On a grassy slope in Kanaka Bar, a herd of goats frolic and play. But this isn’t a farm or a petting zoo — it’s an innovative wildfire mitigation effort from the First Nation.

Some of the goats loudly bleat as they chow down on invasive species and overgrown brush. 

“In the last five years, Kanaka community has been experiencing devastation with fire,” Pauline Michell told The Narwhal.

That includes two evacuations due to wildfires, as well as floods and mudslides that have closed roads and cut off her community from the world. And in Kanaka Bar, there is no fire truck or fire hall. “Kanaka has solely been on its own in regards to fire,” said Michell.

Located in Nlaka’pamux territory, 20 kilometres south of Lytton, Kanaka Bar Indian Band also goes by T’eqt’ aqtn’mux, “the crossing place people.” 

In 2021, the Lytton Creek wildfire devastated the area, evacuating numerous First Nations for years, while burning structures and homes to the ground. 

Later that year, an atmospheric river raged through the Fraser and Thompson Rivers, washing out roads and cutting people off from leaving Kanaka Bar.

According to a new report from the office of the B.C. human rights commissioner, between 2000 and 2024, First Nation reserves accounted for 36 of 37 communities where at least half of the total land area was burned by wildfire, with the only non-reserve community being Lytton.

Further, First Nation reserves in B.C. are four times more likely to be impacted by wildfire than non-reserve communities. 

This prompted Michell, an elected councillor in her community, to take a proactive approach to the wildfire season. 

Since late July, a herd of goats have been eating their way through the Kanaka Bar Indian Band, targeting areas with built up fuel and brush that would burn up in a fire. 

About 80 goats have been clocking in this summer, while a few goats like Dandelion and Cuddley are part of a rebel club in their own separate enclosure.

“This is a trial for Kanaka, to look at fuel management in this way,” said Michell. 

“Hearing about these goats being able to do this sounded really intriguing and interesting,” she added.

The idea came by accident, after an area grazed by sheep acted as a fire stop during a wildfire three years prior.

“Back in 2023, the Kookipi Creek fire came through … We had been grazing the sheep that we had out in this back area, and when that fire came through, it actually came pretty much all the way down to community, and then it stopped where the sheep had been grazing,” Emma Bryce told The Narwhal.

She recalled thinking, “This is really cool, we just kind of made our own fire break without really intending to.”

Bryce has been the nation’s food self-sufficiency lead since 2022, and after the sheep experience, started researching different animals to graze in the community.

“In conversations with chief and council, I brought it up and was like, ‘What if we used goats to do wildfire risk reduction?’ They were like, ‘okay, let’s do it.’” 

“This goat grazing project has been a passion project of mine for the last couple of years,” Bryce said, after she took the green light from Kanaka and ran with it. That’s when she met Bruce Bradley, who does contract work across B.C. with his herd of goats. 

Based on Vancouver Island, it took three trips by ferry to bring his herd to the mainland and then to Kanaka Bar this summer. But the Ainslie Creek and Brunswick Creek wildfires impacted initial operations back in July. 

As of Sept. 11, those wildfires remained burning 31 kilometres down the road from Kanaka Bar, though they  are now contained. Once it was safe, the goats got to work. 

Goat grazing benefits for biodiversity and wildfire

The goats have grazed about 12 hectares of ground since arriving in the community earlier this summer.

“We’re trying to get in all the nooks and crannies, especially around the houses and around the roads, the important spaces to make them more defensible and resilient to fire,” Bradley told the Narwhal.

On top of reducing wildfire risk, “the ecological benefits are huge because the goats are trampling, they’re fertilizing … and they’re especially effective for invasive weeds.”

“We’ve tackled this year quite a bit of Canadian thistle, Himalayan blackberry and Scotch broom.” 

Bradley’s been deploying his fire-mitigating goats since 2018, through his company BC Timber Goats.

“It’s a very unique tool, and I think a powerful tool to get wildfire risk reduction benefits and silviculture benefits on the same site, at the same time,” he said. 

According to the B.C. government, silviculture is “the thoughtful, deliberate and balanced management of forests and surrounding local ecosystems” that encourages tree diversity to increase resilience against threats like pests, climate change and disturbances.

The idea to start a goat grazing business came from Bradley’s experience in farming.

“I grew up on a farm that had lots of weed control issues. I’d always spray and mow, and we’d break the mowers. I’d get sick with the spray and so I thought, there’s got to be a better way,” he said.

Bradley said that in areas of the farm sprayed with pesticides, “everything would just turn brown, and half the time it would burn in wildfire in the summer.” 

Goat grazing achieves similar outcomes as pesticide use but is much healthier for the environment.

According to the University of Calgary, which piloted a goat-grazing project at their main campus last year, “targeted grazing is a proven land-management technique that uses livestock to naturally control vegetation growth. Unlike herbicides, which can have a lasting environmental impact, goats provide a natural way to reduce unwanted plant growth while encouraging native vegetation to thrive.”

Animals grazing through southern Interior communities has become less common with wildlife populations declining.

“Using goats actually mimics what you would have typically seen if you had large herds of elk moving through. … Goats mimic a natural system that this landscape would have evolved with already,” Bryce said.

An addition to the FireSmart toolbox 

Over the summer, the goats have been working alongside Kanaka Bar’s fuel management crew.

As the FireSmart team gathers fuel and brush into a pile, the goats eat until it’s gone. It’s a win-win situation: feeding the goats and disposing of the community’s built-up fuel.

“I don’t think there’s ever going to be a scenario where we don’t need people out on the ground, going out and doing the bigger fuel management,” Bryce said, adding goat grazing complements other fuel management strategies. 

“They can go in and defoliate, which is great to have more visibility when you’re out there working in really dense brush,” she said. 

Bryce and Bradley estimate the goats haven eaten 0.25 hectares of ground each day. They’re scheduled to wrap up their work on Sept. 21.

“The goats are going in and doing a really efficient job at something that is really challenging to do with just human crews alone,” she said. 

When the project was first brought forward to the community, residents were interested in learning more about it, but not exactly excited about goats – that quickly changed.

“Now it’s to the point where members want a couple of goats to tackle the brushes in their yard as well, so that’s really good,” said Michell.    

“When wildfire comes to Kanaka, we’ll be more prepared.”

Updated on Sept. 16, 2026, at 11:11 a.m. PT: This story has been updated to correct the dates that the goats are in Kanaka Bar.

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Months of planning. Weeks of wrangling the right clothes and gear. Daily checks of fire smoke maps. Reading through the fine print of the cancellation policy for our canoe rental — and discussing what Plan B might look like if conditions became too stifling.

We had cleared all the hurdles and things looked alright; our canoe trip would forge ahead. And yet as we dipped our paddles in and set out on a classically Canadian adventure — this one on the largest lake in North America without motorized boats — we were greeted by a light smoky haze hanging over us.

A good trip in the backcountry is the best way I know to reset: a digital detox where my biggest preoccupation is (literally) boiled down to what dehydrated food I’ll throw in the pot for dinner. Maybe I fret about how much longer until I reach the summit or where to set up camp. But not much else.

These days, though, it’s impossible to separate the joys of our natural world from the grief of seeing the destruction wrought upon it, often by our own doing. I know this because it’s what I hear from my friends, and also because it’s how I felt, swaying between emotions during our trip to Murtle Lake in the British Columbia Interior this August.

Throughout the trip, the highs easily revealed themselves: in the white-sand beaches, the moon hanging perfectly between two peaks during sunset, the panoramic awe as we reached the summit. There was a familiar low — the ache in my hamstrings on a brutal hike. But there was also a new kind of gloom: looking out at the swaths of burn scars that screamed: “Hey, remember those record-breaking headlines?”

There were no fires nearby on our trip, but this area is no stranger to them: the 2023 Murtle Lake fire left its mark as it burned 1,711 hectares, or more than four Stanley Parks of territory. And that was just a tiny fraction of the 17 million hectares burned that year — more than 43,000 Stanley Parks! — in the worst fire season in Canadian history.

While it’s far from the most devastating impacts, I can’t help but long for the trips that don’t require planning around the worsening climate. My biggest worry a decade ago was whether we’d be able to squeeze on as a walk-up group on the West Coast Trail.  

Almost everyone in Canada has a story about how a summer trip was altered or cancelled due to wildfires or smoke; a recent study found more than 60 per cent of Canadians have been personally affected by climate change this year. It’s not surprising, considering the horrors we’ve all watched unfold in places like Summerland, B.C., where 20,000 area residents were forced to evacuate, 150 structures were torched, dozens of pets went missing and an 80-year-old woman died. The impacts are also often disproportionate: despite representing five per cent of the population in Canada, Indigenous communities account for 42 per cent of wildfire evacuations. Or even across the globe in Nepal last week, where a glacier collapse and seismic event caused flooding that killed at least 1,200 people, with 29 Canadians and permanent residents still unaccounted for.

The scale of the grief varies enormously but the underlying reality is the same: climate change is not only transforming the places we love, but what it feels like to love them.

On the road to Jasper, amid the smoke and rebuilding

Ten years ago, a friend and I drove the Icefields Parkway that leads to Jasper. This time — en route to Murtle Lake — I hit the same road again and was quickly reminded of the jaw-dropping scenery. Everything was familiarly beautiful, until it wasn’t.

While the 2024 Jasper fires captured Canadians’ hearts and minds, no number of photos or video clips compared to the experience of seeing it with my own two eyes. Rows upon rows of charred trees, stretching dozens of kilometres, campers visible from the highway where forest had once provided cover. Making my way toward the town, where 33 per cent of structures burned, the rebuild in progress made me feel hopeful.

Every night on Murtle we sat around — under the red glow of our … headlamps, thanks to a campfire ban on account of the wildfire risk — and shared our highs, lows and heroes: floating in the water on a sunny day; a couple who brought us warm, homemade brownies; seeing the fire scars that dotted parts of the landscape. 

The days were filled with magical moments served up by the natural world: a trip to a waterfall, spotting a barred owl, loon calls, fish that leap out of the water, a meteor shower.

We hiked five hours up a mountain and camped in the alpine, surrounded by 360-degree mountain scenery unlike anything I’d seen in my life. The jagged rock. The patches of sparse trees amid a grassy ridge. A sunset, a sunrise and a total state of zen. 

Falling in love repeatedly with the natural world, while also witnessing the scars being inflicted upon it, feels like an awful impossibility. How can you not be sanguine looking out at mountains that have made it through millions of years? And yet, reality kept smacking me in the face.

‘At one with the world’

On our final night, we camped next to two brothers — David and Peter Hatto, 83 and 79 years young. They were nine days into their trip, at their fourth campsite, and reminding us that, in our 30s, we hopefully have many more decades doing these adventures. David lived in Jasper until the fires tore through and destroyed his home. He’s waiting for it to be rebuilt.

