

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.

Get the inside scoop on The Narwhal’s environment and climate reporting by signing up for our free newsletter.

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.

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.

Get the inside scoop on The Narwhal’s environment and climate reporting by signing up for our free newsletter.

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.”  

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.

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.”

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.

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.”

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.

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.

Would a good mother keep her child home from soccer this week, even though they love it? That’s what I’m wondering as I look at the extreme heat warning for southern Ontario, where temperatures will feel as high as 40 C as the days go on. 

I have so much climate grief, rage and fear, anticipating how exhausted from heat my kid will be all week, then upset if I say soccer seems like a bad idea. Children are more at risk from heat-related illnesses than adults, for a host of reasons. They can’t always tell when they need to drink more, for one, and their bodies aren’t as quick to produce sweat to help them cool off.  

But the biggest risk, in my mind, is grown-ups. We might not realize kids feel even worse than we do during a heatwave — and we’re definitely not doing enough to address the climate emergency that puts them at such great risk. 

In Toronto, where I live, only 177 out of 582 schools at the biggest public board have central air conditioning. In the majority of schools, staff and students cycle through “cooling centres” in gyms and libraries, spending the rest of their time in a hot, closed space with a fan, hopefully (a friend just told me he had to buy one for his kid’s class). The Toronto District School Board’s repair backlog is currently at $4.2 billion: without help from higher levels of government, thousands of children will be stuck sweating for years to come while the planet gets hotter. 

The board rarely closes in a heat wave, since not all parents can find last-minute childcare. Besides, not every home has air conditioning: when the school year ends next week, many children will be stuck in a hotter space, not a cooler one. As always, these inequities intersect with other disadvantages. Across the city and country, urban neighbourhoods where residents are most likely to be racialized, low-income and live without air conditioning are also least likely to have nature-based cooling solutions, which is to say tree cover, green spaces and bodies of water. 

I know I’m lucky I can afford air conditioning. I also have options for where my kid will spend the summer. I am full of tears and rage for every child in this world, all powerless to stop adults from pumping greenhouse gases into the air and left to cope with the dangerous weather that stupidity increases. Children in the global south are facing drought, hunger and war made worse by climate change, and did little at all to contribute to it. 

As a parent, though, I’m responsible for one specific young person. And I’m heartbroken to say that this year, when choosing summer camps, I mostly picked spaces with air conditioning. My kid loves running around outside chasing various rolling and soaring objects, which historically has been a healthy thing to do. But in southern Ontario in 2024, that could mean dehydration, heat stroke, heat rash or swollen limbs from soaring temperatures. Out west, the respiratory threat of wildfire smoke means my colleagues put N-95 masks on their toddlers’ faces before a canoe trip. 

Get it through your heads, grown-ups: the days of summer being the obvious time to send kids outside for some fresh air are nearly extinct. 

Instead, we’ll be taking them to air-conditioned theatres, where this summer’s trailers will include one for The Wild Robot. It’s based on a touching novel about an android dropped into the middle of a forest, whose heart swells when it realizes the beauty of nature and how all life is interconnected. It’s likely to be a lovely movie. The story crystallizes our broken relationship with plants, animals, water and wild things, but it also normalizes it in a way that troubles me. 

Because it doesn’t have to be like this. We know how to bring fun summers back, not just for my child and all the young people here now, but the ones who will be born in the years and decades to come. Their planet could be a much worse place. Or, if we act, it could be much better. 

Adults should be having adult conversations about the climate emergency. Truly confronting it means the fastest possible transition away from industries that release massive amounts of greenhouse gases. It also means the fastest possible ramping up of technology to capture what we’ve already pumped into the atmosphere, to prevent the planet from getting even hotter. The second one absolutely does not cancel out the first. If someone tells you it does, ask how they make their money. 

It also means preserving the wild spaces we have now, which already help regulate our climate, and could do more if kept healthy. It means demanding our government cut off subsidies for fossil fuel companies, and direct those billions toward an economy that creates meaningful value for everyone. It means reducing our consumption of just about everything, while also rolling our eyes when industries that produce huge emissions try to make our individual “carbon footprints” the problem. 

It feels both cheesy and obvious to say these things, but if you love a child, you need to say it over and over anyway. 

It’s going to feel like 38 C when I meet the school bus today. Many students in southern Ontario won’t be able to escape the heat when they go home. Every one of them deserves a safe and comfortable climate to live in. They also deserve honest, determined adults making every possible effort to ensure fossil fuels don’t continue heating our planet — even to run the air conditioners that can be life saving in times like these. 

Anything less is knowingly setting our children on fire. 

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.

The Brooks home will never be like it was before the 2021 floods in British Columbia. Two years ago, extreme rain filled the Similkameen and Tulameen rivers. Water burst over the banks through a dike and flooded siblings Dian and Danie’s property just outside of Princeton. The two rushed to save their animals and waited for two days in the second level of their home before a rescue boat came.  

As Dian watched their homemade furniture bob in the deluge, she remembers thinking, “There goes our house. There goes everything that we have worked for our lives. We have just lost everything.” With help from volunteers, some funding from government and insurance they have since repaired some of the damage and are back inside. 

But the two pensioners are still waiting on the provincial government to respond to their appeals for more help. “We have no money. As it is, we’re broke. We will be paying for this for the rest of our lives,” Dian told The Narwhal.

