When fires burned near towns or villages in the past, they were stamped out, and fast. “Redshirts,” as Canada’s wildland firefighters are still known – although they wear banana yellow now – reliably came to the rescue.
Those days are over.
In the past 15 years, wildfires have become too powerful, too erratic, too hot, too fast to contain. Cataclysmic fires, sudden evacuations and dangerously smoky days are our new reality.
Roughly speaking, Canada’s new era of fire kicked off in May of 2011, when a massive blaze ripped through Slave Lake. Flames met a landscape desiccated by drought, mowing through more than a third of the Northern Alberta town in hours. It was the largest evacuation and most expensive natural disaster in the province’s history.
These records were clobbered five years later, when an out-of-control wildfire ravaged Fort McMurray, the country’s energy capital. Nicknamed the Beast, the fire was among the worst in Canadian history, both for its cost – $9.9-billion – and its impact: 2,400 buildings lost. Nearly 100,000 people fled in what remains the largest single-day evacuation in Canadian history.
Then came Lytton, B.C., the first town in Canada to be swallowed whole by a wildfire, on June 30, 2021. One day earlier, the town had set the record for Canada’s highest recorded temperature, 49.6 C.
Two years later, B.C. recorded its most expensive fire season. The province spent more than $1-billion to fight fires, and insurers paid out more than $700-million to rebuild swathes of the Shuswap and Okanagan lost to flames.
Then last summer, fire blitzed through Jasper, the crown jewel of Canada’s parks system, a sunbaked town tucked into the sylvan folds of the Rocky Mountains. That monster burned so hot a single breath could blister lungs.
So far this summer, fires have chewed through an area the size of New Brunswick.
To try to grasp how loss on that scale affects people and communities, The Globe and Mail talked to people who lived through Canada’s biggest wildfires of the past 15 years. Here, they share the hard lessons they’ve learned, and how they made themselves whole again.
Jasper, Alta., 2024
On July 22, 2024, Wendy Wacko woke just after dawn to another blue-sky day in one of Canada’s most breathtaking mountain communities. She had no sense anything was amiss.
The fire rating was extreme and, later that day, three fires ignited just outside of Jasper. Before night fell, they were raging out of control.
Ms. Wacko, a 74-year-old artist, was hosting a dinner party with two other couples when an evacuation alert landed at 8:28 p.m. There was “no immediate threat,” it read, but noted that “multiple fires were burning on the outskirts of town.”
No one there appeared fussed. Oh well, maybe tomorrow we’ll have to evacuate, one said. What’s for dessert? another asked.
Barely 90 minutes later, an evacuation order came blaring through all six phones: Everyone in the area needed to get out, now, it read. Fire was blocking two highways. Only the Yellowhead – west to B.C. – remained open. “Our friends dashed out, and I started cleaning the kitchen,” Ms. Wacko recalls. Her husband, Dwain Wacko, started chuckling: “What are you doing?” he asked. They threw some clothes and favourite art pieces into Mr. Wacko’s truck, and joined the snake of cars crawling out of town.
Two days later, a 10-storey wall of thousand-degree flames entered Jasper. The blaze spat embers the size of soccer balls in every direction, lighting fires 500 metres ahead. Jasper’s wood homes were ideal kindling and the Wackos’ entire neighbourhood of Cabin Creek, including their home of 40 years, was levelled.
“I threw up pulling into Jasper for the first time,” she said. “I felt terrified, nauseous, heartbroken.” The shock, she added, finally began to fade this summer, one year after the fire.
She couldn’t believe how quickly the work of a lifetime could disappear.
She lost most of her art collection, including Approaching Waterton, a painting done by her friend, the celebrated landscape painter Doris McCarthy, who died in 2010.
“I loved the art collection I had. I loved, loved it. But the most important lesson Dwain and I have learned is that the relationships, the friends you surround yourself with, are the most important thing in life.”
She lost her scarf collection, cherished letters from her dad and from Ms. McCarthy, and her wedding ring.