When I connected with him a week later, I asked David what keeps drawing him to the backcountry. “Once I’m there, inevitably I’m all by myself, and to be able to just sit and absorb the relaxation and beauty of the area is definitely psychologically healing,” he told me, reflecting on hikes along Athabasca Pass trail in Jasper National Park. “You feel more or less at one with the world in a place like that, and it makes you realize how small and insignificant you are at the same time.”

As we left the brothers back at Murtle, we drove back through Jasper and its own ongoing reality. Smoke lingered in the air and got heavier on the way down toward Banff, the mountains at times barely visible.

“Well it was nice to forget about the climate apocalypse for at least a week,” one friend remarked.

But that’s the thing: it’s hard to truly forget. To be a human in nature is to be reminded of the impacts of a warming world and the human actions that are causing it.

The beauty and the destruction follows us everywhere. Sometimes, all we can do is feel grateful for those flashes of awe — and remind ourselves, and the people around us, that it wasn’t always this way, that it’s worth fighting for, that there’s still a path to making things a little bit better.

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John Pomeroy had only been back in Canmore, Alta., for two weeks, returning from a research trip in Tibet, when he heard the news of a glacier collapse in Nepal. 

The director of the University of Saskatchewan’s Centre for Hydrology has been working non-stop ever since, trying to make sense of what happened. 

“It’s just horrific,” Pomeroy said. 

When he saw the magnitude of the disaster, Pomeroy immediately made contact with his Nepalese colleagues to assist with analysis. 

As of Sept. 1, when The Narwhal last spoke with Pomeroy, he said the team believes that years of warm temperatures, a particularly warm, wet summer and thawing permafrost led rock to fracture. The rock combined with glacier ice to form an avalanche of debris, on top of releasing a large volume of meltwater which had been stored in the glacier. The torrent of debris immediately formed a wave of destruction.

More than 1,000 people are dead and thousands more are missing. 

“It was very, very fast,” said Pomeroy, who is also a UNESCO chair in mountain water sustainability. 

Early warning systems weren’t capable of giving enough time, Pomery explained. It wasn’t until later when officials could see water levels rising — a precursor to the tsunami that was coming, that a flood warning could be issued downstream. 

“It looks like a lot of the warnings came from the local communities,” Pomeroy said. “They got messages out that the wave was coming to the next [communities] downstream before communications were wiped out.”

The team was monitoring three lakes that had formed since the impact, which were at risk of breaking and causing further flooding. Pomeroy said the lower lake caused high flows on Friday, leading to evacuation.

While that flow has subsided, there’s still danger from the two remaining lakes, Pomeroy explained. 

“It’s not safe yet,” he said. “And this glacier is still very unstable and more could break apart.”

While Pomeroy has research collaborations in Tibet focused on the problems associated with a warming climate, much of his research is focused in Canada, which is home to more than 30,000 glaciers. 

Pomeroy and upwards of 20 students and technicians study mountain glaciers, snow and hydrology from the University of Saskatchewan’s Coldwater Laboratory in Canmore, Alta.

He wants people to know that what’s happening with glaciers in Canada, and globally, is about so much more. It’s about the cryosphere — everything that’s frozen, from permafrost, to glaciers, to snow and ice caps. 

The Narwhal spoke with Pomeroy over the phone to learn more about what’s happening with our glaciers and what, if anything, we can do about it. 

This conversation was edited for length and clarity.

Glaciers seem to fly under the radar here. There are events happening related to glaciers in Canada and they don’t really get a lot of attention.

I agree, we don’t tend to have communities right under a glacier in most places, like they do in Switzerland or Nepal or the Andes. But we do have many, many glaciers. We have more glaciers than any other country.

We’ve lost hundreds, maybe thousands of them, and we have many more to lose, unfortunately. In the Canadian Rockies, we’ve lost about a quarter of the glacier volume since the turn of the century and this is one of the highest rates of loss in the world.

Most of the glaciers are more remote. And because we’ve got these U-shaped valley bottoms, we tend to put our infrastructure pretty far away from those glaciers.

But even if our infrastructure is further away, would that mean that we shouldn’t worry about it?

Well there’s a massive casualty event that almost happened in the Canadian Rockies. It was in 2012 in the summer, and a piece of the [Ghost Glacier] capped off along with a rock fall and fell into the pond beneath it. It caused a tsunami type wave that washed out the trails, the picnic areas, the parking lot and the road around Mount Edith Cavell [in Jasper National Park]. This is a very, very busy area. It happened in the middle of the night and no one was hurt.

If that had happened at three o’clock in the afternoon we could have had casualties of hundreds of people in that area. 

So we do have places at risk. We have many tourism spots where you can go in and hike in and look up and see a glacier overhead. Those glaciers are falling apart, they’re disintegrating. We do have regions like Lake Louise [in Banff National Park], others in Jasper National Park and the Columbia Icefield area that are essentially risky. The risk varies and it changes rapidly over time.

I’d never thought about Lake Louise as a place of risk, but do you mean Mount Victoria and the glacier?

Yeah, Mount Victoria at the back, simply because the number of climbers and others go in that area. In our situation it’s more alpinists that are exposed to that sort of terrain. 

Then, you know, things that have happened at the Bugaboos mountain range and others. These things are happening. And then the debris flows associated with thawing ground and heavy rains, this is also loss of the cryosphere. These things wash out the Trans-Canada Highway and some of the connecting roads almost every year somewhere and at least cause a temporary closure.

Let’s define ‘cryosphere’ — which means the frozen parts of the Earth. Can you speak more about the big picture, beyond just glaciers?

So glaciers are, of course, fed by snow.

If we don’t get the snowfall we get a melting glacier. The deeper the snow, the slower the glacier melts; the shallower the snow, the faster it melts. So that glacier snowpack tie-in is really strong. But it’s also important for permafrost because frozen ground doesn’t begin to thaw until the snow melt has occurred.

In a year with a late snowpack in the mountains, all the ground stays frozen pretty late in the year. In a year like we had in 2023, where it melts a month early or a month and a half early, then the ground thaw starts immediately after the snow disappears. 

Ultimately it’s driven by rising temperatures. And those rising temperatures — we’ve shown that 1.5 C is too much warming to hold the cryosphere together in the Rockies.

Even if climate warming stopped tomorrow and temperatures didn’t increase anymore, we’d lose almost all of them by the time we got into the early part of the 22nd century. 

So this is already too warm for the frozen part of the planet, and we’re warming up more all the time and this is human driven.

Glacial meltwater ends up in the oceans and contributes to rising ocean levels which floods coastal cities and ports. The thawing sea ice in the Arctic Ocean results in greater coastal erosion, reduced populations of seals and polar bears and other issues for that ecosystem.

The declining lake ice in our big lakes in Canada contributes to algae blooms in the summer and greater coastal erosion. The loss of winter snowpack means the winter roads that supply remote Indigenous communities have to shut early and are not as effective.

The other thing that’s shown up in just the last few years is that streams draining the Arctic tundra have acidified rapidly since 2023. 

And these were pristine streams that have now turned orange and become acidic and are full of heavy metals and sulfuric acid. And this is leaching of minerals from thawing permafrost into the streams, making them toxic. So we’re getting these rapid, rapid changes everywhere. And it manifests differently in every environment across Canada.

Why do you think it is that the connection [with ice melt] is not necessarily made?

For glaciers it’s partly because Canada doesn’t view itself as a mountain country. Not in the way that Switzerland or Norway would, or Nepal. And that’s odd because we have more glaciers than any other country on the planet, and we have some of the most spectacular mountain landscapes. These are UNESCO World Heritage Sites, but we don’t see that at the heart of our country. It’s at the western or northern edge of our country.

Also, we tended to avoid the glaciated areas, the really colder areas, because of the harsh winters associated with them.

But we’re all going to be feeling the effects whether we see it or not

Yeah, we are. It’s already impoverishing us economically. It’s causing ecosystem changes, collapses in some areas, and it’s going to get far, far worse. It’s accelerating rapidly.

When you say it’s impoverishing us economically, are you referring to infrastructure?

Wildfires have a strong association with the winter snowpack and the timing of spring snow melt. And we’ve had low snowpacks and early melts in exactly the worst wildfire years in the last few years. So the trigger for those early season wildfires is the low early snowpack.

The lowest snowpack and earlier snowmelt on record in the Fort McMurray area was 2016, just before the massive fires that destroyed that city, as an example. The other is thawing permafrost.

There’s lots of talk now about expanding the use of Churchill as a port on Hudson Bay due to the shorter ice covered season there. But the problem remains the train line, which has flooded out from snowmelt events and collapsed due to the thawing permafrost, and that’s getting worse.

Then there’s the hydroelectricity and the algae blooms. And then drought. Snowpack primarily, and glaciers to a secondary degree, provide water supply for vast downstream areas. So the Saskatchewan River Basin across the prairie provinces, which supports irrigation districts in cities like Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Regina, Prince Albert, Medicine Hat and the Okanagan from snowmelt gas struggled in recent years with snow droughts, resulting in low water levels and restrictions in irrigation and even urban water consumption. It ties into hydroelectric droughts as well because if the stream flow’s not there hydroelectricity’s generation capacity is lower as well.

What do you think Canada can or should do about this? 

Well, the first thing is to have a strong greenhouse gas mitigation strategy. Achieving net zero at the earliest possible opportunity. By that I mean 2030, 2035. It shouldn’t be an option. It’s a necessity for survival.

And we need to do that in concert with other countries around the world. That’s gonna be incredibly difficult, but we have to push for that and make that case in our foreign policy. 

The second is a plan for adaptation. Understand that floods will be different, droughts will be different, more severe, these glacier and permafrost and snow hazards will be increasing in mountain and other cool regions and that means more monitoring. More observation stations, better satellite measurement of these things and better predictions of floods or droughts or extreme events that may ensue from them. 

And then also working with communities to ensure that those early warning systems are appropriate for those communities and that community knowledge is used to design these things. Often the most vulnerable communities are Indigenous. And so those systems need to be designed with Indigenous people, bringing in their understanding and their knowledge systems into this to make effective prediction systems.

It requires big changes, but if we don’t start now, we’re not going to get there.

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When the fire came to the Okanagan Indian Band on Aug. 1, Sienna Belanger’s first instinct was to catch her horses.

Winds reached 115 kilometres per hour, with sustained speeds of 80 kilometres per hour, according to the BC Wildfire Service. Six-foot-tall flames ripped through the grassland, prompting evacuation orders for thousands of people.

“I only managed to get one of my horses,” she said. “Then we just opened up the gate and ran with them down to our bottom field. They got loose. All I could do was hope and pray.”

Sienna did not know the syilx word qwilmiʔst when the Bradley Creek wildfire came, but she lived it. The teaching describes a person who pulls together their physical skills, their sharpest thinking, their deepest intuition and their spiritual awareness and acts without hesitation. 

It is what the Old People call on when facing anything serious. To hold back part of yourself is to risk everything. To give your whole self is how you meet the unknown.