Southern B.C. was hit by its first atmospheric river of the season last week, a fitting backdrop as the province debates how to address emergencies and disasters. The proposed Emergency and Disaster Management Act will define how citizens and communities across B.C. are — or are not — supported by the government when disaster strikes, Chad Pacholik, a disaster risk manager told The Narwhal.

The bill has seen years of engagement and delays and getting to the vote stage to implement the law could still take weeks, or longer. The province’s ombudsperson is also calling for urgent action to improve support for long-term evacuees after another summer of record-breaking wildfires. The hope is this bill will help address decades of government inaction as climate change increases the number and severity of disasters faced by people across the province. 

But some experts in emergency management say key elements are missing that would ensure the legislation is clear, easy to implement, properly acknowledges First Nations and supports enough capacity within communities to implement changes. 

“Quite literally, lives could depend on the framework and the law that’s being discussed here today. Communities depend on us, as well, to get this right,” Shirley Bond, BC United MLA for Prince George-Valemount, said last week in the legislature, as the proposal saw days of debate. “Time is of the essence.”

Bowinn Ma, minister of emergency management and climate readiness, introduced the act on Oct. 3. The 122-page draft is a significant update from the previous 12-page Emergency Program Act, which was last updated in the 1990s. It recognizes First Nations’ inherent rights, aims to address modern risks like COVID-19 and climate change and acknowledges the importance of risk reduction, mitigation and preparedness along with response and recovery. There is also a clause that sets the act to be reviewed within five years.

“This legislation formally recognizes the rights of First Nations as decision-makers in emergency management,” Ma said as the bill was introduced. “The Emergency and Disaster Management Act moves towards a holistic four-phase approach of mitigation, preparation, response and recovery.” It requires climate risk assessments and updates the concept of what an emergency is, “to reflect modern realities.” 

Changes “will hopefully prove to be a step in the right direction,” Robert Phillips, First Nations Summit political executive said in a press release. The First Nations-led group supports nations in treaty negotiations. “It will be imperative that this new legislation results in strong government-to-government relationships with First Nations in all aspects of emergency management, premised on acknowledgement and respect for First Nations’ title and jurisdiction within their respective territories.”

Step in the right direction, but not far enough 

If done right, new legislation could help improve how displaced people are supported after major disasters, Tyrone McNeil, chair of the Emergency Planning Secretariat, Stó:lō Tribal Council president and Tribal Chief, told The Narwhal. But as it stands, the current draft of the bill is “disappointing.” 

McNeil, a member of Seabird Island Band, wants to see evacuee programs modelled after the United Nations Sphere Project, a humanitarian aid program better designed to address long-term disaster displacement. The province’s current program is “designed for an apartment building in Vancouver burning and people vacating for a week or two and they are rehomed,” McNeil said.

Indigenous people in B.C. are more likely to experience evacuations than non-Indigenous people, according to an analysis in The Tyee. In part, this is because colonizers forced First Nations onto reserves, government-created tracts of land that are often in spots prone to risks and hazards and don’t have enough protection, such as dikes to minimize flooding. The Indian Act also undermined the ability of First Nations to self-govern and make decisions for the safety of their communities. 

“The stress of evacuation, the stress of multiple evacuations by certain people is going to significantly impact their health over time,” McNeil said. A humanitarian approach would also encompass spirituality, how to take care of Elders and dietary needs. “Let’s be proactive and let’s invest early on.” 

While the draft recognizes First Nations’ inherent right of self-government and lawmaking in relation to emergency management, McNeil isn’t satisfied. “It’s a prescriptive piece of legislation that doesn’t fully incorporate our rightful place in emergency management,” McNeil said. 

In particular, McNeil is concerned about clause 162 which says that, in cases of conflict, the Emergency and Disaster Management Act prevails over all other provincial acts and regulations. McNeil worries this clause could be interpreted to mean this act supersedes B.C.’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act. 

“Our rights and title are not properly placed and recognized and respected,” in the current draft McNeil said.

Community capacity is an issue 

Capacity is crucial as communities grapple with the growing frequency and intensity of disasters. That means having enough paid, trained professionals to handle everything from mitigation to recovery, providing access to standardized emergency management training, ensuring smaller municipalities and regional districts have enough funding and aren’t overly reliant on volunteers.

Frontline delivery of emergency evacuee support is done “overwhelmingly by volunteers,” B.C.’s ombudsperson Jay Chalke said at a press conference. His office reviewed the province’s response to the 2021 wildfires and atmospheric rivers. “We heard about people who were working 15, 16, 17 hours a day, seven days a week for months on end as volunteers … this model cannot be sustained.” 

Most local governments are already having trouble meeting current requirements, disaster risk manager Pacholik told The Narwhal. The new legislation adds “a lot more things to the plate, and we don’t have a lot more trained, experienced people to be able to take on those tasks.” 

Pacholik worked with local governments and Emergency Management B.C. when the legislation was still being developed and currently consults with First Nations and local governments to help them navigate disaster preparation, response and recovery. 

He said the new proposed act puts a lot more on local governments and First Nations, Pacholik said. “I think there’s going to be some struggles to try and keep up.” 

