The Summer Canada Burned — The wildfire season that shocked the world – Windsor Star

Nov 22, 2023

This excerpt is from the new Postmedia/Greystone book The Summer Canada Burned, now available online and at bookstores starting Nov. 27

Canada awaited the start of wildfire season. It was the end of April. The annual battle of the blazes was not expected to begin in earnest for weeks, maybe even two months in a good year. But it would soon become clear that the 2023 season would be anything but good.

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On April 30, the first “wildfire of note”—meaning it could threaten public safety or critical infrastructure—popped up in Alberta. About an hour’s drive west of the capital city of Edmonton, near the hamlet of Entwistle, a fire devoured tinderbox-dry trees and grass. A few minutes away, a second wildfire of note burned simultaneously. This one cropped up closer to the hamlet of Evansburg, humorously known for electing a “town grouch” in past years. There was nothing funny, however, about what was about to occur: Something had sparked Alberta’s first two notable fires of the year, igniting a wildfire season across Canada unlike any other.

The blazes became a fiery harbinger, foreshadowing a season eventually described as vicious, hellish, and apocalyptic. One word, however, emerged from the lexicon of forestry experts as the defining characteristic of the 2023 Canadian wildfire season: unprecedented.

Read More: https://windsorstar.com/feature/wildfires-novascotia-bc-alberta-summer-canada-burned-book-smoke