As the fire grew closer, the flames were everywhere. Sienna ran through the smoke, through the flames, to turn on the water at her mother’s barn. 

She started dousing the flames. She does not remember making the decision, but she remembers her body moving.

“It was just like that adrenaline moment where you do something or you freeze, and my loved ones froze, and I just couldn’t in that moment myself not do anything,” she said. 

“I just felt like a different switch turned on, and I was like, ‘Okay, there are things to do, things I need to organize.’ ”

She was not thinking or hesitating, she was qwilmiʔst. All of herself was in motion.

A land worker, a horsewoman, a dreamer

Sienna has remained at home on the Okanagan Indian Band since the fire came over the hill on Aug. 1. She and her neighbours at Abel Cove were under evacuation order, but with such a short time to leave, they chose to stay.

Her papa had always been intentional about who lived in this community.

“My papa did really good in picking his people for his community,” Sienna says. “He chose people that would be helpful, that would be a good contribution to his family and an extension. And so all of these families who have stayed have been people who I’ve known my whole life.”

Even though he’s gone, she says, his efforts are still here. The people he chose knew how to fight fire. They knew how to hold their ground.

So, with no time to flee, or to pack, it was just Sienna, the fire, the wind and her horses.

The Bradley Creek wildfire has destroyed or damaged an estimated 245 structures on Okanagan Indian Band land, according to a formal assessment by Canada Task Force 1, a specialized search and rescue team deployed in urban environments. The team examined 513 structures over three days. As of Aug. 19, the fire was classified as “being held,” with more than 100 firefighters and six helicopters still working the perimeter.

For at least two weeks, there was a constant presence of blades chopping, of shadows of helicopters crossing the sky, of the distant rumble of bombers dropping fire retardant on the hillside above Sienna’s mother’s place and her grandmother’s house at the beach.

Sienna, 25, is a syilx sqilx’w youth born and raised at the Okanagan Indian Band. Her nsyilxcen name is xixʷutm, a name she carries from her great-granny Mary.

Sienna and her mother, Mariel Belanger, own and operate Studio Síspl̓k on the Okanagan Indian Band reserve, welcoming community organizations, schools and wellness programs for workshops that bring together storytelling, visual arts, land-based learning, food forest knowledge sharing and n’syilxcen language. It’s the kind of work she’s been doing for years: creek rehabilitation, forest restoration, plant identification, seed harvesting — work that has always been about connection. 

That work is rooted in the nsisúlaʔxʷ Food Forest Project, a living, land-based classroom and gathering place where Sienna’s food plants, medicines and community are able to grow in kinship with one another. She’s also been on a language revitalization journey for six years, learning to speak the words her ancestors spoke.

She has been building a food forest on 10 acres of her family’s property, dreaming of a space where her people could harvest berries and medicines.

The fire took Sienna’s food forest. More than 100 plants, berries, medicines — the careful work of years— reduced to ash. It took her prospector tent and a platform she had built for outdoor education. It took her plans for a creative space.

Coyote is destroyed. Fox gathers the bits. Coyote comes back to life.

In the captikʷɬ, the syilx law story system, there is a pattern that repeats again and again. Coyote is destroyed through his own foolishness, through greed, through ignorance. And Fox always comes along to gather the bits, the hair, the bone, the fragments of what remains, and breathes them back to life. Something is lost. Something is gathered. Something is brought back. These stories are how knowledge is renewed. These stories are how people survive.

Sienna does not talk about the loss of her food forest with self-pity. She talks about it with survivor’s guilt.

“Even though my work burned, we survived compared to the rest of the community, who’ve totally lost everything,” she says.

And yet, just two weeks after the fire, she says, “There are some parts of my food forest coming back. I’ve been checking on it every day and am seeing new life already, little green shoots are starting to come up.”

Sienna is Fox. She is gathering the bits. She is watching for the green shoots. She is breathing new life into what remains.

Sienna’s grandmother has been staying with her through all of this, offering emotional support. She has watched Sienna work herself to exhaustion, caring for the horses, checking on the food forest, organizing supplies, making sure everyone else was okay before she ever stopped to breathe.

One day, she sat Sienna down and told her something Sienna is still trying to hold onto.

“My grandma recognized what I was going through and told me, you are allowed to accept kindness right now.”

Sienna’s grandmother has seen fire take what her people built. She has seen them rebuild. She knows survivor’s guilt is heavy, and that accepting help is part of the ceremony of healing.

Grief needs a witness

On the morning after the fire passed by her house, a chestnut stallion appeared at Sienna’s fence. She recognized him.

Her cousin Devyn McMillan runs Rewild Ranch, which provides equine-assisted therapy — workshops and events where people can connect with horses. 

“I sent my cousin a message,” Sienna says. “I was like, ‘Hey, your red stallion’s here. He’s okay. I hope you guys are okay.’ I had no idea at that time that her house was gone until my grandma told me that her family barely escaped.”

It was then that Sienna and her grandmother decided it was time to go look for her cousin Devyn’s horses and to finally go and acknowledge themselves what happened to her family’s homestead. 

As they passed what had been the family homestead, there was nothing left but chimneys standing against the sky. Her grandmother started crying.

“We wanted to look away, we didn’t want to see what happened,” Sienna says, tearing up.

But they looked together. That is what you do. In syilx teachings, you do not turn from grief. You face it and let it be witnessed.

Sienna cried too. She let the tears come down, but she did not stop; she knew she had work to do.

She drove to her cousin’s property and saw the horses standing there. 

“I got there and started counting, one, two, three, four, there were 12 of them, and I had one of the stallions at my house, it was 13, I was so happy, it was all of them,” she said.

Sienna grabbed a bucket and a lead rope and walked into the field. She caught one horse and led it into the sand arena. Then she went back for the rest.

“At that time, my heart just totally broke for my cousin because it’s such a hard thing to go through, to lose everything,” Sienna says. “She had built her hopes and dreams on those horses, and I understand because we both love horses in the same way.”

Sienna doesn’t see herself as the hero of this story. She didn’t know a convoy was already on its way; she just knew what needed to be done. She also noticed something that said everything about Devyn’s horses: they were still together, still standing in the place they knew. Scattered horses run. “That’s how you know they are well-trained horses,” Sienna says. “They know to stay together. They know home.”

Friends and family came together anyway. Neighbours organized a supply run with 16 bags of horse feed and a box of groceries. It was the Old Way. The people came together, and what one could not carry, many could.

“It was truly that moment when a village came together to help,” Sienna says. “I just felt so blessed and touched.”

Sienna is also quick to acknowledge the community that surrounded her. Mary’s Emerald Bay, she says, is where people stuck to the teachings her papa passed down about fire safety. They came together in their time of need, saving themselves, saving their neighbours and saving the animals. They even rescued a burnt kitty.

Of the 21 homes at Mary’s Emerald Bay, only one has minimal fire damage. The rest survived because of the people who knew what to do and did it together.

‘If I can fight flames, I can get on the back of a horse again’

As of mid-August, helicopters were still flying. Evacuation orders are slowly being lifted, but Sienna and her community are still under an evacuation order zone. They’ve been actively trying to get permits to leave, but technically, they’re still stuck, unable to leave for two weeks now. The waiting is the hardest part.

“Since being stuck here and being isolated, it’s been a little hard on our mental health,” Sienna says. “The land work was a way for me to keep busy and keep all my mental health issues at bay. Fire really has done a number on that.”

And yet, being isolated has also given her time to return to something she thought she had lost: horse training. Years ago, her horse Lily kicked her in the head, fracturing her skull and leaving her deaf in one ear. The accident left her with lingering brain damage, with issues that still follow her today. She has not been able to fully get back on Lily since.

But she says something changed in her after she walked through the flames.

“In my mind, if I can fight flames, I can get on the back of a horse again,” she says.

She has started slowly, partially sitting on Lily for brief moments. She has not been able to do that since the accident.

She is learning to trust her body again. To trust the horse, and to trust that she can survive what has already happened to her. The fire taught her that if she could face the flames, she could face her fear. She could get back on. “It’s been so rewarding,” she says. 

She is still planning: packaging seeds she harvested from the food forest, traditional sunflowers and vegetable garden varieties for a seed sale. A concert with music collective Kinfolk Nation that she is hoping will still happen in September. Black, Indigenous and queer artists, coming together on the land. Food harvested from the land, cooked on the land.

“My dream was to create a space that was organic for plant material, for berries, for harvesting, for all of our people’s traditional uses,” she says.

She has been sketching a new design for her food forest. Since her tractor survived, she has the ability to move soil, to transform her place again.

“I’ve been trying to step out of that guilt so I can get back to what I was doing,” Sienna says.

The fire could not take her, or her horses. It could not take the green shoots pushing through the ash of her food forest, and it could not take the teachings her grandmothers and papa passed down. It could not take the courage she found in the smoke, and it could not take her dream.

So she is still here, moving, and gathering the bits and breathing them back to life. And now, she is sitting on Lily’s back again, learning to trust herself and the horse, because if she could fight flames, she could get back on, so she did.

That is qwilmiʔst. That is Fox. And Sienna will still be here — breathing new life into what remains.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The injury is often invisible to others.

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

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

My concern extends beyond my own situation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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While health officials urge people to stay indoors due to the smoke draping the Midwest, experts say we should remember the same polluted air affecting humans is also threatening animals. 

On July 16, Detroit ranked as the worst air quality in the world with a 724 index — climbing past the 300-point threshold on the Air Quality Index, where air quality is considered hazardous. In second place sat Toronto, then Minneapolis, Minnesota and in fourth place was Chicago.

According to Dr. Jack Harkema, a veterinary pathologist at Michigan State University, the effects of wildfire smoke on animals aren’t just a single symptom. 

“It doesn’t affect just the lungs, but also the cardiovascular system and the metabolic system,” Harkema said. “We’ve actually even looked at the effects on the brain, and there’s increased inflammation in the brain as well.”

Wildfire smoke may be even more harmful to animals than the everyday air pollution found in cities, he said. 

“Wildfire smoke is probably even more toxic than our regular urban particulate matter. These particles create a lot of oxidants, they damage tissue and they cause inflammation locally in the lung, but then that inflammation can spread to other organs.”

Wildfire smoke contains a mixture of pollutants, including fine particles known as PM2.5. Those microparticles are small enough to go deep into the lungs and, sometimes, enter the bloodstream.

“PM2.5 particles are inhalable,” Mayra Oyola, an assistant professor in the department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Wisconsin Madison, said. “They can get into the lungs and, just like in humans, they stay there. They can damage respiratory and cardiovascular tissue in anything that breathes. So it’s not just us.”

The fires that are impacting the Midwest are mainly contained toward the lower part of Ontario. But the smoke from these fires has migrated from wind paths to reach the Midwest.

“Animals close to the fires, that’s the biggest concern, because they will be displaced,” Oyola said. “More often than not, they move into human-populated areas. That creates risk for both humans and the animals.”