While it’s a positive step that the act puts a greater emphasis on consultation and co-ordination, some First Nations already lacking capacity will now have multiple entities approaching them to maintain this requirement, Pacholik said. Consultation and co-ordination will, “undoubtedly lead to stronger emergency management and disaster risk management. But all takes time.”

The bill needs to enable First Nations to build capacity in a sustainable fashion, McNeil said. He’s called for government funding to be dispersed faster, more community access to professional support and incentives for people to take on advanced degrees and training.

Pacholik said the act does strengthen some opportunities for collaboration: it makes it easier for two or more local authorities or Indigenous government bodies to work together on certain requirements like preparing a risk assessment or emergency management plans. And overall, he thinks the bill is more inclusive and comprehensive than past legislation, Pacholik said. 

But while it has a stronger legal lens, he feels that many might struggle with the application of the bill if it becomes legislation in its current state. “It’s very aspirational language,” that envisions a world where disaster risk-reduction is prioritized and well-resourced and good relationships exist between all parties that need to work together. “That is going to take some work in some areas of the province to get there.”

Language matters 

The draft is too complicated and should be put into plain language, emergency management professional Tarina Colledge said, so that it can be understood and applied by people who aren’t academics or policy experts. “Reading through it sends you in circles as you follow various references to different sections and pages.” 

In her 17 years of experience working on public safety with local government, Colledge has worked in British Columbia and Alberta and has been deployed to disasters in New Brunswick, Texas and Washington.

Words matter and terminology needs to be consistent, Colledge told The Narwhal. The act, for example, doesn’t define what a “disaster” is, instead referring to the old act for a definition. “How can you have an emergency disaster management act that doesn’t have disasters?” Colledge asked, adding that a clear definition is fundamentally necessary to ensure a clear understanding of what actions need to be taken when. 

It’s a confusing oversight as there already is common terminology established by Public Safety Canada, Colledge said. The federal department defines an “emergency” as a “present or imminent event that requires prompt co-ordination” like a neighbourhood fire that is growing out of control. A “disaster” is when a phenomenon “exceeds or overwhelms the community’s ability to cope” such as a major wildfire requiring evacuation.

She’s also concerned that the terms “critical incident,” “incident,” “emergency” and “disaster” are used interchangeably. Unclear definitions can lead to public safety issues down the road, Colledge said, because in a disaster, people on the frontlines need a common understanding to reduce miscommunication. It would be like changing the names of the tools in an operating room. “Your gurney is not a gurney, your scalpel is not a scalpel.”

Opposition parties respond to proposed Emergency and Disaster Management Act

During debate about the proposal, official opposition members from BC United said they were encouraged the government is acknowledging past issues but expressed concerns that this legislation falls short. 

“There certainly is a need for clarity on the disaster and emergency management response. I’m not convinced that this bill provides that clarity,” MLA for West Vancouver-Sea to Sky Jordan Sturdy said.

The next step for the bill is a committee hearing where MLAs will ask questions, suggest changes and present a revised version for a vote. The House will then vote on the updated version and either send it back to committee for further changes or have further debate. A final vote by the members of the legislative assembly is needed before the bill is made into law. 

“We have to really think about how do we get these big government machines to be more human-scaled, more oriented towards community and able to operate in a more effective and nimble way when there are real disasters that strike,” Sonia Furstenau, leader of the B.C. Green Party, told The Narwhal. Furstenau said she is looking forward to discussing the bill further and finding out if local authorities and First Nations have enough capacity, resources and authority to drive significant change.

McNeil is hopeful more changes will be made in the committee phase. He wants to see clear acknowledgement of Indigenous Rights, mechanisms for funding and language that encourages greater innovation and resilience. “We really need to enable and support innovation,” McNeil said. “Particularly when it speaks to climate resilience and nature-based solutions, because those are the two long-term solutions on any disaster, whether it be floods, fires, tsunami, sea-level rise … resilience is the best way forward.”

Alongside the legislation, the B.C. government is also creating an emergencies task force. This group is made up of 14 experts in emergency and wildfire management and will “begin work immediately and provide action-oriented recommendations on enhancing emergency preparedness and response in advance of the 2024 wildfire season.”

‘It’s past time’

While politicians debate legislation, flood survivors like Dian Brooks are still living in damaged homes, waiting for answers from government programs meant to help evacuees. After the 2021 atmospheric river events, she and her brother applied for funds through the province’s Disaster Financial Assistance program, which provides financial support to people who suffer “sudden, unexpected and uninsurable losses” as a result of an extreme weather event. Only disasters listed by the province are eligible. 

After months of navigating applications, assessments, site visits and paperwork, the Brookses received about $12,000 from their insurance, which the province’s program required them to spend before applying for any other assistance. They eventually received about $51,000 from Disaster Financial Assistance, far from what they say was needed. The siblings have since appealed the amount but still haven’t received a decision from the government. There is currently no required timeline for appeal decisions: as of February 2023, Emergency Management BC received 182 appeal requests for the atmospheric river events and had completed just 12 requests. It upheld the original decision in all appeals.

The same day disaster legislation was introduced this month, B.C.’s ombudsperson Jay Chalke released a report detailing the failures in government response to the heat dome, wildfires and floods in 2021. It focused on the two main programs designated to help evacuees facing everything from an apartment fire to major wildfires and flooding — Disaster Financial Assistance and Emergency Support Services — and found that neither program has been adequately adapted as major disasters increase in frequency and intensity.

