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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Summary

• As wildfire smoke worsens across Canada, volunteers are teaching people to build low-cost DIY air purifiers.
• The fan-and-filter devices can perform as well as commercial HEPA air purifiers while costing around $60 to make.
• Organizers say the workshops provide practical protection from smoke while building community in the face of climate change.

On a sunny Saturday in July, a few dozen people file into a United Church on a quiet, tree-lined street near Victoria. Outside, the sky is clear and cloudless — a far cry from the wildfire smoke blanketing other parts of Canada. Inside, people are taking steps to protect themselves from the toxic smoke that has become a regular feature of Canadian summers.

As climate change makes summers hotter and drier, wildfire season becomes, on average, longer and more severe. More Canadians are experiencing the impacts with every breath they take and three-quarters say they’re concerned about wildfire smoke impacting their air quality. Once smoke rolls in, air purifiers — filtration machines capable of removing toxic chemicals and tiny particulates from the air — can be difficult to find in stores, even for those who can afford them.

But at the church, participants are learning to build simple, effective air purifiers at a workshop organized by Bill Darnell, a local resident who helped found Greenpeace in 1970.

“I’ve been involved in social justice and climate action pretty much all my adult life and it’s kind of discouraging that I’m still having to do it at this point,” Darnell tells The Narwhal.

Darnell was inspired to organize the event after learning about a similar workshop that took place in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. He and other volunteers use information compiled by the BC Lung Foundation and Simon Fraser University to help people build DIY air purifiers, using simple and accessible components like box fans, furnace filters and duct tape.

A 2023 study conducted at the National Collaborating Centre for Environmental Health found these air purifiers can perform as well as commercial air purifiers equipped with high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters. While HEPA-equipped air purifiers often cost hundreds of dollars, the materials for these DIY versions cost less than $60. Since 2023, the BC Lung Association has logged more than 160 community workshops where participants have built more than 3,200 air purifiers.

B.C. has recorded 634 wildfires since April 2026 and 98 are currently burning across the province. The fires have put thousands of British Columbians on evacuation alert, while others have been evacuated — like the community of Boston Bar in the Fraser Valley, where a rapidly spreading wildfire nearby also closed the Trans-Canada Highway for four days in early July. Even so, wildfire smoke has — so far this year — had less of an impact on air quality than in previous years. Most of the province is experiencing low-to-moderate-risk air quality. Meanwhile, intense wildfire activity in Ontario made Toronto’s air quality the worst in the world on July 15.

Darnell describes the DIY air purifier workshop as an opportunity to build community and educate people while also empowering them to take action in the face of a direct threat like climate change.

“It really is important to come together when you’re facing a catastrophe,” he says. “There’s the fast-moving ones like floods and fires, and there’s the slower-moving ones like climate change and smoke. The most important resource is the people around you.”

A fan, a filter, a roll of duct tape: a simple solution for cleaner air

Wildfire smoke is more toxic than everyday air pollution. It can travel thousands of kilometres and linger in the air for weeks. 

The smoke contains gases, such as carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide, and volatile organic compounds, like benzene, toluene and butene. There is also particulate matter, which can include soot, dust, pollen and spores, as well as chemical particles. The particles are classified according to size and fine particulates — the really tiny ones, less than 2.5 microns in diameter and typically referred to as PM2.5 — pose the greatest threats to human health because they can travel deeper into the lungs than larger ones. 

Fine particulates found in smoke and other types of air pollution have been linked to damage in several organ systems, including the heart, brain and reproductive system. 

Certain air filters are capable of removing particulates from the air. The DIY air purifiers use a single MERV 13, commonly used in furnaces and available in Canada for less than $20 per filter, which need to be changed out regularly to maintain performance.

The 20” filters fit perfectly on the back of a 20” box fan, which costs about $35. Duct tape seals the filter to the fan, allowing air to be drawn through the filter and pushed out through the fan. To increase the air purifier’s efficiency, a “shroud” can be placed on the side of the fan opposite the filter. Made of duct tape or cardboard, the shroud blocks off the corners of the fan face, preventing air backflow.

