Front Burner - Wildfires rage across Canada

Episode Date: June 11, 2025

As many as 40,000 Canadians are out of their homes right now with evacuation alerts and states of emergency in effect across much of western Canada, from B.C. through northern Ontario. Many, especially those from Saskatchewan and Manitoba, have been away from home for weeks, with no indication of when they'll return.CBC Thunder Bay's Sarah Law brings us the story of evacuees from Sandy Lake First Nation, making their way to Thunder Bay, Ont., as fire bears down on their fly-in, fly-out community.Then, Chief David Monias of the Pimicikamak Cree Nation in Manitoba tells us about the struggle his community has had getting the resources to effectively fight the fires and support its community members through the ongoing evacuation.Fill out our listener survey here. We appreciate your input!For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

The ocean is vast, beautiful, and lawless. I'm Ian Urbina back with an all new season of The Outlaw Ocean. The stories we bring you this season are literally life or death. We look into the shocking prevalence of forced labor, mine boggling overfishing, migrants hunted and captured. The Outlaw Ocean takes you where others won't. Available on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast.

Hi, I'm Allie Janes. I'm a producer on Front Burner and I'm filling in for Jamie Plusong. I'm scared. Trapped. The footage Carl Jani shot on Saturday is terrifying. This is my camp, man. Dark orange skies, red flames, sparks flying. Jani and 18 other construction workers were on a site in Northern Ontario,

near Sandy Lake First Nation, close to a 156,000 hectare fire that's still blazing out of control. It's all around us. Jani, who's a former firefighter, says he told the crew they had to leave. But the fire closed in fast. There was nowhere to go. So he says he threw water on some blankets and told the crew to put them over their heads. They ended up sheltering in a metal shipping container as the smoke and flames raged around them. Here's what he told our CBC News

colleague Gavin Axelrod. Rescue attempts by air were unsuccessful for hours. Finally, trucks got through to drive them out, and they boarded evacuation flights in nearby Sandy Lake. Over the last few weeks, about 40,000 Canadians have been evacuated from their homes due to wildfires. What's striking about it isn't just that huge number. It's that these fires are happening in so many different places across the country.

The majority of those evacuees are from Manitoba. 21,000 had been registered as of Monday. Everyone's feeling fearful. We've gone to our homes and we just looked at it and you know, there's nothing you can do. Another 11,000 in Saskatchewan. We cry. Hey, that's our home. About 4,000 in Alberta.

I looked up and there was smoke and then all of a sudden an RCMP pulled up to our driveway and asked us to leave and said you guys have to leave right away. And there are a number of other smaller communities in BC and Northern Ontario also under evacuation order. On Tuesday, a local state of emergency was issued for the town of Squamish, a popular tourist destination not far north of Vancouver. Fires are rapidly encroaching on the community.

Smoke from all these fires has meant poor air quality in cities across the country and even internationally. On Friday, Toronto and Montreal ranked among the top five polluted cities in the world. This smoke is going via Greenland, southern Greenland, Iceland to Europe within a few days. Most of the communities directly affected by these wildfires are small and remote and primarily indigenous. Families have been forced out of their homes with no idea when they might be able to come

back or what will be left when they do. And many are ending up scattered across the country in completely different cities from other community members or even from their own family. We're going to bring you some of those stories today. We're starting in Thunder Bay, Ontario. For the last few days, the city has been the main hub for evacuations from Sandy Lake First Nation. Sarah Law is a reporter with CBC in Thunder Bay, and she's been speaking to some of those people. [♪ music playing, fades out.

[♪ music ends. Hi Sarah, thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you for having me. Okay. So you're in Thunder Bay. You were at the airport yesterday to speak with some of the people who were arriving from Sandy Lake. And can you just describe the scene?

Like what was it like there at the airport? Mm-hmm. Well, it was pretty busy. We watched the Hercules plane come in, super loud, large plane, and basically the evacuees were shuffled into the airport and then directed across the way to an evacuation hub that they've set up. So kind of a separate area in the airport. And all of the members of the Sandy Lake Band Rep program are there.

They're directing people on where to go. They had a bunch of food, pizza, and drinks available, snacks for folks. And then basically they were going through a bunch of lists. I saw a lot of clipboards of, okay, who is staying where? So we know that some evacuees are staying in hotels in Thunder Bay for a night or two. Some are staying in like head universities dorm rooms because of course most students are home for the summer.

So that works out pretty well. And then there's basically three host communities for Sandy Lake members. They're going to Kappa Skaesing, Cornwall and Mississauga. And it seems like they're trying to get people to those communities as quickly as possible, like limit the time that they have to spend in Thunder Bay. Because really, people just want to be in one place, right? They want to limit the amount of travel that they have to do.