Chalke found the programs are “outdated, under-resourced, inaccessible and poorly communicated.” His team surveyed almost 500 British Columbians affected by floods and fires. Many of them echoed Brooks’ experience of delays, bureaucracy, long waits and lack of clear communication. Chalke called on the government “to take urgent action to better support people who are increasingly being displaced from their homes due to climate-related disasters.”

Chalke also raised serious concerns about inequity in support delivery. The current “one-size-fits-all approach” of these programs “unfairly creates barriers for people to access the supports they need.” The report detailed evacuees’ long waits for decisions about their aid requests, and described the government’s communication as limited and confusing. 

It also criticized leaders for ignoring years of warnings, going back to 2003, that B.C’s systems were not set up for disasters that force people out of their homes for weeks or months. “Successive leaders in government have, so far, failed to respond to clear direction for improvement in the province’s disaster response programs and capacities,” reads the ombudsperson’s report.

Brooks agreed the government’s delay was unacceptable. “It’s past time,” Brooks told The Narwhal. Past governments haven’t followed through on their promises “because they don’t have to. That’s the thing that bothers me. There’s money spent to make these reports … and they get shelved. Nothing happens.” 

The ombudsperson made 20 recommendations on how to improve the province’s Disaster Financial Assistance and Emergency Support Services. 

These include more capacity to handle applications, better recognition for front-line volunteers, accessible reception centres and flexible and responsive support for all evacuees. Chalke also called for a plan to help people facing long-term displacement, greater capacity building and funding for First Nations and a policy to reassess insurance availability across the province. 

Chalke also called for changes to be implemented over the next two years. At a press conference following the report’s release, he acknowledged that new legislation could take years to see changes on the ground. “What can’t wait is a comprehensive plan to respond to people who are displaced from their homes for long periods,” he said. 

Minister Ma told The Narwhal the province wasn’t surprised by the recommendations and has accepted all of them. “We’ve already done a lot of work over the last few years to try to address or progress on addressing these concerns,” Ma said. “And there will still be work to do moving forward as well.” 

The province is transitioning to an online registration system in an attempt to provide assistance faster: it will send evacuees relief through e-transfers, instead of requiring them to stand in line, fill out paperwork and wait for vouchers. There have also been changes to the Disaster Financial Assistance program to expand farm owner and small business eligibility.

The new legislation “speaks to our desire to no longer focus solely on response to emergencies,” Ma told The Narwhal. We need to “get ahead and be better at preparing for mitigating the impacts of disasters before they happen.” The draft will evolve over the next few weeks as it makes its way through the legislative process. When implemented, it will still take years for related regulations to be developed.  

Brooks says she refuses to be defeated and is grateful that her brother and her as well as their animals made it out safely. But the to-do list of repairs feels relentless from the roof, fencing, field repairs, front deck and walkway. “We are not beggars at the gate. This is taxpayers’ money,” Brooks said. She estimates they still have about $150,000 of work to go. “I’m angry at our government because I think that they have a very large part in this … There’s stuff they can do about this. They’re just not doing it.”

Editor’s note: The ombudsperson’s report findings echo those in The Tyee’s Bracing for Disasters series, reported by Francesca Fionda in collaboration with the Climate Disaster Project. Both found people are being evacuated in B.C. for weeks, not just days, and government support has not adapted to the climate crisis. You can read Diane Brooks’ first-hand account of the flooding here.

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.

Near the end of July, I found myself discussing grasshoppers with an organic farmer named Thomas Tumbach.

I’d asked how his six-hectare Okanagan farm was faring amidst what’s shaping up to be the worst drought in B.C.’s history, expecting an answer that had something to do with water shortage. But Tumbach told me the drought wasn’t hitting his crop so directly; like most farms in the Okanagan, his irrigation water comes from a highland lake that isn’t in any immediate danger of running dry.  

It’s the knock-on effects that are killing him, he explained. One in particular: as the surrounding landscape desiccates, irrigated farms become oases that draw pests desperate for moisture. This year an unprecedented grasshopper infestation has laid waste to Tumbach’s vegetable harvest. He estimates the bugs will cost him more than $50,000 this year, a crippling blow for any small farmer.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said. Nor is his an isolated case: grasshoppers are devouring crops from the Similkameen Valley in southwest B.C. all the way to Alberta.

And they’re just one of many drought impacts being overshadowed by this summer’s wildfires — an understandable distraction. Tumbach’s own home has been repeatedly threatened by wildfire in recent years, so he knows as well as anyone that when flames are bearing down, nothing else matters.

But water is life. In the long run its absence is even more lethal and far-reaching than fire, which is but one of drought’s many consequences. Others are playing out in every corner of the province right now, in ways both surprising and predictable. They range from insect plagues and parched crops to dead salmon, mental health issues, infrastructure crises and an overstretched public service.

So what’s to be done? Can the B.C. NDP do it? The provincial government has passed a number of policies that could help communities and ecosystems struggling to adapt to hotter, drier summers. Unfortunately, it seems afraid to use them.  

Two canaries on the coast

“As a society, we have to get over the idea that we have a limitless water supply,” said Donna McMahon, director of the Sunshine Coast Regional District for Elphinstone, a district studded with small farms. 

