News

Raging wildfires and smoky skies across much of Canada have put a damper on travel this summer, resulting in cancelled plans and closed businesses.

Smoke and flames continue to engulf much of Canada, with Alberta imposing new evacuation orders, Manitoba bracing for heavy, lightning-generating thunderstorms and high wildfire risks and poor air quality from coast to coast.

Anthaea-Grace Patricia Dennis is not your typical 12-year-old.

The techniques used to put out the wildfires that are burning across Canada vary somewhat depending on geography, but ultimately they depend on people on the ground with hoses and shovels digging out hot spots one by one, experts say.

Fire has driven Marvin Herman’s family from their home in northwestern Saskatchewan twice in the last month.

As wildfire approached a neighbouring community, April Glaicar grabbed her camera. What she witnessed was “alarming.”

During his 18 years living on the north shore of Centennial Lake, Mike Coates said he had never even heard of a forest fire nearby. Until Sunday.

Over the past few days, apocalyptic skies have darkened Tony Wawatie's traditional territory around Barriere Lake. Hundreds of wildfires are scorching Quebec's Abitibi-Témiscamingue region, forcing most of the First Nation's roughly 800 members to evacuate.

The fire prompted more than 16,000 people to be evacuated from their homes in Hammonds Plains, Upper Tantallon and Pockwock, which are suburban communities about 25 kilometres away from Halifax. It destroyed about 200 buildings, including 151 homes.

“This is at least the third year where I've had to wear a respirator,” says Sayward, B.C., resident Shannon Briggs, whose children are growing up in the age of apocalyptic wildfires.

Scientists warn the world is on track for 2.7 C of heating with current action plans and this would mean two billion people experiencing average annual temperatures above 29 C by 2030, a level at which very few communities have lived in the past.

Ever since fighting “The Beast” — a massive system of wildfires that devastated Fort McMurray and swept through northern Alberta in 2016 — Ron Quintal says his “anxiety level goes from zero to 100 in a matter of minutes” at that telltale sign of smoke.

In May, Green Party Leader David Coon tabled the bill with “urgency,” he said, after Premier Blaine Higgs said he would pursue fracked gas development with or without First Nations' consent.

Hazy skies tinged with an eerie yellow glow greeted millions of Canadians in Quebec and Ontario again on Wednesday, June 7, 2023, as the smoke from hundreds of wildfires continued to cause air quality warnings in Canada's most populated corridor.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is showing no interest in compromising with Meta and Google over a proposed law that would make them pay for Canadian journalism that helps tech companies generate revenue.