Right. So this was like a temporary stopover, and then they're being filtered out to all these different communities. Yes. And, I mean, I can only imagine how emotional this must be for them and how shell-shocked they must feel. Like, what sense did you get? I mean, I know this is just sort of their first stop, but like what they were going through mentally.

So it was pretty interesting in that generally spirits were pretty high. There were some emotional moments with relatives reconnecting with one another. Some of them were moved earlier than others. So as the different planes were arriving, people were seeing, oh, that's my sibling, that's my child and reunification. So those were some nice moments.

But there was also a lot of laughter in the evacuation hub people kind of joking around Humor is a really big coping strategy in the northern communities I found and so just a lot of teasing one another and I heard this motto from a lot of sandy lake members No, there's don't panic I was like, keep calm, eat better. No, there's don't panic, eat panic. No, there's don't panic, eat better. That's awesome. For sure. So, obviously there's a lot of emotions.

People are kind of looking around like, okay, what's happening next? Where am I going? Because once they're arriving in Thunder Bay, they don't actually know which community they're staying in for the long term until they're told, okay, you're boarding this plane at this time and off you go. So, I can only imagine, you know, the toll of that uncertainty.

I know I myself am a big planner. I like to write out my whole itinerary for my life. So that uncertainty, I think, is taking a toll. But at the same time, people are just trying to do what they can to stay as positive as they can right now. Can you tell me about some of the stories that you heard from from evacuees and you know what they told you about what they're going through, how they're handling the situation? I spoke with one young man who said he was just really afraid for his fellow community

members, worried about, you know, the consequences of the fire, the smoke inhalation, especially. We know today, for example, there's a lot of air quality statements and warnings in effect for well over a dozen First Nations in our region. One family I connected with, Mary Ellen Kakagamic, she was there with her two daughters, six-year-old Sarah and nine-year-old Carise. Is there anything that you wish you could have brought? I don't know. My dog.

You had to leave your dog there? Yeah, my dog. Do you want to tell me about your dog? What's its name? She's like grey and she's like kind of small. And you know, the children described how it was windy and smoky. I was surprised that the one young girl, Sarah, said that she fell asleep on the Hercules plane, which I found funny because everyone else I talked to said, oh, that plane was

so loud and so bumpy. You know, it was scary conditions. At one point it was, the sky was just orange and there was ashes coming down. Yeah, yellow, orange. Not knowing what their community will look like when they come back home, only being able to bring so much.

Like maybe two plushies, headphones, a charger, and my device. And your clothes. Yeah. You know, it really puts into perspective for a child what those priority items are, but also the essentials, right? I spoke to one member of Sandy Lake's Band Rep program today, and she said there was

a very young boy. The family didn't even have time to pack him any clothing, any change of clothes. So it was the band rep members went into town, they picked out a bunch of, a couple of outfits for him just to, you know, get him through these next couple of days. So what other kind of supports are being offered at the evacuation hub? Well there's all of those essential supplies that I mentioned to get people through the next moment, the next day, the next few days. There's also an elder on site offering interpretation services. We know language might be a barrier for certain community members,

particularly the older adults. I was also speaking with members of the Band Rep team about the importance of the mental health supports, the social service supports. A lot of our people have anxiety. They left our community and they see it the community like burning so like a fire right behind the community right so it's really traumatizing for the kids the adults the youth our elders because that's our home. Making sure that people have access to

medical assistance there was a woman on dialysis when we were there, making sure that she had all of her supplies and everything that she needed. A lot of individuals in the community are going through addiction. They're on the Suboxone program, and some of them expressed concerns about, will I be able to get my Suboxone wherever I'm going?

So the support workers are trying to make sure that all of those arrangements are in place by the time they arrive to just reduce that stress, right? The stress of the uncertainty in a situation like this. Now, you also spoke with the chief of Sandy Lake First Nation, Dolores Kakagamic. And as I understand it, she's actually still in the community overseeing the evacuation efforts. And so what did she tell you about what it's like there right now? Yes, well, she's been very busy, hard to get a hold of, of course, because her priority is her community.

I know that yesterday she actually went up in a helicopter to overlook the fire. And I can give you some information about that fire. It's called Red Lake 12. It's more than 156,000 hectares large now, which is super significant. It's the biggest fire in our region. The latest information we have from Ontario's Ministry of Natural Resources is that we did get some rainfall, the temperatures have dropped and the winds have eased up a bit since the weekend. So that has helped to stunt the fire's growth, but obviously it's still a very significant concern and it's not just impacting Sandy Lake as well.