Since 2015, the Sunshine Coast has imposed Stage 4 water restrictions five times. Farmers have been prohibited from watering crops for periods ranging from two weeks in 2018 to three months in 2022. 

Most years, drought has been confined to small pockets of B.C. That, combined with the Sunshine Coast’s relative isolation, has made the region’s water scarcity seem unique. But this year, two thirds of B.C.’s water basins were at drought level 4 or 5 — the most extreme rating — by the end of July and water restrictions are coming into place in almost every corner of the province. The Sunshine Coast is no longer exceptional. “We may have been a bit of a canary in the coal mine, but our situation is far from unique,” McMahon said.

Part of that “situation” involves the bureaucratic obstacles to getting new water infrastructure in place. Silas White, mayor of Gibsons, the southernmost town on the Sunshine Coast, articulated the problem in an open letter to Premier David Eby published on May 31.

Crucial water-supply and storage projects are “mired in administrative and operational delays,” White wrote, adding that the impact went well beyond infrastructure. “My primary reason for writing you is to share with you this significant mental health and social phenomenon that has become absolutely real in our community, because it does not show up in our water licence applications or technical reports.”

These are issues that communities all over the province, especially rural ones, are now grappling with. 

Another isolated community whose water crisis is veering from exceptional to emblematic happens to be among the rainiest places on earth: Tofino, B.C. 

By July 20, the town had received just 20 mm of rain in three months, about one fifteenth of the 275 mm it historically gets over that period. 

Although voluntary water restrictions were in place, Mayor Dan Law was hopeful his community could “race the drought to the end and we won’t have to take those drastic stage 4 measures.”

Tofino gets all its water from nearby Meares Island – the same island MacMillan Bloedel planned to clearcut in the early 1980s, only to be repelled by Tla’o’qui’aht and Ahousaht nations and the small army of activists they inspired. Four decades later, the reservoir supplying Tofino’s residents and the one million tourists that pass through each year, mostly in summer, is being replenished almost solely by moss, which absorbs moisture from fog and dew and drips it back into the ground. That moss, in turn, requires the shade and protection of primary forest to flourish. 

“So because of the vision and action of Tla’o’qui’aht First Nation, specifically Chief Moses Martin, in the 1980s, we have a healthy watershed,” Law said. “I think that’s extremely important for all of us to realize: the action that we take today, the wisdom of it may only become apparent in 40 years, and likely the inaction may become apparent too. ”

Highlighting the link between healthy ecosystems and water security isn’t the only lesson Tofino offers. As the town weighs its own options for expanding its water supply and enhancing conservation, memories of 2006 are top of mind. That year, drought forced the community to close all businesses, including resorts, turning visitors away and crippling the local economy as it came to the brink of running out of tap water. 

That experience galvanized the community to increase its reservoir and impose water metering on several big resorts. Thanks to those actions, 2023 has yet to reach the dire circumstances of 2006, despite this year being drier, Law explained. 

Are B.C. authorities leading, or reacting?

In 2016, B.C. passed the Water Sustainability Act, which gave the province wide-ranging powers to monitor water levels and enforce conservation measures. In 2021, the province launched a $27 million Healthy Watersheds Initiative that continues to evolve and expand, most recently with a $100 million endowment from the province in March 2023. The Watershed Security Fund, as it’s now called, will go toward habitat restoration, improving water-supply infrastructure and mapping watersheds across the province; an intentions paper in collaboration with First Nations is still in the works.

The problem, Oliver Brandes said, is that after giving itself those powers, the province has largely failed to exploit them. “We’ve got all these wonderful tools,” Brandes, project lead of the University of Victoria’s POLIS Water Sustainability Project, said. “Use them.” 

“The province has an unbelievably important role in providing confidence and management in drought. And that is the concern here,” Brandes said. He feels that provincial officials have — yet again — been caught flat-footed by a predictable emergency: B.C. didn’t issue its first official warning of impending drought until June 23 and that warning came with a request for voluntary water conservation rather than a mandate. “We knew it was coming in May and June, so where are the orders? Where are the fish protection orders, the critical flow orders? Where are the enforcement actions on unregulated groundwater users? Are we enforcing the rules?”

One crucial gap between water-policy intent and execution in B.C. is the province’s failure to register thousands of unlicensed, non-domestic water users, a category that encompasses water-bottlers, farmers, tourism operators and small industries. “If you’re going to manage the system, you’ve got to know who’s using the water and how much they’re taking,” Brandes said. 

Instead, provincial authorities are largely flying blind. Under the Water Sustainability Act, the province set a March 2022 deadline for an estimated 20,000 such non-domestic users to license their water use; only 7,900 applied. The result has been a haphazard enforcement of water restrictions, with a handful of unlicensed water users being cut off while thousands more have yet to suffer any consequence, and licensed users now find themselves subject to restrictions.

The Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship and the Ministry of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness both declined an interview request. They sent a joint emailed response instead that read, in part, “We are calling on everyone in B.C. — including industrial water users – to reduce their water usage … the province is actively monitoring conditions, and will not hesitate to establish Temporary Protection Orders to restrict water usage by water licence holders if voluntary compliance does not result in the necessary reductions.” The email cited the water policies the province has passed, including the sustainability act. 