Birds are especially vulnerable to wildfire smoke because their respiratory system is more efficient than other mammals, according to research scientist at Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology Olivia Sanderfoot. While that helps them get more oxygen, it also means they breathe in more harmful particles from polluted air.

“Birds are able to take up twice as much oxygen with each breath compared to mammals, which also means they’re getting an extra-heavy dose of anything toxic in the air,” Sanderfoot said.

“We’ve known for a long time that birds are more vulnerable,” she said. “So I’m especially worried about them in this smoke.”

Other outdoor animals can also suffer. Because of respiratory diseases like heaves, livestock that spend their time outdoors are exposed for days or weeks to smoky conditions, which heightens risks, Harkema said.

“If this continues, you’re going to see more illness in humans and animals.”

For pet owners, Dr. Jennifer Henderson, a veterinarian at Vetco Total Care in Chicago, said taking the same precautions you would take for yourself is ideal. 

“The same concerns apply to our pets that apply to humans,” Henderson said. “You just want to keep them inside or limit their activity outside so it doesn’t cause any flare-up.”

Owners should also watch closely for signs that smoke may be affecting their animals.

“I think respiratory symptoms, with the coughing and the lethargy, are the main things to watch for,” Henderson said. 

She also recommends monitoring for bloodshot eyes, squinting or other signs of eye irritation. The guidance is ultimately simple, Henderson said: if the air isn’t healthy for people, it probably isn’t healthy for pets either.

“Similar to how they’re dealing with it for themselves, [they should] apply the same concerns and strategies to their pets,” she said. “You can’t put a mask on a dog, so it’s really just keeping them out of the environment or limiting their time.”

Harkema recommends limiting walks to brief bathroom breaks and avoiding strenuous exercise.

“You don’t want to exercise them because more of these particulate matter and other air toxicants can get into the lung and cause inflammation,” Harkema said.

Sanderfoot said keeping pets in cool, air-conditioned spaces with clean, filtered air whenever possible is best. 

As wildfire seasons grow longer and more intense, Sanderfoot says she expects poor air-quality events to become a more frequent occurrence across North America.

“The issue is that climate change is supercharging these fires and lengthening our fire season,” Sanderfoot said. “The bigger the fire, the more smoke.”

According to Oyola, research shows wildfire smoke will become a persistent problem.

“It’s very clear that climate change is real and that it’s not slowing down,” she said. “With drier conditions and warmer conditions, we should expect more events like this.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eventually, I had to leave too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Summary

• Indigenous culture camps are happening across Canada this summer. Revitalizing cultural practices, spending time on the land, and participating in ceremonies is the focus of most camps. 
• Despite dozens of wildfires across B.C., organizers are fulfilling their commitments, highlighting the importance of hosting communities and organizations.
• Some culture camps have been happening for decades, while other communities hosted their first camp this year.

For 10 days in July, Qaqaqam Chris Wells spent time on the land camping with Líl̓wat youth, teaching Lil̓wat7úl cultural protocols, songs and stories. The Kwáozán̓tsut cultural summer camps have been “a long time coming,” he said. 

“Bringing our children back onto the land is teaching them land based healing and learning,” Wells told the Narwhal. “It was really awesome to bring back our culture.”

Hosted at Klháka7min, previously known as the Coast Mountain Outdoor School, two separate age groups camped for five days each between July 6th and July 17th. 

Though the youth were a bit shy at first, Wells and fellow camp leaders Ánwasúlmec Brett Wallace and Sík Sík Joshua Anderson say that by the end of each cohort, seeing how the participants had come out of their shells was a highlight.

“It was extra special for me: I had two of my daughters there, one in each age group,” Anderson said. “It was an opportunity to spend more time with them during the busy summer.”

During this year’s culture camp, a wildfire prompted evacuations in Pemberton, located approximately 25 kilometres down the road. Despite the nearby fire, the culture camps were a success — connecting youth with tradition, the land and culture. 

“We were pretty safe from all the fires happening around us,” Wells said. He’s stewarded the territory since he was a youth.

Land-based learning, education and connection

Between the two age groups — 9 to 12-year-olds, and teens — 30 youth attended the camps. 

Líl̓wat Elders took youth out onto the land, teaching them about edible berries and teas that grow in the area during that time of year.

“Every evening we had singing and drumming, and talked about cultural protocols. We talked about the origin of the songs. We talked about our ceremonies,” Wells said. 

Archery, axe throwing and rifle shooting with the older age group all took place with laughter and storytelling throughout. 

Youth had the opportunity to make traditional rattles and smudge bowls, ceremonial items that can be hard to access for a young person. Anderson said numerous parents reached out to him after the camp, sharing how their child went home wanting to practice their culture more through smudging. 

The youth even made a swimming hole to jump into cold glacier water, adding some casual fun into the mix, and relief from the hot summer days. 

“You can’t forget the fun part of it. We had the opportunity to play bone game in the evening time,” Anderson said, which showed the youth “how disputes were settled in a traditional manner.” 

The bone game is a traditional game used historically as an alternative to war by nations along the Salish Sea, and has other names such as “stick game” or “hand game” in other regions of Western Canada.

Youth were also split into three groups and tasked with helping in the kitchen. Local Lil̓wat7úl chef Casey Gabriel taught them how to cook for the group and clean up afterwards. 

The Kwáozán̓tsut Cultural Summer Camps were championed by the organizing trio of Anderson, Wells and Wallace, who are no strangers to hosting culture camps. But despite hosting camps in St’át’imc Nation communities for years, it took some time to prepare and build the trust required to host youth camps in their own nation. 

Now the Líl̓wat Nation wants to host another culture camp this fall. Wells, Wallace and Anderson are all looking forward to sharing their knowledge and helping out.

Now in its 15th year, Nlha’7kapmx annual culture camp is a ‘safe haven’

Excitement for future camps is a sentiment shared by Michelle Isaac, who always lends a helping hand at an annual Nlaka’pamux culture camp hosted at Pasulko Lake, located in B.C.’s Southern Interior.

“My stepmom at the time, Amy Chapman, brought me up to what used to be called the healing gathering. All I remember from there was how much of a difference it made in my life,” Isaac told the Narwhal. 

She attended the healing gathering after surviving a severe car accident, but over the years, the annual gathering lost volunteers and resources. 

Having experienced the healing energy of gathering herself, and meeting with the service agency about how to support community members, Isaac and a group of ladies working for Nlha’7kapmx Child and Family Services decided to spearhead a community based culture camp.

Now in its 15th year, people in the area look forward to gathering at Pasulko Lake each summer, practicing culture and being together on the land. 

This year, a mix of cultural activities, including drum making, cedar weaving and language friendship bracelet making took place, along with activities such as a tug-of-war game between youth and the local firefighting group, the Lytton Rattlers, and a performance by local band Ritchie and the Fenderman.

Isaac attends camp each year with her children, who are part of the Lower Nicola Indian Band community. While Isaac is not Indigenous herself, she still attends with an open heart and mind, supporting in any way she can. When wildfires are burning, she sees the camps as an especially important place for youth. 

“They’re able to come up there and do the activities, do the crafts, I find it takes a lot of stress and fear from the fire away from them,” Isaac said. This year, it’s also been an important refuge for her as well, after she was evacuated in July due to the nearby Brunswick Creek wildfire.

“Fire-wise, for me it was a safe haven. My one daughter came up as well, who was also evacuated, and hung out all week there. It gave me a safe place,” she said.

Across B.C. and Canada, wildfires disproportionately impact First Nations communities. Though they represent only five per cent of the population, it’s estimated that First Nations make up 42 per cent of all wildfire evacuations. 

As wildfires blaze all around the Interior, the camp offered a break from smoke for those in attendance. On event posters this year, air quality warnings were addressed, with evacuation routes marked along the way to camp as a precaution.

People who attended camp were asked to register at the sign in desk daily, to track who was there, and were informed about a muster point in the event of evacuation. 

The decision to continue on with both culture camps was deliberated by organizers carefully, with designated people monitoring surrounding wildfires.

Renegerating the land through fire

B.C. was the first province or territory in Canada to ban cultural burning in 1874, prohibiting generations of Indigenous people from stewarding their territories with fire. In 2024, 150 years later, the province officially amended wildfire regulations to support cultural burns. Today, many nations are in the process of reclaiming this practice, including Líl̓wat. 

“We can’t look at fire as dangerous all of the time. We gotta look at it as an element that helps us regenerate, and help us repurpose the land,” Wallace added.

An example of fire regenerating the land was visible to those at Líl̓wat’s culture camps through an abundance of berries, following a cultural burn several years before.

“That specific area was culturally burnt seven or eight years ago and now finally it’s starting to reproduce huckleberries,” Wallace said. “It’s not just a small piece of land, it’s a really big area, and the whole area was covered in huckleberries and raspberries because of these cultural burns that happened.”

Youth were able to harvest these berries, and surrounding wildlife have a tasty treat. 

And in the era of technology, culture camps give youth the opportunity to disconnect from the internet, and to connect with the natural world. 

“Back in our time, we didn’t have technology to hold us back from being out on the land,” Wells said. “It’s important to return to land-based healing … to be St’át’imc, and to do St’át’imc things.”

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“What are you going to do about wildland firefighter mental health?”

The question came to Jim Johansson — a former wildland firefighter and assistant professor in the faculty of nursing at the University of Alberta — from a student in December 2023. Canada had just experienced its deadliest wildfire season on record.

Eight wildland firefighting personnel died in 2023 in Western Canada and the Northwest Territories, prompting scrutiny of the profession’s hidden costs: chronic fatigue, physical and mental burnout and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Now, the 2026 fire season has made one thing unmistakingly clear: the psychological toll of wildland firefighting in North America has reached new levels. In June, two wildland firefighters and a bush pilot died in a plane crash near Fort Simpson, N.W.T. Several days later, three firefighters were fatally burnt while working on a wildfire along the Utah-Colorado border, while a fourth died on July 24 from injuries he sustained. 

Kylie Foisy, the nursing student who sent the email about mental health to Johansson back in 2023, had just wrapped up her rookie season as an initial attack crew member in northwestern Alberta. Initial attack crews are the first on the scene of new blazes, tasked with quickly extinguishing them. On her second day on the job in May 2023, Foisy’s crew was dispatched to a 5,000-hectare wildfire. “It was so crazy,” she says. “But so fun.”

She loved the intensity of the work and the strong bonds she developed with her crew, but the summer unfolded with more sobering events, including a fatal helicopter crash in her district. For Foisy’s crew it was “business as usual” the next day, she says. For the duration of the season she felt the impacts wearing on her mental well-being, and could see others were also struggling.

For Johansson, Foisy’s email was a call to action. And it was the very start of what is now Canada’s first wildland firefighter peer-support network. Johansson has assembled a team of veteran wildland firefighters, occupational health therapists, psychologists and climate specialists to co-create and launch a new peer-support network in Alberta “by wildland firefighters, for wildland firefighters” — the first of its kind in Canada.