It takes about 25 minutes to assemble one air purifier, which can be used immediately to clean the air in a space of up to 400 square feet. At the Victoria workshop, each table soon sports at least one, some of them decorated with colourful duct tape designs, others sleek and white. 

Community in the face of climate crisis

Among the workshop attendees is Victoria city councillor Dave Thompson, who is considering putting on a workshop in the neighbouring municipality.

“I wanted to see how it got organized,” Thompson says. “We’ve been very active on climate change and this is a piece we haven’t done yet.”

Many participants express a desire to do what they can in the face of the climate emergency.

“I feel like whatever we can do on an individual basis for ourselves and our families is always helpful,” Mary Jean, a nurse, tells fellow participants at her table.

Around the room, several signs feature prompts for conversations about climate change and climate action.

“According to polls, 80 per cent of Canadians are worried about climate, but we often think we’re the only ones,” Darnell says. “So what we’re providing is a place where we can come, do something positive, have fun and know that we’re among people and we can talk about it.”

Climate change is making wildfires more likely and more intense. Between 1948 and 2024, annual average temperatures in Canada increased by an average of 2.8 C, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada.

In B.C., wildfires have burned about 10 million hectares of land, more than in the previous six decades combined, according to the BC Wildfire Service. 

While Darnell feels discouraged about the state of climate action at the provincial and federal level, he sees the importance of people gathering. 

“A lot of the province, particularly to the east of us, is on fire at the moment and certainly in the rest of Canada as well. We are trying to provide practical help for people in the community,” he says. 

“People really need a place to come together and just say, ‘Am I crazy?’ No, you’re not. The behaviors of our economy, of our corporations and our government are crazy at the moment.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Summary

• On Wednesday, Toronto’s air quality was the worst in the world, as wildfire smoke from northern Ontario blanketed the city. 
• Research suggests even moderate levels of wildfire smoke can pose significant health risks.
• The federal government uses the Air Quality Health Index to communicate the severity of air pollution. The higher the index score, the more precautions people — especially those with health conditions — should take to stay safe and comfortable.

On Tuesday, Sol Mamakwa was driving to Thunder Bay, Ont., sunshine behind him, darkness ahead. 

The Ontario NDP MPP represents the large, remote northwestern Ontario region that is currently burning at extreme rates. More than 100 active wildfires in his riding have displaced six communities so far, and put dozens more under threat as temperatures reached close to 40 C on July 15.”

Meanwhile, choking smoke from these fires has spread more than 1,000 kilometres away, making Toronto’s air quality one of the worst in the world. (On Wednesday, it was even the worst in the world and hospital visits are on the rise.) 

Ontario is not the only province burning. Per the Canadian Wildland Fire Information System, 858 active forest fires across the country have impacted 2.4 million hectares to date; 111 of these fires are considered out of control. Such wildfires are fuelled by warmer-than-average temperatures and drier conditions which make forests more prone to burning and lead to fires spreading faster and further. 

This year, there have already been 483 wildfires recorded inside Ontario’s fire region, compared to 351 last year and the 10-year average of 320. The number of fires has been climbing sharply, with 31 new fires discovered in a single day earlier this week.

“It’s eerie to be in my part of Ontario right now,” Mamakwa told The Narwhal. “The situation is unprecedented, and it’s getting worse.”

As the number of wildfires grows, so do the health risks of smoke, which is more toxic than normal pollution as it can linger in the air for weeks and travel thousands of kilometres. 

“Wildfires in my region have gotten worse and are getting worse,” Mamakwa said. “It needs to be treated like the emergency it is. Every possible measure needs to be taken to keep our communities safe.” 

Here are some things you need to know.

Wildfire smoke may increase health risks

Wildfire smoke continues to cloud much of Ontario, forcing people to stay inside as much as possible. 

This kind of smoke has three main ingredients. There are gases, such as carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide, and volatile organic compounds, like benzene, toluene and butene. There is also particulate matter, which can include soot, dust, pollen and spores, as well as chemical particles. The particles are classified according to size and fine particulates — the really tiny ones, less than 2.5 microns in diameter and typically referred to as PM2.5 — pose the greatest threats to human health because they can travel deeper into the lungs than larger ones.