Brandes allowed that the province’s new policies and legal tools articulated “exactly the right commitment” but enforcement and application should have begun years ago. “Look at how many droughts there have been since 2016. We passed the legislation knowing full well this world was coming … There’s no excuse to say, ‘oh, I didn’t see a drought coming in 2023,’ ” Brandes said.

Aaron Hill, executive director of Watershed Watch Salmon Society, has tried to get the NDP government to be more aggressive with water management. “The unlicensed users should be their highest priority and they should be putting the full weight of the law behind enforcing that regulation, and they’re not,” he said.

“We brought this to their attention last year.”

But the society’s attempts to engage the B.C. government sound like a scene from Catch-22, with the Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship directing Hill to the Ministry of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness, who pointed him to the Ministry of Forests and so on. “It was a clown show,” he said. 

I asked both Brandes and Hill if there wasn’t a chance that B.C.’s public service was simply overextended; this year’s drought, after all, is but the latest in a series of unprecedented catastrophes that go well beyond climate disasters. Both felt I was being too soft. “I don’t believe it’s just a staff problem,” said Brandes. “It’s really a priorities problem.”

But Donna McMahon, the Sunshine Coast Regional District director, felt otherwise. “Everybody’s overwhelmed,” she agreed when I put the same question to her. “The civil service that supports the Water Sustainability Act – when they put that Act through, they did not adequately resource it. And those people are overwhelmed, and they’re absolutely years behind in trying to process things like water licences.”

Tofino’s mayor, Dan Law, also had a far more sympathetic view of the NDP’s leadership. “The province has been excellent,” he told me, describing a productive relationship with numerous ministries which were all attentive to his feedback. Law is keenly aware this summer’s B.C. drought is no one-off, but rather a sign of things to come. Did he honestly feel that B.C.’s NDP saw things the same way?

“Absolutely,” he said. “This is really the start of hopefully a new relationship, where the province starts to look at everything in light of a changing climate … The costs are enormous to the province and they’re very well aware of that.”

Law’s confidence seems optimistic: the province has had years to factor the costs of climate change into its water policy. But bureaucracies move slowly, and this isn’t John Horgan’s NDP anymore. As a new generation of leaders assume key cabinet positions under Eby, they now have a chance to start using the policy tools at their disposal and proactively preparing this province for a hotter, drier future.

Properly speaking, it isn’t just a chance: it’s an imperative.

Updated on Aug. 18, 2023, at 1:58 p.m. PT: This story has been updated to clarify that the March 2022 deadline set by B.C. authorities was for non-domestic users to licence their water use, not register their wells.

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 Yoenne Ewald’s hay supply fell through this spring, she was devastated. Without hay, she can’t feed her cattle. Like most farmers, she’s tough and used to troubleshooting unexpected problems but the stress this year has been on another level.

“The options are to sell them for nothing or watch them starve,” she says on her farm just outside of New Hazelton, B.C. 

Under frequently smoke-choked skies, the ground is thirsty in the northwest. After a sudden and late frost, summer came early this year. With it came forest fires and drought. For much of the region, rain has been in short supply for months. Sporadic showers and cooler temperatures have provided some relief but the recent rain hasn’t reduced widespread impacts on the farming community. Plants are dying or stressed or all coming up at the same time.

Ewald says her farm, where she has been raising livestock since 2021, needs about a decade of careful rejuvenation before the soil can support natural pastures for her cattle, especially during drought. She picks up a hay bale with her tractor and takes it to her hungry herd.    

“They’re getting old hay that I thankfully managed to secure by the skin of my teeth,” she says, explaining the low nutritional value of the feed means her animals are far skinnier than they should be this time of year. “It’s a shitty place to be in the middle of summer.”

Like the weather, the price of hay is erratic. With supply scarce across the province and persistent, severe drought conditions, prices are skyrocketing. Ewald says she’s been quoted numbers she calls “astronomical,” more than double what she paid last year, adding that it would be cheaper for her to send her cattle to Manitoba for the winter. Farmers are scrambling to get enough to keep their animals alive — or they’re culling them months early, downsizing and hunkering down in the hopes that next year will be better.

Curt Gesch, a semi-retired rancher who leases land to hay producers, says only one of the three fields on his property in the rural community of Quick, B.C., got a decent crop this year.

“That’s fairly typical of what’s happening around here,” he says. “Or they’re spending more on fuel than the hay is worth. The price jumped up way, way, way, way high.”

Ewald recently sold three heifers at a loss because she can’t afford to keep them and doesn’t know what’s going to happen to the rest of her herd. Sitting at her kitchen table, dogs milling about around her feet, she runs through the sunk costs of raising the animals to this point: feeding the pregnant mothers, calving and feeding baby animals since the spring. It’s bleak, she says. Just getting calves born cost her about $650 each, not counting her time, and she’s selling them for around $300 to $400. 

“It doesn’t feel good on a daily basis to not know how you’re going to provide for their basic needs — let alone make your living,” she says.

Ewald is what’s known as a direct-market producer. She sells meat to consumers through the likes of farmer’s markets or local shops not via wholesalers. This means right now her back is against a wall because she doesn’t breed the type of cattle people buy at auction. Plus, she says, the only abattoir in the area is fully booked so she can’t even cull her herd.

“It’s been a really stressful week,” she says, fighting back tears. “The long and short of it is we’ll handle it, we’ll come up with something that can handle these seasons.” 

