In the summer of 2015, my first summer in Canada, I remember waking up to a muggy morning and walking outside. The skies around me were orange, and I could see flakes of a grey-white substance falling from the sky and sticking to my eyelashes. I was disoriented enough to think that it was snow then I remembered it was July.
I looked around me and my landlady’s car was covered in a powdery substance that stuck to the metal of the bonnet and hood. I looked at the driveway and the same powder coated the tarmac on the road; it disintegrated like flour as I took a few steps forward and stuck to the bottom of my shoes. I walked closer to the car and touched the bonnet and the same powdery substance stuck to my fingertips. I took a breath and I could taste wood and smell smoke. My lungs responded with a small cough.
It wasn’t snow. It was ash.
I remembered that experience today when I felt this clammy coldness in my body. The sun was shining; it was supposed to be 26 degrees but there was no warmth. My hands and feet were cold. I looked outside the window and saw an orange hue in the sky behind Mt Benson. I went outside to collect the clothes that had been drying on the clothes rack and I could smell a woody smoke in the air. Usually the smell of a wood fire evokes feelings of comfort and warmth but that has changed for me – and likely for countless others who live on the west coast.
The smell of woody smoke now evokes iconic images of hot flames lapping a mountain landscape that used to be filled with giant evergreen trees, a trail of cars evacuating a city with scared faces looking out the window at a boreal forest going up in flames, the charred skeletal remains of abandoned homes, and an army of firefighters facing an inferno.
Like many others I have asked myself why the wildfire season is starting earlier, continuing for so much longer, and and increased in intensity in western Canada. And like many, I have attributed it to climate change, and how the summers are hotter and drier in a region that is known for its temperate rainforests.
But this CBC article which I read this morning gave me a new perspective.
Yes, climate change has a significant role to play but there are other contributing factors. Quoting from the article:
- decades of overzealous fire suppression,
- poor forest management,
- criminalization of traditional Indigenous burning practices, and
- the systematic destruction of more fire-resistant tree species.
And all of these factors have made the three ingredients required for a fire to start and spread more readily available – fuel, ignition and weather.
The upshot is that while climate change is a major contributory factor and the one that we have the least control over, we can influence the other factors. Whether those changes will be enough and whether they will come soon enough for any real change is unclear. But the great thing about the analysis in this article is that it shows a way out and hints at hope when too many are feeling powerless.
Maybe it was the article. Maybe it is my new perspective on the province’s leadership and the newfound faith that I have in their leadership and compassion. But something has made me feel more positive about the climate change crisis, and more hopeful about our ability to adapt to an ever changing environment and survive the challenges that are coming.
Island Intrigue 