The more particulates in the air, the hazier it becomes. Extremely poor air quality due to wildfire smoke is hard to ignore, often resulting in new reports and public health warnings to stay indoors and take precautions.

Research suggests even moderate levels of wildfire smoke can pose significant health risks, especially for people with chronic lung diseases like asthma or emphysema that make them more vulnerable to negative health impacts. Fine particulates found in smoke and other types of air pollution have been linked to damage in several organ systems, including the heart, brain and reproductive system.According to a study by the Canadian Climate Institute, long-term exposure to increased toxic wildfire smoke is associated with an estimated 2,500 premature deaths annually in Canada. The study found wildfire smoke caused an estimated total of $5.3 billion in acute health damages between 2014 and 2025.

Most air quality advisories in Canada are now the result of wildfires, not other pollution

Wildfires are now the most common reason for air quality advisories, which are issued when concentrations of particulate matter and hazardous gases rise to levels that can negatively impact human health.

To help Canadians understand the health risks stemming from current air conditions, authorities use the Air Quality Health Index (AQHI), a colour-coded scale of one to 10 (with a plus sign if it’s off the charts), based on concentrations of ozone, particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide — the pollutants found to have the greatest health impacts. 

The higher the health index score, the greater the risk and the more precautions people — especially those with health conditions that make them vulnerable to poor air quality — may need to take to stay safe and comfortable. Avoiding polluted air by staying inside and using air purifiers is the most effective protection but avoiding strenuous outdoor activity and wearing a respirator can also help.

Small amounts of wildfire smoke also come with long-term health risks

At the University of British Columbia, physician Chris Carlsten is leading an effort to shed light on how wildfire smoke affects human health over the short and long term. His team was recently awarded a federal grant to support its work.

Carlsten said the team is focusing on chronic exposure to any amount of wildfire smoke versus acute exposure to high levels, even though the short-term peaks are “problematic.” 

“There may be more health effects, ultimately, from the more common but lower-concentration exposures,” Carlsten said in an interview. The team will also explore how wildfire smoke affects people differently based on age, sex, genetics, exercise habits and socio-economic status.

Better data will help improve public health policy and planning when wildfires flare, allowing people to make more informed choices about how to reduce their risk.

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Osoyoos Indian Band is working to revitalize forests in its territories that have been ravaged by wildfires — turning them into fire-resistant zones full of biodiversity, wildlife and medicinal plants for its members.

Band-owned company Nk’Mip Forestry is planning to revive two woodlands located above the First Nation’s reservation in the highlands between Oliver and Mount Baldy — making up just over 40 hectares combined. The forest tenure where the project is located is approximately 50,000 hectares in size, and is co-managed between the Osoyoos Indian Band and Gorman Bros.

The two forests — a drier Douglas fir ecosystem with ponderosa pine, and a montane spruce ecosystem dominated by dense lodgepole pile further up the hill — were both impacted by the 2021 Nk’Mip Creek wildfire, which is estimated to have burned just over 20,000 hectares.

After the fire, Vernon Louie, an Osoyoos Indian Band member and grounds operation manager with Nk’Mip Forestry, said animals in the area were displaced.  

“Twenty-plus years ago, there used to be deer and elk all over. Lots of moose up here, especially up Baldy you’d see them. Almost one every time you’d go up,” Louie told IndigiNews.

“Now, you’d be lucky to see a deer if you go up.”

These animals, he said, were forced to look for food sources at the valley bottom. Now, after five years, they’re starting to return to the highlands.

“But they need better ground, and more stuff to eat,” he said. “We want them to actually come back up and settle. But you gotta give them the opportunity to do that by clearing this stuff out.”

The first phase of the project’s operations, scheduled for late summer and into the fall, will see the burned, still-standing dead timber removed from both sites, to help make space for the planting of various berry and shrub plants, as well as deciduous and native trees.

“What we’re really doing here is trying to influence a bit of a change in this post-wildfire landscape, to encourage wildfire resiliency and ecosystem resiliency in the future,” project lead Eden Hardcastle, a forester-in-training with Nk’Mip Forestry, told IndigiNews.

“Instead of using the word restoration, I’ve used the term intervention.”

The dead timber will not be salvaged for profit, however. Instead, the trees will be processed into firewood materials for the community.