Johansson hopes to apply what he’s learned over the past decade as a mental health nurse to bolster support for those on the frontlines of wildfire. A year after Foisy’s email landed in his inbox, he hired her as a research assistant. Together, they’re undertaking a qualitative research project to examine the mental health challenges related to wildland firefighting and climate change in Alberta.Already, they’ve heard stories from those who have experienced or witnessed crew members escape near-death scenarios, including close calls with fallen trees or vehicle collisions. Others were impacted by fatal tragedies, like in August 2024, when 24-year-old firefighter Morgan Kitchen was killed by a fallen tree while working on the Jasper wildfire. Last week, as the two-year anniversary of Kitchen’s death approached, six workplace safety charges were laid against Alberta’s Ministry of Forestry and Parks in relation to it, for failing to take measures to assess and control hazards related to dangerous trees — along with failing to adequately train firefighters to identify hazardous trees. The first court appearance is scheduled for this September, in Jasper.

Wildfire fighters lack the supports of municipal firefighters

Despite working on the frontlines of some of Canada’s most intense climate-related disasters, most wildland firefighters are classified as forestry workers — not first responders — under Canada’s national occupational classification system. They also often lack the wages, pensions and benefits afforded to municipal firefighters. 

Johansson was all too familiar with the working conditions on the frontlines of wildfires. He had worked as an initial attack firefighter in Alberta from 2001 to 2009, then taught up-and-coming crew members and leaders at the Hinton Training Centre until 2013. Johansson led an initial attack crew from 2005 to 2009, working 12- to 16-hour days over three-week shifts, hauling hose through muskeg and pumping water from swamps to extinguish wildfires.

Despite the low pay, the camaraderie and joy of spending days in the bush “got into his blood,” Johansson says. “There’s a culture of wildland firefighting that I felt so happy in, and that didn’t really exist anywhere else,” he says.

Yet, there were psychological hazards, too. In 2007, a helicopter carrying an initial attack crew crashed near Fort McMurray, killing 22-year-old Patrick Dominic Watters-Michaud. After the news arrived, Johansson had to “jump in a helicopter and go day-base that day,” he says. Day-basing involves relocating crews to high-risk wildfire areas to increase their chances of extinguishing the fires when they’re still small. The next day, wildland firefighters informally banded together, lowering the flags at bases across the province, “mourning the loss of one of our people,” Johansson recalls.

Alberta Wildfire managers raised the flags, citing that the firefighter did not meet the criteria of their flag-lowering policy. The policy changed in 2008 after crew leaders filed formal complaints. Alberta Wildfire did not respond to questions from The Narwhal about this incident or any other questions.

The incident opened Johansson’s eyes to the “legitimate danger” of wildland firefighting, and he became increasingly anxious to fly on helicopter patrols — a routine part of firefighting work where crew members survey the landscape for new ignitions. But it also shone a light on what he says is the government’s ongoing failure to provide safe, culturally relevant mental health support to wildland firefighters.

Johansson became increasingly vocal as a leader, advocating for the safety and well-being of his crew. He would eventually be “DNRed” by the Edson district — a term referring to Alberta Wildfire’s “Do Not Rehire” policy. Alberta Wildfire does not grant seasonal firefighters automatic recall rights from one season to the next, unlike other Canadian provinces like B.C. Alberta Wildfire did not respond to questions about whether this policy exists or how it’s applied.

After leaving wildfire, it felt like Johansson was “starting all over again,” he says. He decided to pursue higher education in nursing, specializing in mental health. 

Johansson doesn’t want his research limited to publishing papers.

“When I put my nursing lens on firefighting, I’m always looking for strengths and how we can mobilize those to help people. In wildfire, that strength is the people,” Johansson says. “That’s what keeps firefighters coming back every season.”

Climate change and gaps in mental health support put Alberta’s wildland firefighters at risk

For his research, Johansson interviewed 17 former and current wildland firefighters in Alberta. He shared preliminary results with The Narwhal.

Early data from Johansson’s qualitative research has raised some red flags. The majority of wildland firefighters Johansson spoke to agreed the 2023 fire season was a “turning point” in their careers. Crews spent a higher number of days actively fighting fires in increasingly risky and volatile environments. It’s “non-stop all season long,” and there’s fatigue and additional safety issues that come with that, researchers found.

Initial attack and unit crew leaders also spoke to Johansson about mental health challenges related to high turnover of crew members. “In the past, most crews would only have a small number of rookies each year,” Johansson says. An Alberta Wildfire document, leaked to The Narwhal, analyzes the results of a wildfire crew exit survey in 2023, and indicates that “60 per cent of all firefighters were either brand new, or entering their second year.” 

Alberta Wildfire did not respond to any questions about the findings of Johannson’s research.

Johansson’s research found leaders were worried about dividing their attention between managing large-scale wildfires, and simultaneously supervising a higher number of rookies less familiar with volatile fire behaviour and danger trees, whose unstable roots and surrounding soil could result in suddenly toppling over. In addition, some reported that third-year firefighters were being pushed prematurely into leadership roles, he says.

There are broader labour issues in Alberta too, including that wildland firefighters lack paid sick days and health benefits. There are some limited mental health services available — including a counselling hotline — but interviewees expressed hesitation, or lack of trust about confidentiality when using the services for fear they might not be hired back the following spring, Johansson says.

Wildland firefighters are left to fend for themselves in the off-season — when they often need supports the most

Johansson often compares the dynamics of wildland firefighting to that of soldiers returning from combat. “[Wildland firefighters] exist in these really high-intensity situations. They have a tight-knit peer support network that keeps them safe mentally,” he says.

But when the wildfire season ends in the fall and seasonal firefighters’ contracts are terminated, they suddenly lose that support network.

For Jessica Broder, a former wildland firefighter with the BC Wildfire Service, when she left her crew to spend the winters in other communities she lost her “sounding board for processing.” She also points to the reality of wildland firefighters relying on substances to cope through the off-season. A study of U.S. wildland firefighters found that nearly four in five respondents reported binge drinking before and after the fire season.

Broder worked on a unit crew in Revelstoke, B.C., in 2023, the summer her colleague Devyn Gale was killed by a fallen tree. The accident felt all too relatable, Broder says. She herself had narrowly avoided falling trees and knew others had experienced similar close calls. 

After Gale’s accident, she and her crew participated in critical incident stress management debriefs, and had access to a clinical counsellor with a history in wildland firefighting.

Broder and her crew accrued approximately 100 fireline days in the 2023 season (a unit crew would be happy if they got 60 days, according to Broder). While initial attack crews respond to wildfires with the goal of quickly extinguishing them, unit crews are 20-person crews that specialize in “sustained action,” or longer-term firefighting efforts on mega-fires. In September, her crew was deployed to northern B.C. to work on the Big Creek fire, which she described as her “breaking point.” The Big Creek fire grew to more than 175,000 hectares in 2023 and triggered evacuation orders in the Takla Lake First Nation. Broder led a night shift, working from 5 p.m. until 9 a.m. the next morning, and had to evacuate camp when the wildfire threatened to burn it.

Broder worries that increasingly destructive wildfire seasons are exposing firefighters to greater psychological strain. While BC Wildfire Service has some mental health training, including a course offered through the Canadian Mental Health Association, adapted specifically for wildfire, called Resilient Minds, Broder would like to see more preparatory training for all wildland firefighters.

“We’re not giving people the tools to tell someone at 4 a.m. that their house is not ‘an achievable objective,’ or to go into a rural or Indigenous community [to engage with community members],” she points out, referring to how wildland firefighters have to knock on doors and tell community members to leave their homes — and sometimes warn them they are unlikely to have a home to return to.

Recently, Johansson recruited Broder — today a student at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, B.C. — onto his team to research existing mental health support programs for wildland firefighters in North America. “It’s something that really lacks across Canada,” she says. “I think [a peer-support network] could be transformational.”

‘It’s not a hopeless endeavour’: veteran wildland firefighter

Over a 30-year career, Michelle Wigmore fought wildfires across Canada and North America, led a 20-person unit crew and developed national training courses. Today, she’s teaming up with Johansson to help launch the peer-support network.

Over the years, Wigmore has seen wildland firefighters struggle with mental health, but says “it’s often not in the way people think.” Busy seasons and long hours can be challenging, but they’re also “why people join fire and stay in it,” she says. “It’s the excitement, adrenaline, you’re working as a team — it’s the greatest thing ever.” But it comes with immense pressure.

Wigmore has lost colleagues to helicopter accidents, health conditions and suicide. One year, a crew member died by suicide on his day off. 

A recent survey in the U.S. found 22 per cent of wildland firefighters have attempted suicide, while 37 per cent reported suicidal ideation. 

Rainy seasons can be just as psychologically hazardous, Wigmore says. When wildfire activity is low, crews may spend extended periods away from home without the opportunity to earn overtime. “That’s when I’ve seen the most issues come up,” she says.

The solutions don’t always need to be complicated, Wigmore says, and they’re most effective when they come from the ground up. Crew morale is at the heart of it, she says. “It’s not a hopeless endeavour.”

What helped her crew the most when they lost a colleague to suicide, was the show of solidarity from other wildland firefighters on base. They collectively decided to construct a bench in honour of their colleague and flew it to a nearby mountaintop.

In 2023, Wigmore wasn’t hired back on — she was “DNRed.” The “do not rehire” policy in Alberta is “barbaric,” Wigmore says. Wildland firefighters deserve job security and automatic recall rights, so they’re not afraid of advocating for their well-being, or safety, says the veteran firefighter

But she’s quick to credit recent progress. The Alberta government and union signed a new agreement in 2025 that will increase wages for crew members with the most years of service by more than 19 per cent by 2027. Wages for longest-serving crew leaders and supervisors will rise by more than 27 per cent and 31 per cent, respectively. 

“This is career-changing for people,” Wigmore says. “[Firefighters] that were planning their exit strategy … are now planning to stay.” Other major wildfire agencies in Canada, including B.C. and Ontario should take note, Wigmore says.

BC Wildfire leads cultural shift in mental health awareness

The devastating losses of six firefighters in B.C.’s wildland firefighting community in 2023 “struck a chord” for the BC Wildfire Service, Olivia Goldney, a safety specialist with the organization, says. “We need to have a strengthened culture of care for our staff and develop trauma-informed systems that can allow our staff to do this job long-term,” she adds.

Aside from chronic fatigue and burnout, wildland firefighters are grappling with a profound sense of “ecological grief,” as their communities and landscapes are burnt over by wildfires. Goldney experienced post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from her experiences as an initial attack crew leader in 2021, witnessing the devastating events of the Lytton fire, which tore through the community in 15 minutes, destroying homes and businesses, and killing two people.

Today, she’s leading the development of a new psychological health and safety strategy within the BC Wildfire Service. “We want to align psychological injuries closer to how we approach physical injuries,” Goldney says.