“The fire changed Dwain and I. The whole situation made me love my husband more than I ever dreamt was possible. We’re kinder to each other. Our relationship is deeper. That’s what matters. Not the ring.”
This ceramic dog, which belonged to Ms. Wacko's mother, was chipped but not shattered after a high fall.Courtesy of Wendy Wacko
But fires are capricious in what they take, Ms. Wacko learned. She could find no trace – at all – of the car she’d left in her garage, nor of an Inuit carving so heavy it took two people to lift. But a delicate ceramic sheep dog belonging to her mom had survived intact, falling three storeys into the basement.
So did the bulk of Ms. McCarthy’s estate – paintings, sketches and journals. She and Mr. Wacko had purchased it in 2019, to preserve and promote the artist’s legacy. Half they donated to the University of Toronto. The other half they stored in a Jasper warehouse that miraculously survived the inferno.
“There wasn’t even a scratch on the building,” Ms. Wacko says. “It’s a miracle. I imagine a painting in my head: 50 angels floating just above the building – their wings flapping to push the flames away.”
These days, she’s up by 5:30 every morning, and at work by 7. She has committed to three exhibitions in the coming year, and will need to produce 32 new paintings for the shows.
Ms. Wacko is driven, but she has also found herself in a financial hole: “We were underinsured. We have to live with that. We’ll have to dip into our retirement savings to cover our losses. I’m doing okay with sales from my art. But I’m going to have to reinvent myself.”
– Nancy Macdonald
West Kelowna, B.C., 2023
The morning of Aug. 18, 2023, was smokier than usual in West Kelowna, where Heather MacKay lives. The lake behind her home was hazy and a friend texted to make sure she was safe, anxious after reading that an evacuation alert was issued for her area.
We’re always on alert, Ms. MacKay typed back.
Having moved to interior B.C. three years prior, the MacKay family had adjusted to the threat of wildfires. The first time they got an alert, they’d crammed suitcases full of their essentials, but with every subsequent false alarm they grew confident their neighbourhood was safe.
That day, just in case, Ms. MacKay slipped a box with documents and a ring from her grandmother into her purse. She then spent the day cutting and colouring clients’ hair at her salon, despite her pinging phone.
“On a scale of one to 10, what’s the likelihood of us getting evacuated?” her eldest daughter asked in the family group chat.
“Maybe two,” her husband responded.
A couple of hours later she was cleaning up the salon when her husband called, telling her to come home. Panicked, she raced out of town, across the bridge, but her street was blocked off and evacuations were under way before she could arrive. Her husband and daughters packed her bag for her.
That night, the McDougall Creek fire jumped the lake to their neighbourhood. She listened to the crackle of the flames engulfing their home through a livestream she’d set up to catch rodents in her cupboards.
High winds and drought-like conditions allowed the wildfire to grow rapidly, displacing 35,000 people and burning more than 300 buildings, including the MacKays’ home.
Heather MacKay’s West Kelowna home was one of many buildings destroyed.Courtesy of Heather MacKay
In the following months, any signs of smoke sent Ms. MacKay into a spiral. Dispossessed of four decades of belongings, she and her family were left with gym bags of clothes and each other. They’d lost everything from her wedding dress to Christmas decorations to her reading glasses.
“I couldn’t function after the fire, when we were trying to find a place to live. I couldn’t have cared less because I was depressed,” Ms. MacKay said.
For six weeks, the family was separated, moving through seven different homes. Guilt from not being together and knowing her two daughters had fled their home in fear weighed on her, Ms. MacKay said. She was embarrassed at how ignorant she’d been to the wildfire.
Kelowna is expensive and starting over has not been easy. Because they were renting, they only had $40,000 in insurance, which was required by the landlords. It was not nearly enough to rebuild her life, but Ms. MacKay is just grateful no one was hurt.
The fire was a reset for all her relationships. It strengthened her bond with her husband, her daughters and even strangers.
And the goodness of people has stuck with her. An artisan from Manitoba remade a pair of earrings lost in the fire; a lady from the farmers’ market gifted her a new apron; a neighbour from 10 years before sent her $1,000; a person whose name she didn’t recognize sent her money with the message: Ukrainians stand with Heather.