‘It’s been awful’: B.C. agriculture minister

For any farmer trying to raise more than a few animals, the situation is getting desperate. Pam Alexis, B.C.’s agriculture minister, says she’s keenly aware food producers are in rough shape right now. 

“It’s been awful,” she says on a phone call with The Narwhal. “This summer is just off the charts.”

“The main issue that we are directly hearing from people on the ground, with respect to drought, is that farmers and ranchers are having to use their fall and winter feed now,” she says, adding the ministry is working on both short- and long-term solutions to support producers.

“We have a regenerative committee that’s looking at soil health and just provided recommendations. There’s talks about water and conservation and who needs to be at the table. But, you know, it means having hard conversations: is this really the right crop for this region, at this stage in the game, when we’ve had so much drought? We just have to approach it logically, in my opinion, and figure out what’s going to work.”

In the short-term, B.C. is providing $150,000 to support a new access to feed program through the BC Cattlemen’s Association. Kevin Boon, general manager of the industry group, says it’s doing what it can to source hay from out of province and across the border. The association isn’t purchasing hay for anyone — the program helps connect buyers to sellers and tries to keep costs as low as possible.

“We’re kind of like a dating game for hay,” he chuckles.

States like Washington, Utah and Montana have had bumper crops this year and in some cases have a significant surplus buyers can get at a reasonable rate. The real challenge, he says, is transportation.

“The trouble is, how do we get it north?” he says, explaining the further hay has to travel, the more it’s going to cost the farmer. The association is in talks with the government about getting financial support to offset transportation costs, but nothing is finalized, he says. 

If drought impacts weren’t so widespread, farmers from the southern half of the province would be sending hay north to help, Boon explains. In 2021, when B.C. was hit with a catastrophic atmospheric river and numerous farms were flooded out, producers from the northwest worked together to gather extra feed to send down south.

“It was so generous,” he says. “They didn’t ask for a dime for it. Right now, when everybody up there is suffering, our guys down here are saying, ‘I’d love to put a load of hay on and send it up there — but I gotta buy five loads myself.’ We’ve run out of excess.”

The province is also working with the federal government to provide financial assistance to impacted producers. While the focus of the government’s efforts is partnering with industry groups, the ministry says it can also help small-scale producers directly and encourages anyone struggling to call AgriService BC. But life on a small farm is busy and many food producers running smaller operations don’t have the time to search out grants or other means of support. They also can’t wait for funding — their animals need to eat every day. 

So far Ewald has cobbled together some half-rotten hay, substandard blends and even picked up some small square bales, not normally used for cattle, because they were a decent price. But her barn is half-empty and she says her cattle complain when fed the low-quality stuff.

“Last night, I made them pick through the worst of the hay,” she laughs. “They yell at me every time they see me.” 

What’s happening right now will impact her farm for years to come, she says. She had plans to grow her herd over the next few years while working to improve soil health. 

“That’s out of the question, I think, at this point,” she sighs. “The way to go is to just pare down the herd to a small quantity of animals so that no matter what the weather dishes, it’s going to be a sustainable system.”

The repercussions of choices like this extend far past farmers’ fences.

“If I can’t feed my animals,” Ewald says, “I can’t feed my community.” 

B.C. farmers facing ‘an infinite amount of problems’

Feeding community and supporting local food security is a lifelong passion for Mark Fisher, a farmer in Telkwa, B.C. As the former director of the Regional District of Bulkley-Nechako, he’s worked for years to support agriculture and food networks in the northwest. He says what’s happening on the land this year, while not entirely unexpected, has been nearly impossible to prepare for.

“It’s not like it’s a surprise,” he says. “You can see these things coming. But now that it’s here, there are no certainties. And it’s much more than just water.” 

On his farm, perched on a hill overlooking the river valley, he’s been increasing his water storage systems, developing new planting techniques and experimenting with different timing and cycles of crops. He’s been farming in the area for more than 20 years and says he knows every inch of his land — what it needs, which plants grow where and how best to nurture them. But the erratic weather patterns and unpredictable climate are triggering a complex and cascading series of impacts.

“There’s an infinite amount of problems,” he says. “I was prepared for the [lack of] rain; I wasn’t prepared for all these other things.”  

He talks about how photosynthesis was hampered this year by spring pollen not getting washed off leaves until a few weeks ago. The prolonged heat led to early plant harvests, which means he now has food storage and refrigeration issues.

“Food security is the one that scares me the most,” he admits, explaining he doesn’t just grow food for the community, it’s also how he feeds himself. “I don’t generally go to the grocery store a lot. But all the stuff I’m going to be harvesting normally in August and September, that’s coming now. I’m not going to be able to store that [for] an extra two months, I’m going to try to sell it off to recoup some of my costs of labour instead. I just don’t know what to do.”

People come together in times of crisis

Ewald says one of the things she’s most concerned about is social dynamics. In a crisis, people tend to react in two ways: coming together to support one another or isolating and protecting what’s closest.

“When you’re in a very bad position, it breeds suspicion,” she says. “You start having these kinds of uncomfortable, ugly feelings about people in the community.”

As hay prices continue to climb, she says it’s hard to know whether folks are taking advantage of the situation or, like Gesch said, losing money on the hay they’re selling, even at inflated prices. 

But she says as bad as it all feels right now, she’s grateful for the people who are trying to help.