All wildland firefighters in B.C. have automatic recall rights and benefits, including sick days and partially paid short-term disability leave, according to Goldney. Once they have worked over a certain number of hours, they also receive a $1,000 annual health and wellness allowance that can be used for services such as massage therapy and counselling. A counselling hotline is available to all firefighters, while First Nations firefighters can also access a crisis line to access culturally informed support. A 2021 survey found more than 50 per cent of Indigenous wildland firefighters in Canada had experienced additional risks related to cultural discrimination on the frontlines.

After the 2023 season, BC Wildfire Service also launched a recovery program, a four-day intensive retreat that provides firefighters with therapeutic tools for their long-term recovery from work-related traumatic stress.  

While wildland firefighting has long been dominated by a culture of stoicism — “a kind of buck up and do the job,” Goldney says — she’s seeing a cultural shift within BC Wildfire Service’s leadership to acknowledge and address the psychological toll of the work.

“From the bottom to the top, there’s this ‘shake’ that’s happening culturally,” Goldney says. “People are understanding the work we do has profound impacts on a person.”

She points to systemic changes that are underway in B.C.: wildland firefighters are becoming increasingly recognized by their first responder peers in the province. Recently, BC Wildfire Service was invited to join the BC First Responders Mental Health committee, Goldney says. In addition, B.C. wildland firefighters will soon have the most comprehensive cancer coverage in all of Canada. She’s hopeful that federal legislation will change to recognize wildland firefighters as first responders.

“I think only good things are to come,” Goldney says.

Wildland firefighting peer-support network sets sights on launching in early 2027

If you had asked Johansson at 25 whether he was struggling with his mental health, he would have shrugged and replied, “Job’s fine. I’m fine.” Twenty years later, he’s no longer sure that was really the case.

That realization is part of why Johansson sees value in long-term support. His team plans to build a year-round support network for both active and retired wildland firefighters, offering a space where those still processing their experiences can find an informed, listening ear.

“You could be two, three, five, 10 years out and still access [support],” he says. 

Come September, after the fire season, Johansson’s team will brainstorm what the network could look like. There are already ideas of starting an online platform, a peer-support counselling line, group fitness challenges or even integrating supports into video games. 

They plan to launch the pilot peer-support network in Alberta in the spring of 2027 with the broader goal of eventually expanding across Canada. 

Already he’s receiving overwhelmingly enthusiastic reception and support for the project, he says. “[People] are like, ‘Thank you for doing this’, or ‘How can I help?’ It’s obviously filling a need.”

It’s been a full-circle moment for the former wildland firefighter, although Johansson admits that, emotionally, a part of him has never really left. 

Gardening in his backyard in Calgary often evokes the memory of “digging in the dirt, looking for hot spots,” he says. Even the faintest trace of wildfire smoke has a way of transporting him back to the frontlines. “It’s total nostalgia,” Johansson says.

“For a minute, I’m back in it.”

Updated on Aug. 7, 12:52 pm PST: A number of photographs in this story have been changed. The images originally used did not show a wildfire, but an Indigenous cultural burn, and misidentified attendees at the burn as employees of BC Wildfire.

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.

At recess, Abby Burtnick watches her Grade 4 and 5 students play in the schoolyard that borders an aspen and spruce forest in the Village of Haines Junction, Yukon. 

Known as Dakwäkäda by the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations, meaning “high cache” in Southern Tutchone, the valley is hemmed in by the glacier-capped mountains of neighbouring Kluane National Park and Reserve.

Burtnick’s students “check in,” scanning the bush as they play. From an early age, kids in Haines Junction are taught to confirm there are no grizzly bears or black bears around. Growing up in one of the densest grizzly bear corridors in Yukon — with a range of 14 to 40 grizzly bears per 1,000 square kilometres — kids learn young about the “things you should do in bear country and the things you shouldn’t do,” Burtnick says.

Most kids are unfazed when conservation officers call the school because there’s a bear in the area. When the rules are respected, grizzlies “don’t really cause issues,” Burtnick says. “They just exist.”

In 2024, not one but six grizzly bears were spotted along the five-kilometre trail of the school’s annual cross-country race that loops through a forested ravine. Conservation officers and wildland firefighters fanned out along the race route to ensure that the bears stayed off the trail. Burtnick was at the start-line, holding back 200 students, when she overheard a radio call about a grizzly on the race trail, followed by an update of two grizzlies mating.

The school delayed the race for an hour to give the grizzlies space to breed and move on. It’s the kind of thing that “only happens in the movies,” Burtnick says with a laugh. Or, in Haines Junction.

Communities in B.C. and Alberta are reporting higher rates of human-grizzly interactions and conflict — due, in part, to climate change, shifting food availability and habitat loss, along with more people living and recreating on the landscape. There are reactions ranging from fear to outright intolerance from communities who aren’t accustomed to sharing space with one of Canada’s largest apex predator species. Recently, authorities confirmed that two male subadult grizzly bears had been illegally shot along a highway near Sundre, Alta. 

Meanwhile, the Village of Haines Junction has quietly coexisted with grizzly bears for decades. For First Nations people, millennia. 

Here, people are proud — and even protective, Burtnick says — of the grizzly bears who den in the mountains and wander down to gorge on plants and berries in the valley below.

Grizzly bears in Haines Junction aren’t sold as a tourist commodity in the same way they are in other Canadian towns that overlap with bears — like Banff, Alta., or Churchill, Man. — and residents say they prefer it this way. They don’t want the “bear jams” that crowd highways down south and can lead to grizzlies being killed by vehicle traffic, Burtnick says.

So how does this small mountain community in southwest Yukon make it work? 

‘This is their land’

When John Fingland meets a grizzly bear on a trail, he heeds advice from Elders. He speaks calmly to the bear, addressing him as “Ä́’sía,” the Southern Tutchone word for “grandfather.”

“Bears are very spiritual to us. We treat them like human beings,” Fingland, a member of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations, says.

Fingland works as a guide and storyteller at the Da Kų Cultural Centre, which showcases his First Nation’s history and culture in Haines Junction. The village was established in 1942 with the construction of the Alaska Highway, which carves east and west through the valley. But the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations, along with the Kluane First Nation and White River First Nation, hunted, fished and travelled through the region for millennia before that.

There’s a kind of code of conduct that develops when you’ve lived so closely with grizzlies for 10,000 years. Fingland doesn’t speak badly or make jokes about bears. He even steps around piles of scat. Stepping over would be considered disrespectful — a show of dominance, he explains.

“We have a very strong belief that this is their land,” Fingland says. But not everyone has the same relationship with bears — or even a relationship at all. Especially tourists. Every summer, upwards of 40,000 people flow through Haines Junction on their way to Kluane National Park — home to the majority of Canada’s tallest mountains — to camp, paddle on Kluane Lake or hike to the Kaskawulsh Glacier.

At the village welcome centre, visitors are directed to the local bakery to buy or rent cans of bear spray. Bear spray contains capsaicin, the chemical compound that gives chili peppers their burning heat, and is considered highly effective at deterring aggressive bear behaviour. A study of 83 incidents of bear spray use from 1985 to 2006 showed 98 per cent of people who carried bear spray in close-range incidents were uninjured. Outside the bakery, there’s a sign with a QR code that links to online instructions for using bear spray. Inside, baristas whip up lattes, and offer essential tips to tourists: Do not spray into the wind.

Some residents carry it, too, even if they’re just out for a stroll. Marguerite Richard, who’s lived in Haines Junction since 1988, says she doesn’t need to see bears to know that they’re around. That’s not to say she’s “bearanoid,” she adds, but rather “situationally aware.” 

While walking, or trail running, Richard doesn’t wear ear buds. She stays alert. In town, Richard sometimes finds grizzly tracks or piles of scat. She’ll even take a closer look to get a read on how recently the bear was around, and what it was feeding on. 

“Coexistence is like a recipe, but it isn’t a teaspoon of this or that,” Richard says. It’s about risk assessment and modifying her own behaviours based on the season, or the bears she encounters.

Richard relies on reports from neighbours and a community-run Facebook page, where a typical photo post might include the caption, “Grizzly out between the airport road and Pine Lake, don’t use the trail!” 

The valley is a smorgasbord for bears. In early spring, grizzlies feed on green grass, dandelions and alpine sweetvetch, known aptly as “bear root,” along the highway. If they get the chance, they’ll prey on moose, sheep or caribou calves, along with smaller mammals like ground squirrels. Berries ripen through the summer into early fall as grizzlies undergo a metabolic state called hyperphagia, an extreme desire to pack on the calories.

It’s when bears are given a chance to habituate to anthropogenic food sources — including garbage, livestock, meat caches or domestic fruit bushes, that trouble comes knocking on people’s doors in Haines Junction. “That’s a really dangerous situation for everybody and that bear is going to die,” Richard says, point-blank.

That’s one law of living with grizzlies that everyone in Haines Junction seems to understand is non-negotiable: a fed bear is a dead bear.

Prevention better than the alternatives

Perhaps no one knows grizzly bears better in Haines Junction than the conservation officers tasked with managing them. Fortunately, according to Russel Oborne, a conservation officer with the Yukon government, responding to a case of food-conditioned grizzlies is a rare occurrence in Haines Junction.

For 26 years, Oborne has lived and worked in various Yukon communities. Nineteen of those years he’s spent in Haines Junction. While every local community is unique in their cultural approach to living with wildlife, he says Haines Junction is one of the most tolerant of coexisting with grizzly bears.

“People are very aware that they can’t have standing garbage on their properties,” Oborne says. “They really understand what you need to do to keep the community safe and keep the bears safe.”

He points to cooperation between the Village of Haines Junction, Yukon government, First Nations governments and Parks Canada to prevent food habituation. They’ve identified areas for potential risk, including a new bike park for youth, where they plan to uproot female soapberry plants — only the female plants produce fruit — this summer.

While agriculture and ranch lands can be “ecological traps” for carnivores, Oborne says the number of farm-related conflicts in Haines Junction are very low. Nataschaa Chatterton lives adjacent to a grizzly bear hot spot along the Alaska Highway, and raises goats, horses and dairy cows, along with free-range chickens. “We’ve never felt any threat,” she says.

Occasionally, she’ll find bear scat along the perimeter of the property. But she’s never had a negative interaction with a grizzly bear. She credits her two land guardian dogs, Pyrenees mixes, for keeping the bears at bay. “I know when there’s a bear around because their bark has a different tone,” she says. “It goes to a deeper tone — it’s a bigger sound.”

Licensed hunters can legally harvest one grizzly bear every three years in the Yukon, however females with cubs are off limits and roadside hunting is prohibited in some areas. In a recent government survey of 700 resident hunters, nearly half indicated that they’d only harvest a grizzly bear in a conflict situation. The majority of hunters reported efforts to mitigate such a scenario with a grizzly, including that after a successful hunt, they’d take the meat only and leave behind the gut-pile — the latter which is strong-smelling and a major bear attractant.