“I had helped a lot when Ukrainians were first coming to Kelowna, helping them get settled. I just cried because the refugees were giving me money,” Ms. MacKay said.
She tries to laugh all she can, allowing the heaviness to roll off her shoulders. Her lifestyle has completely changed. She doesn’t live in a big house and she doesn’t have the luxuries she used to. But she does have her friends and family, and she received support from communities she didn’t realize she was a part of.
– Sophia Coppolino
Lytton, B.C., 2021
There aren’t many conversations Meghan Fandrich has with community members that don’t mention the fire that tore through her hometown of Lytton in 2021.
The trauma of surviving a wildfire goes far beyond the fire itself, as it has permanently altered the landscape of her life.
“That town basically looked the same since I was a little kid, and probably looked the same more or less for generations before that,” Ms. Fandrich said.
“There’s just always this trust that it’s going to be there, the community is going to be there, and then just all of a sudden it’s gone.”
While the home she shares with her nine-year-old daughter survived the fire, it levelled most of the village in a matter of minutes, including the business Ms. Fandrich had spent the past several years building.
She ran the Klowa Art Café on the village’s Main Street, which showcased local art, served coffee made from beans roasted in Lytton and employed five people.
After the fire, Ms. Fandrich had enough in the bank to issue final paycheques to her employees but not much else. For the next six or so months, she relied on donations from friends and family to provide basic necessities for her and her daughter.
Because she didn’t lose her home in the fire, she wasn’t eligible to receive financial assistance from the Red Cross.
She also had to pay a lawyer $25,000 to negotiate with her insurance company over the settlement for the loss of the café, a process that took 2½ years. When her insurance company eventually compensated her, it was insufficient to rebuild the business.
“I’m still recovering from it, still trying to get our feet back under us,” Ms. Fandrich said.
When Lytton burned, debris collapsed into the courtyard garden of Meghan Fandrich’s café.Courtesy of Meghan Fandrich
Ms. Fandrich, sitting in the courtyard after the debris was cleared, would be hard pressed to supply the café even if it had survived: The nearest grocery store is two hours away.Courtesy of Meghan Fandrich
When the fire happened, there was an initial sense of shock as she packed up her cat and her daughter’s stuffies and fled the flames. But coming back afterward was harder.
The village was mostly reduced to rubble, and it remained that way for the next two years. Drinking water wasn’t available from Ms. Fandrich’s tap for six months, and there were frequent power outages.
Lytton still doesn’t have a grocery store, which means that Ms. Fandrich has to drive two hours each way to buy food.
Part of the trauma of the fire, she said, manifested in her hesitation to leave her house, even to do essential trips, such as for groceries. On those long drives, the possibility of having the highway wash away is always on her mind, as tree deaths from the fire have led to soil erosion.
“Any time there’s a rainfall, there’s more landslides, because the trees don’t hold the mountains together any more,” she said.
She worries if she leaves, she might not make it home again.
“You can’t recover the loss of everything until you’re able to feel safe again and feel like home again,” Ms. Fandrich said. “There’s none of that.”
“Even for the people in the area who didn’t lose a building in the fire, they lost their town, their community and their centre,” she said.
Lytton's mayor and B.C. dignitaries opened the town's first rebuilt municipal building this past August. The community is still putting its infrastructure back together so locals can return.Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press
Ms. Fandrich said the fire has changed her relationship with her daughter.
In the years leading up to the blaze, she was focused on building her business, to secure a stable income and create something she could one day leave for her daughter. As a preschooler, her daughter played with the baristas during the day and Ms. Fandrich would have her laptop open in the bathroom during her daughter’s bath time.
With the fire came social isolation, which forced Ms. Fandrich and her daughter to rely on each other for support and for company.
Many people, including her daughter’s best friend, had to move elsewhere. The village’s snowplows were also destroyed in the blaze, which meant that in the first winter after the fire, heavy snowfall left them unable to leave their home.
Now, she deeply cherishes the time she spends with her daughter.
