Akita Colomb and her three-year-old daughter Lucillia Francois in the children’s activity tent at the Days Inn hotel in Niagara Fall, Ont. They are among hundreds of northern Cree from reserves across Manitoba that were evacuated to the city.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Akita Colomb and her children are not in Niagara Falls for the waterfalls, wax museums, casinos or blinking lights of the carnival rides that call out to the millions of tourists who come here on vacation.
For them, the Ontario city represents something else: sanctuary from the wildfires that have consumed so much of northern Manitoba.
The family members are among hundreds of northern Cree from reserves across Manitoba that were flown here after evacuation centres in Winnipeg reached capacity. Their arrival capped a surreal, and sometimes terrifying, three-day journey to safety, Ms. Colomb said.
“I keep pinching myself, like is this real? Did we really make it out?” she said, sitting in a makeshift daycare inside a tent on the parking lot of the hotel she will call home for the next few months.
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A little more than a week ago, Ms. Colomb and her family were scrambling to get out of Mathias Colomb First Nation, also known as Pukatawagan, as the fires grew closer. As residents cut timber and manned fire hydrants to protect their homes, the blaze cut off the community’s railway line and encircled its airfield. The smoke was so thick it hurt their lungs and turned their eyes red.
Ms. Colomb and her boyfriend, Tanner Francois, filled a knapsack for each of their four young children and escaped with the clothes on their backs. Helicopters flew them to Winnipeg, where they joined thousands of others packed into temporary emergency shelters set up in hockey rinks and an indoor soccer centre. She dressed the kids in bright clothes so she could find them in the crowd and tied bells to their wrists so she would wake if they wandered off in the night.
“It felt like one of those end-of-the-world movies,” Ms. Colomb said.
When the federal government began looking for people willing to be moved to Niagara Falls, she quickly put her hand up.
Robert Garland, vice-president of eastern Canada for Xpera, the company contracted by the federal government to co-ordinate shelter for the evacuees, said 1,500 hotel rooms in Niagara Falls have been set aside. The costs are covered by Indigenous Services Canada.
“In Winnipeg right now, the capacity is so tight that a lot of these people were staying in congregate settings, like school gymnasiums, rec centres, sleeping on cots. It was a very crowded situation,” he said.
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While in Niagara Falls, the evacuees are being given hot meals, donated clothes, toiletries and diapers, along with tours of the falls and trips to Walmart. An Indigenous centre is also planning drum circles and bannock-making events for those missing home, he said.
“It’s like my dream vacation came true,” said Conrad Castel jokingly. He was in The Pas, Man., getting a cast for a broken arm on May 27, when his family was told they couldn’t return to Pukatawagan.
A few days later, he and his partner, Sundance Dumas, sat on a stack of pallets outside a Niagara Falls hotel, listening to Alanis Morissette and worrying about their two dogs left behind, Buck and Rocky.
Other evacuees said they are worried about their homes and being separated from family. It could be months before they’re allowed to return to their communities, they said.
Conrad Castel and Sundance Dumas at the Days Inn hotel in Niagara Fall, Ont. The two evacuated from Mathias Colomb First Nation, also known as Pukatawagan, in northern Manitoba.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
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The mayor of Niagara Falls, Jim Diodati, said his city is proud to open its doors to other Canadians in their time of need. But he also said he’s frustrated no one from the federal government told him such an unprecedented influx of evacuees would arrive at the beginning of peak tourist season.
Niagara Falls, with its large stock of hotel rooms, is already hosting around 1,500 refugee claimants – who rely on social services, soup kitchens, food banks and local charities – under a temporary hotel housing system designed by Ottawa at a cost of $208 a day per person. There’s little economic benefit except for hotel owners in a town that has been built around tourism, he said.
“We all want to do the right thing, and we’re happy and proud to do that,” Mr. Diodati said at City Hall. “But this all has to be balanced with the residents here who count on the traditional tourists who pay their bills.”
Tina Blacksmith Ross and her partner Richard Ross share a kiss outside the Frontier BBQ & Smokehouse in Niagara Fall, Ont. The couple is from Cross Lake First Nation in northern Manitoba.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
A few blocks away, Ms. Colomb’s children play with sidewalk chalk, make beads and draw pictures outside their hotel. Laura Marciante, operator of the Toronto-based company MeLor, which was hired to provide daycare services for the displaced children, says she hopes to give the kids “a summer they’ll never forget.”
She and other women are busy making bubbles, playing catch and doing anything else they can think of to help the children take their minds off the fires and the toys they left behind.
Ms. Colomb feels safe here. But at night, when things are quiet, the questions come from the children.
“Sometimes they ask, ‘Can we go home now?’ I just say, ‘No, not yet.’ I try to explain it to them, but every time, I start to cry.”