Yukon Conservation, along with Champagne and Aishihik First Nations and Kluane First Nation, have mobile electric fencing units that hunters can temporarily use while they process the meat, Oborne says. 

“People will hang a moose for about a week before they cut it up,” he says. “Of course, it’s just this delicious-smelling dead moose to a grizzly bear.”

There have been incidents in the past with grizzlies hanging around unfenced meat caches. Oborne advises people to process and get the meat into freezers, as quickly as possible, and remove bones and other attractants. “Usually, that solves the problem,” he says.

If it doesn’t, Oborne adds, there are protocols in place to capture and relocate bears — if they haven’t shown aggression towards people. Worst-case scenario, and an outcome that nobody wants, Oborne says, they euthanize. “It’s a really hard cycle to break with the bears once they’re into attractants.”

While relocation is often perceived by the public as a “good news story,” Oborne says, most conservation officers know that there’s a high probability of the grizzly wandering back, especially if it’s a male. Even if it’s been moved 300 kilometres or more from the original location. Sometimes bears return in worse body condition, even more motivated to find food.

Relocation and euthanization are a last resort, Oborne says. He encourages residents to prevent food conditioning from occurring in the first place by keeping a clean property, or camp. “The proactive is way better than the reactive course of action,” he says.

Practical steps Haines Junction has taken to support grizzly bear coexistence

A gang of glossy black ravens perch on a small mountain of garbage at the Haines Junction landfill. 

Beyond the heaps of trash, you can make out a five-foot-tall fence — consisting of seven steel wires — running around the entire perimeter of the dump. A current of 10,000 volts runs through those wires: one touch to a curious bear’s snout, and ZAP! It’s an effective way to teach a bear you’re not welcome here without harming it.

In 1992, Haines Junction became the first Yukon community to electrify its garbage dump, Dan Drummond says. Drummond, a retired conservation officer who worked here from 1986 to 2007, says previously “all the dumps were open to all wildlife.” Black bears frequented the dump during the summer, while grizzly bears — most often big males who wandered over from Kluane — tended to dominate in early to late fall. Locals and tourists also used to flock there to take photographs. The combination of attractants and attention led bears to become dangerously habituated to people. 

“Human waste was available to bears at the bear’s discretion,” Drummond says. “Bears died at an unreasonable rate because of their proximity to people and people’s garbage.”

Drummond was a part of the village’s effort to secure funding and install a trial 300-metre electric fence around the pit. It was part of a broader North America-wide movement from the late 1970s to early 1990s to improve bear management practices around garbage dumps in high-density wildlife areas. 

The fence was immediately effective, Drummond says. One zap and the bears got the point. 

The community of Faro followed suit, then Whitehorse, he says. Today, all communities in the Yukon have electric fences installed around their landfills, or waste facilities. 

Following the dump enclosure, however, many bears had to be put down. Mature bears who’d spent their entire life gorging on garbage were conditioned to source it elsewhere. Some diverted to the neighbouring community of Champagne to raid meat caches and outdoor freezers, Drummond says. Dozens were shot.

Some residents remember the story of a grizzly, dubbed the “burglar bear,” smashing through a residential door at night, tempted by a Thanksgiving turkey carcass left in a garbage bag. The only barrier between the bear and the owner and her two young children was a plastic baby gate. Quietly, she and her children escaped through the bedroom window. Later, it was determined the same bear had broken into cabins along Dezadeash Lake, more than 40 kilometres away.

Drummond shot the burglar bear from a helicopter, he says.

Once you “break the cycle” with those food-conditioned bears, “you’re dealing with wild bears, and it’s not so hard to keep them out of the dump.”

Two years ago, the Haines Junction dump expanded into a regional waste facility. There’s a recycling depot, which will soon be joined by a composter, all enclosed by an electric fence. The only wildlife spotted inside, an attendant says, are eagles and ravens. 

They haven’t had an issue with a bear in nearly a decade.

The laws of living with grizzlies

Ellen Bielawski has stopped counting how many grizzlies she’s seen near her off-grid cabin, situated in a dense spruce forest west of Haines Junction toward the Alsek Valley. 

But some encounters stand out, including the night she stepped outside to brush her teeth and looked up to see a mother grizzly and her two yearling cubs, less than 20 metres away. Shocked, everything Bielawski knew about bear encounters went flying out the window. “Did I remember to face the bear? I ran into the cabin with my electric toothbrush,” she laughs.

The retired archeologist and professor has lived here for the past 20 years. She previously worked in the Arctic in polar bear country, where she slept in a tent with a loaded rifle by her side.

But here, grizzly bears tend to keep to themselves, Bielawski says. 

“People have always said to me, ‘Aren’t you afraid of bears?’ And I say, ‘I’m way less afraid of bears than I am being a woman alone in a parkade in the city.’ ”

Recently, she and her husband cut down and cleared trees and bushes within 30 metres around the cabin to make it less susceptible to wildfires. The catch-22 is an increase in grizzly susceptibility, as disturbed forest promotes the fresh growth of bear foods like grass and berries. But the upside is that it’s now easier to see if a grizzly bear is around, Bielawski says, and they can avoid surprise encounters.

She’s extra cautious in the spring when bears come out of the den, motivated to find food and mate, and fall, when bears are preparing to hibernate. “I worry far more about November bears than I do the rest of the year,” she says. In late November 2018, a woman and her baby were fatally attacked at their remote trapping cabin in east-central Yukon by an emaciated grizzly bear that hadn’t yet denned. Authorities determined that the bear didn’t have enough body fat to hibernate. 

Bielawski avoids recreating at dawn or dusk, when grizzlies tend to be more active. Even walking out to the clothesline, less than ten metres away from her cabin, she carries an air-horn on one hip and bear spray on the other.

But the Alsek Valley is notoriously windy, with katabatic winds barreling through the valley at 100 kilometres an hour. It’s not an ideal place to detonate a can of pepper spray.

She’d like to see more workshops that allow participants the chance to fire an inert can of bear spray, and to understand how many seconds the contents of a can lasts for (roughly eight seconds). Adrenaline, Bielawski says, has the potential to take over in human-bear encounters. “It’s flight or fight,” she says. 

Although bear attacks are rare in Haines Junction, they have occurred in the past. On June 30, 2024, a resident was jogging with her dog along the Pine Lake trail which runs along the highway, east of town, when she came upon multiple grizzlies. There had been many sightings of family groups and courting pairs, grazing on grasses in the ditch, that spring, Oborne tells me. The dog broke free from its leash and triggered a defensive attack by one of the bears, who then turned on the jogger, according to a statement made by Yukon Conservation.

The jogger was critically mauled and required hospitalization, but survived — along with the dog. A recent study of human-bear conflicts found “the presence of a dog more than doubled the odds of a bear conflict.”

Conservation officers put down three bears. Weeks later, the willows along the trail were cleared and mulched to improve visibility along the trail. Yukon Conservation, along with the village council, also put up a cautionary sign that reads: “This path is a high-use area for grizzly bears. Encounters are likely.” It encourages people to carry bear spray and keep dogs leashed. 

One source described the 2024 attack as a “lightning rod” for conversation in the community, questioning why a recreational trail would be built through a well-known grizzly bear corridor — and why the jogger, a resident, chose to run late in the evening, without bear spray. Others expressed frustration that the bears were euthanized when it had been a defensive attack. Another indicated support for the conservation officers’ call. Ultimately, everyone was relieved that the individual survived. 

But no one raised the question of whether or not grizzlies belong.

Bear 141

As Burtnick drives to school, she scans the ditches for a small female grizzly bear that has been showing up in the community every spring since 2023. She’s easy to identify due to a visible scar around her neck where a wire had been wrapped. The grizzly has become colloquially known to people as “Snare Bear,” Burtnick says. 

To conservation officers, she’s known as Bear 141, Oborne says. In 2023, he and his colleagues attempted to capture the small grizzly and remove the wire from her neck, but after a few days, she disappeared. He didn’t think she’d survive the winter. 

Much to his surprise, Bear 141 returned in the spring of 2024, grazing comfortably beside the highway. Fortunately, the wire had fallen off. Although she hadn’t displayed any aggression, or caused any issues, they decided to relocate her 200 kilometres northwest of town near the Donjek River — for her own safety, Oborne says.

“Of course, she came right back to Haines Junction.” 

But the small female kept to herself and didn’t cause any trouble, so they let her stay. Last year, Burtnick and fellow teachers traded stories of their Bear 141 sightings, routinely spotted grazing in her habitual location along the same recreational trail where the attack occurred. 

“I actually think they’ve got this attachment to her,” Burtnick says, adding that residents feel protective of her when tourists idle in their vehicles, along the shoulder of the highway, taking photographs of the grizzly. “They want her to stay wild,” Burtnick says.

 By late June, no one had reported seeing Bear 141 yet this year. But if the small grizzly does amble back to her favourite spot along the recreational trail again, says Oborne, they’ll leave her be.

“She’s doing what a bear should do.”

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.

Summary

• Wildfires in northern Ontario are putting many First Nations at risk, and two communities have already burned entirely.
• First Nations leaders are criticizing the provincial government’s response to the emergency. They say the government was too slow to identify the risks facing remote First Nations, and that jurisdictional issues prevent First Nations from accessing resources in an emergency. 
• Several First Nations chiefs are calling for the resignation of senior government officials, as well as a public inquiry into the provincial government’s emergency response.

In the summer of 2021, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler of Nishnawbe Aski Nation personally presented Ontario Premier Doug Ford with an 82-page plan to support northern Ontario during emergencies, like wildfires. 

The organization that represents 51 northern Ontario First Nations had developed the plan in response to a series of disasters between 2009 and 2019, both from flooding and wildfires, which are laid out across 27 pages. But those past disasters are nowhere near the scale seen this summer alone, with northern Ontario dealing with what’s now estimated to be the worst wildfire season on record.

The framework identified a series of “deficiencies and gaps” in emergency management for First Nation communities. They include a lack of clear roles for the federal and provincial governments in the event of a disaster; a lack of recognition of the unique challenges facing remote Indigenous communities, many of which are not incorporated like a municipality and are hard to access; a lack of pre-disaster resources and funding for both impacted communities and host communities for evacuees; and no legal framework giving First Nations emergency powers to persuade the province to take action. 

The plan includes 20 recommendations, without which “the need for robust and comprehensive First Nation emergency management will continually increase.”

“That was five years ago,” Fiddler told The Narwhal. “There’s been no response.”

Everything that was highlighted in the report, Fiddler said, is coming to a head today in northern Ontario.

In the span of 11 days, two communities — Collins and Whitewater Lake First Nations — have entirely burned down. By last government count, around 1,800 people have been evacuated, though local emergency officials believe this number may be low as they say there is no coherent government-led system to support or track evacuations in remote Indigenous communities. At least 13 other communities are under evacuation orders, eight of which are First Nations, according to Chiefs of Ontario. As of publication time, there remain more than 170 active wildfires, per Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources, in northern Ontario. 