While both sites have unique planting prescriptions based on their ecosystems, there are prioritized shrub and deciduous tree species that will be planted across both areas.

The prioritized shrub species planned for planting include saskatoon berry, soopolallie (soapberry), huckleberry, thimbleberry and snowberry. Introducing deciduous trees such as birch, cottonwood and trembling aspen to the landscape is also part of the strategy.

“Most deciduous trees and shrubs are going to be really important for a live fire break,” Hardcastle said.“Not only do they retain more moisture, but they’re significantly less flammable, so it can really help slow down a fire.”

Having a diversity of species is critical for ecosystem adaptability, not just wildfire resilience, she said.

“We’re in a changing climate with changing external stimuli. Different trees — well, different plants, in general — can contribute different things to the ecosystem. Having that diversity is important for not only recovery, but long-term resilience in the area.”

Biodiversity in post-wildfire landscapes key to climate resiliency

Although lodgepole pine is a native tree, the species has taken over the site of the montane spruce ecosystem site. Hardcastle attributed its overgrowth to the tree’s serotinus pinecones that spread seeds after a fire sweeps through an area.

“When a fire comes through, that heat catalyzes to drop its seeds. That means that lodgepole pine comes back really fast and really thick after a fire.”

While it is a natural process, Hardcastle noted that it “also creates a bit of a fire hazard in the future, because that stand is really dense and very flammable.”

That’s why reintroducing biodiversity to the forest “is the key,” she added, for it helps with future climate resiliency. 

“It’s not just wildfires that put stress onto our forests. It’s temperature changes; it’s precipitation changes; it’s further human disturbance. Biodiversity helps with all of that. Some species are more resilient to some things than others. It contributes to overall tolerance to change.”

In addition to planting deciduous trees and different shrubs at the montane spruce ecosystem site, larch and douglas fir trees will also be planted there.

“Unfortunately here, we have nothing but lodgepole coming back. That was part of the decision-making there, Hardcastle said. “If we were getting species that we did want to see coming back naturally, we weren’t going to disturb it at all. That’s a process that we’re looking for.”

Once the dead trees have been removed, the plan is to invite Osoyoos Indian Band community members to help plant different trees and shrub species at the sites next spring.

The vision is to remove the dead trees from the forests while retaining the live ones, which will create more space and give shade for different trees and plants to grow, Peter Flett, the head of forestry operations at Nk’Mip Forestry, told IndigiNews. It will also help to attract more wildlife back to the area.

“More shade helps mitigate the heat from climate change. It keeps moisture in the soil. It helps shade-tolerant plants grow.”

The hope is to offer an abundance of food and cultural experiences for community members: more animals to hunt and a greater selection of berries and medicines to harvest.

Restoration project offers hope for community and future initiatives

Hardcastle said the project can act as a model for future similar initiatives and demonstrate how it can be applied on a larger scale. The project is being funded by Environment and Climate Change Canada, through their Climate-Smart Forestry grant, which is being administered by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative.

“Hopefully, in doing this, we can determine what that actual cost looks like for the future,” she said.

Hardcastle emphasized that the purpose of the restoration and intervention work is for the betterment of the Osoyoos Indian Band community.

“It’s for the environment, but this forested area is part of [Osoyoos Indian Band’s] culture,” she said.

“We also wanted to make sure that it was road-accessible, because we want this area to be usable as a foraging site for some of the shrubs that we’re planting. Like, for berries and other culturally significant plants.”

Louie said that Elders in the community have berry-picking spots across the two sites, and have given “all thumbs-up” for this project.

“This work is definitely needed. They want to see it restored. To restore it, you gotta take out the old stuff.”

“Berry picking, hunting, gathering, is really important.  Some of these areas are close to existing roads — the easier access for Elders, the better.”

Following the intervention, Hardcastle said she hopes to see an improvement in species composition, to show more biodiversity across the two sites, within the next five years.

“It would be great to see more wildlife up here,” she said.

“That short term is going to be really telling for what we did right and what we did wrong. Long term, I just hope it’s beneficial for the environment and the community: create a fire break, and create a pocket of diversity in an area that has very little diversity.”

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