“I took all of Lytton for granted, I trusted that the town I grew up in would still be there,” Ms. Fandrich said. “And now, as much as I can, I hold every moment with her as really precious, and every normal moment as really beautiful.”
In the years since the fire, she’s published a book of poetry called Burning Sage, which chronicles the blaze and its aftermath. She’s also lent her voice to climate activism, travelling as far as Ottawa to convince parliamentarians to take greenhouse-gas emissions, which make wildfires more frequent and severe, more seriously.
– Claire McFarlane
Fort McMurray, Alta., 2016
Jon Tupper, his wife and their three-year-old daughter had moved into a house in the Fort McMurray neighbourhood of Thickwood Heights about a year before a wildfire forced out more than 90,000 evacuees in May, 2016. It also destroyed more than 2,400 homes and businesses, permanently altering the community.
On May 2, 2016, Mr. Tupper was barbecuing in his backyard when he noticed a plume of smoke in the distance.
“I thought, ‘that’s going to be a really big fire – it’s pretty dry out,’” he said.
The wildfire smoke was still far away from Jon Tupper's backyard on May 1, 2016. The next day, he was wading through it in a taxi ride to the airport.Courtesy of Jon Tupper
The next day, he flew to Calgary for work, but kept an eye on the blaze’s progression through the Alberta Wildfire Status app.
When the fire leaped across the Athabasca River, he realized the gravity of the situation.
“Maybe 15 minutes later, the deetle deetle deetle of the emergency alerts just started going off on my phone,” Mr. Tupper said. “Events were happening faster than the information.”
Mr. Tupper’s wife and child were forced to flee but what was normally a 4½ hour drive to Edmonton to Mr. Tupper’s parents house took 12 hours along roads full of people trying to get out of Fort Mac.
The Tuppers were among the lucky ones whose house survived the fire, though the roof had to be replaced after water dropped from a waterbomber tore the shingles off.
“All of my stuff that you keep in the back of the yard was just smashed over to one side like the hand of God just swatted it,” Mr. Tupper said.
Moving on from the shock of the fire took a long time, partly because the blackened landscape was an ever-present visual reminder. For a year after the fire, you couldn’t go for a walk in the forest without getting covered in ash and soot, he said. It took about five years for the burned forest to regenerate, Mr. Tupper noted.
“We had people that just couldn’t deal with the visual assault of the devastation, who chose to move town and to leave.”
He said he found himself staying at home more after the fire because the forest in the line of sight from his house was relatively untouched.
The blaze also took a toll on the community, he said, because among those who had home insurance, some received compensation faster than others, allowing them to recover faster.
Some, he said, are still fighting with their insurance companies over their claims while others had no coverage at all.
This, Mr. Tupper said, has created some division among residents.
In early 2017, a Fort McMurray homeowner points out foundation problems left behind after water bombers doused his neighbourhood.Amber Bracken/The Globe and Mail
He said he’s grateful for all the support his family received while they were evacuated. The City of Edmonton offered anyone with a Fort McMurray address free admission to attractions such as the Edmonton Valley Zoo or the Telus World of Science, which Mr. Tupper said helped pass the time when there wasn’t much else to do.
“I found that the weirdest thing about being an evacuee is you’re inundated with toiletries, because everybody wants to help, but you don’t want to say no, their heart is in the right place,” he said.
“Toothpaste would last another year and a half, and we had more toothbrushes than you could shake a stick at,” Mr. Tupper said.
What community members could have used, however, was greater mental-health support delivered in a more efficient way.
A 2023 Cambridge University Press study surveyed wildfire survivors in Fort McMurray, with 45 per cent saying they experienced symptoms of a major depressive disorder.
Mr. Tupper recommends all wildlife survivors seek out mental-health support, even if they think they might not need it. He has offered this advice to those who fled wildfires in Yellowknife in 2023 and in Jasper in 2024 in community groups on Facebook.
For those in Jasper, he also provided a video tour of the regenerated forested areas in Fort McMurray, to show evacuees that the forest will return.
“It’ll be different. It’ll never be like it was, but it will be back.”
– Claire McFarlane
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