This season’s 562 fires (versus 371 last year and a 358 10-year average) have already burned down an area almost as large as the entire Greater Toronto Area, which, last week, had some of the worst air quality in the world because of wildfire smoke.

The fires are “behaving differently than what we’re used to,” Sharon Bak, an emergency responder based in Thunder Bay with 30 years of experience, including at the provincial level, told The Narwhal. “There have been more ‘hold my breath’ moments than I’m used to.” 

Weather projections started looking deadly on July 12, with Thunder Bay heading into a week of record heat, hitting — and in some places surpassing — 40 C. Low humidity, combined with bone-dry conditions across northern Ontario’s boreal forest, plus a major lightning event and windy conditions the week before, made for a dangerous combination. 

“The signs were all there,” Bak said. 

“This wasn’t the norm,” she added. “With northern Ontario fires, we’re prepared. We expect them. But this isn’t the norm. We’ve had fires that are close to critical infrastructure and areas where people live. We’ve had fires going one way that changed direction overnight to get closer to communities, and fires joining together.”

“That’s some pretty huge red flags that a lot is going on that needs to be monitored,” she said. “The question is, ‘Who is watching the clock?’ ”

While the ignition points of the 2026 wildfire season are outside government control, the consequences — how fast warnings went out, whether crews were adequately resourced, whether First Nations were supported in evacuation decisions — are the parts local officials and Indigenous leaders say were within the province’s control and completely failed this wildfire season. And while it’s been one for the record books, that may not be the case for long as wildfires get more severe and intense every year due to global warming caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels.

Impacted First Nations communities have reported needing to vacate themselves, not receiving timely and accurate information from government officials and finding spaces to flee to by themselves. 

In the face of this systemic failure, several chiefs are now asking for the resignations of senior government officials — including the Ministry of Natural Resources director of aviation, forest fire and emergency services and the assistant deputy minister overseeing fire operations — and an independent public inquiry into the province’s response writ large.

No one from the office of the premier, the minister of natural resources or the minister of emergency preparedness responded to detailed questions from The Narwhal. In a July 17 press conference, Ford said of First Nations communities, “We’re supplying anything that they need, and they’ll be safe.” 

“The emergency response from both Ontario and Canada have been completely inadequate,” Chief Fiddler said. “I’ve been on Zoom calls with senior government officials asking them basic questions like ‘What is your capacity? How many beds are available? Where are the host sites?’ ”“So far they haven’t given us a response,” he said. “Numbers keep moving, I get it, but you should have a baseline. ‘We don’t have that information’ is not a good baseline when people’s homes and lands are burning down.”

‘It took too long to recognize the danger’: First Nations in northern Ontario describe failed government communication and self-evacuations

At 2:30 p.m. on July 13, Whitesand First Nation’s band manager was informed of a large fire close to their community. A Ministry of Natural Resources official said it would send a helicopter to investigate, and later reported there was no fire despite visible smoke, Chief Lawrence Wanakamik told reporters this week. 

By 4:00 p.m., the nation’s leadership began arranging transportation to Thunder Bay and booking hotels anyway. Some of their members started leaving soon after. 

An hour later, a council member went to a Ministry of Natural Resources meeting, in which they said they were assured their community was safe and there was nothing to worry about. The member “requested the assurances in writing” but never received it, according to Chief Wanakamik. 

At 6:30 p.m., he added, Elders advised the community be evacuated, despite the ministry maintaining that a full evacuation wasn’t needed and that only “vulnerable” people should be moved. (The ministry did not respond to questions about this sequence of events.)

The ministry issued a mandatory evacuation order three hours later. By then, the entire community was already moving away from their homelands. 

“It took too long to recognize the danger, too long to issue a clear direction and too long to order the evacuation,” Chief Wanakamik told reporters on July 21. “Whitesand’s own preparation and decision-making helped prevent an already dangerous situation from becoming worse.” One person, Elder Stella Watson, died in this harrowing experience, he said, adding she was “having a hard time with her breathing from all the smoke.”

Whitesand First Nation wasn’t the only community to experience this provincial emergency response breakdown. Collins, or Namaygoosisagagun, First Nation Chief Helen Paavola said her community, the first to be evacuated, did so without any notice or support. “My community was devastated by a forest fire that overtook the homes with great speed and heat,” she said in the same press conference. “My members barely escaped with the clothes on their backs.”

“This community burned to ash,” she said. “It burnt to the ground because of a failure of the province in their monitoring. And further to that, the emergency management arm of the province also ought to be held accountable for this disaster.”

Her community isn’t formally recognized by the Canadian government, despite predating Canada, which means community members are locked out of disaster-recovery programs now when they need it most, she said. 

Whitewater Lake First Nation Chief Pauline Drake, whose community has also entirely burned down, said they vacated by themselves, with her mother being the last to leave their land. 

“I really wish things were different,” she said. “I wish we could turn back time and go back and be notified. ‘Okay, there’s a fire in your area. Please be ready.’ ”

The three chiefs, along with six others representing communities impacted by wildfires across northern Ontario, all said that no provincial leaders had reached out to them, neither Ford, nor his Indigenous Affairs Minister Greg Rickford or Minister of Natural Resources Mike Harris. And they dispute Ford’s narrative that Ontario is doing a great job fighting these fires. 

“The premier may not yet have a full understanding of the extent of the operational dysfunction and systemic issues within the current wildfire management structure,” Chief Wilfred King of Gull Bay First Nation, which has been given an evacuation order, said in the press conference. “What he is saying is not true. … He’s creating the narrative so that he can basically lie to Canadians and lie to the people of Ontario.”

“What’s required is a complete overhaul of the system,” he said.

‘There’s been limited capacity in the system for a long time’: Ford government hasn’t fully implemented auditor general recommendations

This pattern of failed communications, lacklustre response and poor planning has been a feature of Ontario’s emergency response system for over two decades — and “all the gaps show this time,” Bak said. 

A 2005 internal government review showed the emergency processes and funding were “not currently sufficient to ensure that Ontarians and the resources of the province are adequately protected against emergencies and disasters.” That review itself was cited in a 2017 auditor general report that noted the cabinet committee on emergency management had not met once in five years. In 2022, the auditor general made 30 recommendations to improve the process, noting that it took longer than four hours to dispatch fire crews to 15 per cent of fires from 2017 to 2021.

“Establishing effective emergency management programs can save lives and better protect property and the environment,” the 2022 report said. “More needs to be done to assess the risks of natural hazards so that the province is ready to respond quickly to future environmental events and to make sure we don’t repeat past mistakes.”

As of two years ago, the auditor general found the government has “made little or no progress” on implementing most of their recommendations over the years. 

“There’s been limited capacity in the system for a long time,” Bak said.

Chiefs say that’s left northern Ontario particularly vulnerable as there has been no full-time emergency management coordinator. There are no resources available and ready to mobilize over a much larger geography if needed, they say, adding there is no regional response centre or controlled coordination system. And there is no ready list of resources, including hotels and donated goods and services, for those who have to respond in real-time. 

“The fires this year overwhelmed communities faster,” Bak said. “And there was a delay in acknowledging the problem and delivering the resources we needed.”

Yet, there were recent signs that this trend was shifting. 

Emergency response has generally been undertaken by a stand-alone government agency under the solicitor general, one of the structural issues identified by the auditor general. That changed in March 2025 when the Ford government elevated it into its own ministry, with resources, employees, modernized legislation and a new volunteer organization called Ontario Corps. This new Ministry of Emergency Preparedness and Response works with other ministries depending on the type of emergency; in northern Ontario, that particularly includes the Ministry of Natural Resources, which manages and monitors forests and fires. 

Emergency Preparedness Minister Jill Dunlop told CBC As It Happens that the government’s response is focused on safety. She said the ministry regularly conducts “after-action reviews” following emergencies and that any communication or coordination concerns “will be considered as part of that process.”

But when pressed about why First Nations were left in the dark during the worst of the wildfires, one of her staff pulled her off the air.

Emergency response in First Nations continues to be broken

Ontario’s emergency response also depends on federal funding, an agreement which assumes provinces have a robust system they can use to respond to disaster scenarios. In other words, Ottawa funds emergency response to First Nations, but Ontario controls the decisions about how that response gets executed. 

Fiddler believes part of why the system is broken is because the First Nations are not at the table in making those decisions. As outlined in the Nishnawbe Aski Nation’s report, Ontario’s entire emergency management system is built for municipalities, and First Nations don’t fit that model — legally, financially or structurally.

To start, a First Nation’s declaration of emergency has no impact on the political system; it doesn’t unlock funding or resources, or force higher levels of government into action. 

Financially, there’s not enough money being spent in the right places, the plan notes. Using federal data from 2012 to 2016, it shows Ontario received 31 per cent of all national emergency management funding for First Nations, with the vast majority going to response and recovery, not prevention or mitigation. Meanwhile, the government has consistently underbudgeted for fire response: in the 2025 budget, the Ford government allotted $135 million for its emergency forest firefighting fund, but ended up spending double that: $271 million.

And then there’s the matter of human resources. Citing the 2020 auditor general report, Nishnawbe Aski Nation’s plan notes that in 2021 Ontario had one field officer per 1.8 million residents, versus one for 137,000 residents in B.C. and one for 273,000 in Alberta. These field officers only show up during emergencies, allowing for little trust-building or preparedness before communities. 

And per Ontario’s emergency response rules, municipalities are expected to self-fund emergency management partly through property taxes and can apply for provincial disaster assistance after the fact. But almost no First Nations in Ontario have a property tax regime, so this financing model doesn’t support them.

Compounding all this is the fact that wildfires in northern Ontario often shut down access to remote communities. That means wildfires cut off an entire essential supply chain of food and medicine. For that reason, Neskantaga First Nation declared a state of emergency this week and has begun evacuating its members. 

These issues are all playing out in northern Ontario right now, with local responders and Indigenous members left asking questions about one central theme: “Why have we been left all alone?” 

“Doug Ford talks a lot about our critical minerals and other resources in our territories,” Fiddler said. “He comes this way when it’s for photo opportunities and cutting ribbons and shaking hands with people in these communities. But when it comes to climate change and its impacts, I haven’t heard him make any commitment.” 

Ford has said he will propose a national fire strategy at a meeting of First Ministers and Prime Minister Mark Carney in Charlottetown this week. But for many people The Narwhal spoke with, that’s not the solution; it’s merely passing the buck. Especially as northern Ontario’s calls to declare a provincial state of emergency, which would theoretically unlock resources, go unheeded. 

“Everything starts at the local level, especially responses to emergencies like wildfires,” Bak said. “You think of what happened at Fort McMurray and Jasper, and you thank God it hasn’t happened here. Well, now it’s happened here and it’s clear we didn’t learn anything.”

Updated on July 23, 2026, at 4:47 p.m. ET: This story has been updated to clarify that the current wildfire season in Ontario is estimated to be the worst in terms of the amount of land burnt, but not lives lost.

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