“I have had people that I only know sort of by association, going out to bat and searching their contacts trying to find hay for me.” And if she finds herself in the unlikely position of having a surplus of hay, she plans to help her neighbours.

Fisher says that spirit of cooperation and support is one of the reasons he lives in the north.

“We live in an amazing place and we know that coming together is going to happen,” he says. “I’ve been here so long and I still cry at how beautiful people are here — even people that I can’t stand and disagree with, they will come together, we just know that.”

Ewald says it’s important to remember why she and other farmers continue doing the work.

“I don’t know many people who produce food that aren’t 100 per cent committed to it, that aren’t passionate about it,” she says. “I think that if they’re able to make it through those people will double down on the practices that we know we need to implement.”

She walks into an area where she’s been trying to get more organic matter into the soil and says seeing a diversity of plants starting to grow there gives her hope.

“What keeps me going honestly changes each day,” she says. “Some days I’m not going — I’m a fucking mess.”

“We’ve all talked about these kinds of problems and difficulties ahead — and now here they are. This is where all the theory and chit-chat gets real.”

The Narwhal is continuing to look into the implications of drought and wildfires on farming and food production. If you’re experiencing impacts, please reach out to reporter Matt Simmons: matt@thenarwhal.ca 

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.

In the past few weeks, climate records have shattered across the globe. July 4 was the hottest global average day on record, breaking the new record set the previous day. Average sea surface temperatures have been the highest ever recorded and Antarctic sea ice extent the lowest on record.

Also on July 4, the World Meteorological Organization declared El Niño had begun, “setting the stage for a likely surge in global temperatures and disruptive weather and climate patterns.”

So what’s going on with the climate, and why are we seeing all these records tumbling at once?

Against the backdrop of global warming, El Niño conditions have an additive effect, pushing temperatures to record highs. This has combined with a reduction in aerosols, which are small particles that can deflect incoming solar radiation. So these two factors are most likely to blame for the record-breaking heat, in the atmosphere and in the oceans.

El Niño’s big comeback

The extreme warming we are witnessing is in large part due to the El Niño now occurring, which comes on top of the warming trend caused by humans emitting greenhouse gases.

El Niño is declared when the sea surface temperature in large parts of the tropical Pacific Ocean warms significantly. These warmer-than-average temperatures at the surface of the ocean contribute to above-average temperatures over land.

The last strong El Niño was in 2016, but we have released 240 billion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere since then.

El Niño doesn’t create extra heat but redistributes the existing heat from the ocean to the atmosphere.

The ocean is massive. Water covers 70 per cent of the planet and is able to store vast amounts of heat due to its high specific heat capacity. This is why your hot water bottle stays warm longer than your wheat pack. And, why 90 per cent of the excess heat from global warming has been absorbed by the ocean.

Ocean currents circulate heat between the Earth’s surface, where we live, and the deep ocean. During an El Niño, the trade winds over the Pacific Ocean weaken, and the upwelling of cold water along the Pacific coast of South America is reduced. This leads to warming of the upper layers of the ocean.

Higher than usual ocean temperatures along the equator were recorded in the first 400 metres of the Pacific Ocean throughout June 2023. Since cold water is more dense than warm water, this layer of warm water prevents colder ocean waters from penetrating to the surface. Warm ocean waters over the Pacific also lead to increased thunderstorms, which further release more heat into the atmosphere via a process called latent heating.

This means that the build up of heat from global warming that had been hiding in the ocean during the past La Niña years is now rising to the surface and demolishing records in its wake.

Small particles in the air help and hinder climate change mitigation efforts

Another factor likely contributing to the unusual warmth is a reduction in aerosols.

Aerosols are small particles that can deflect incoming solar radiation. Pumping aerosols into the stratosphere is one of the potential geoengineering methods that humanity could invoke to lessen the impacts of global warming. Although stopping greenhouse gas emissions would be much better.

But the absence of aerosols can also increase temperatures. A 2008 study concluded that 35 per cent of year-to-year sea surface temperature changes over the Atlantic Ocean in Northern Hemisphere summer could be explained by changes in Saharan dust.

Saharan dust levels over the Atlantic Ocean have been unusually low lately.

On a similar note, new international regulations of sulphur particles in shipping fuels were introduced in 2020, leading to a global reduction in sulphur dioxide emissions (and aerosols) over the ocean. But the long-term benefits of reducing shipping emissions far outweighs the relatively small warming effect.

This combination of factors is why global average surface temperature records are tumbling.

It’s not too late

In May this year, the World Meteorological Organization declared a 66 per cent chance of global average temperatures temporarily exceeding 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels within the next five years.

This prediction reflected the developing El Niño. That probability is likely higher now, since El Niño has developed.

It is worth noting that temporarily exceeding 1.5 C does not mean we have reached 1.5 C by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change standards. The latter describes a sustained average global temperature anomaly of 1.5 C, rather than a single year, and is likely to occur in the 2030s.

This temporary exceedance of 1.5 C will give us an unfortunate preview of what our planet will be like in the coming decades. Although, younger generations may find themselves dreaming of a balmy 1.5 C given current greenhouse emissions policies put us on track for 2.7 C warming by the end of the century.

So we are not at the point of no return. But the window of time to avert dangerous climate change is rapidly shrinking, and the only way to avert it is by severing our reliance on fossil fuels.

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.