This is one community in particular. I'm wondering if we could just zoom out a bit and could you talk to me about what the wildfire situation is like in Northwestern Ontario right now more broadly? Like there are a number of other communities that have also been evacuated, right? Yes, Deer Lake First Nation is affected by the same fire, Red Lake 12, as Sandy Lake. Hundreds of community members there

have been evacuated to Toronto, Webiquay First Nation, they're being impacted by a fire called Nipikin 5, and hundreds of their members are in Barrie, Ontario, a little earlier in the season. Ingolf and Wabsamum independent nations were really hit hard by the impacts of the smoke from a fire called Canora 20. They were sent all the way to Niagara Falls and were staying there for almost a month. Just on Friday, the community gave the all clear that community members can go home. So those repatriation efforts are starting. We're also hearing that North Spirit Lake First Nation and Kiwiwin First

Nation have issued evacuation orders, but we're still trying to find more details about that and where those members will go. It's, I mean, last summer, I don't recall evacuations like this in northwestern Ontario. I'm still fairly new to the region. I know that evacuations aren't uncommon, but it just feels like every day it's another community, another fire of concern. I keep hearing about just how much of a dry season we've had overall. And even though we have had some recent rainfall, I've been talking with fire information officer Chris Marshand and he's described how the dry conditions run really deep into the soil,

which just makes it that much harder to extinguish the fires. It also puts the landscape at risk of lightning fires too. I mean, we know so many of the fires are human caused, but lightning is also another big source of concern. Mm, wow. Sarah, thank you so much. I really appreciated talking to you. Thank you so much. Amy Scott, Host of How We Survive, a podcast that's been a hit for a long time. Can we invest our way out of the climate crisis?

Five years ago, it seemed like Wall Street was working on it until a backlash upended everything. So, there's a lot of alignment between the dark money right and the oil industry on this effort. I'm Amy Scott, host of How We Survive, a podcast from Marketplace. In this season, we investigate the rise, fall, and reincarnation of climate conscious investing. Listen to How We Survive wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so now let's go to Manitoba. As I was saying in the intro, at least 21,000 people are still out of their homes and many of them have been for weeks now. The province's transportation and infrastructure

minister has asked travelers to avoid non-essential trips to Manitoba so that they can free up hotel rooms for evacuees. Pimicicumat Cree Nation is one of the communities under an ongoing evacuation order. Yesterday, I spoke to the chief of Pimicicamac, David Monias, who has also had to flee. Hi, Chief Monias. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. Thank you. Thank you for having me. So for our listeners who aren't familiar, could you just tell me a little bit about

your community of Pimitsikamak? All right. My community is about an eight hour tribe north of Winnipeg, northeast. We have approximately about 10,000 plus pan members, 7500 of which live on reserve. live on reserve and we'll stay brief speaking. Our names are Pimitsagamak and Tashar from the Inc. Or our community and our nation. And before you left, can you just describe to me what the fires looked like? Like what could you see, what could you smell,

what could you hear? Well, first of all, like the fires, we live on like an island and there's another big island that's next to us. That was on fire. So we were fighting that to make sure it doesn't jump across over to our mainland. But we were able to, with winds of course being favorable, we were able to get that out there their control. But in the meantime, while we were fighting that fire, there was another fire.

And then because nobody was working on it, it grew bigger and it's moving northward towards our Manego Bridge and the, and Chenbake and then frankly threatening our, our community. So then we were told that we would have to evacuate fully by the incident commander. And those were the ones were flowing from the west and going easterly towards our community. So we ended up doing a full evacuation. And we called on the army, they can bring the Hercules.

We needed some help. We called ministers. We called the prime minister. We called the premier and their ministers. So they got to help us out to aggravate people. Did you feel like you were getting the help that you needed? Well, the delays were very long.

I mean, even now we're still waiting for the masks and the goggles for us to use in the community while we were there. And because the smoke is pretty hard and it's hard on your lungs. And I couldn't stop coffee for a couple of days after I came back this weekend from Cross State because we are finished def with valuating the people. So yeah, it was difficult getting all the operations because we had declared the state of emergency. That didn't really do anything, didn't really make government move and start providing services to us in a collaborative way. But instead they had stated that they had gone to Red Cross to provide service to us. And we started contacting those guys and then we started looking at how we

can get people out of the way. Most of the people through out to Winnipeg, Thompson, and the Hercules came after Demer Wapkwem with the state of emergency for our community and which Canadians apparently need that in order to assist our people. Despite the fact that we have treaties and we have a treaty relationship and they have a fiduciary obligation and responsibility to our Indians and Indian lands. We still have to back bread. On a similar note, in terms of actually fighting the fires, I mean, we've heard from a lot of nations in Manitoba who felt that they have not gotten enough resources either from the province or from the feds to deal with the fires.

And I mean I saw for example that Chief Gordie Bayer of Pugatawaga and Cree Nation was saying that they were having to use the hoses they normally use to flood the hockey rink to fight these huge fires. And so can you tell me a little bit about the kind of, I guess, fight that you've had to go through to get resources just to actually fight these fires, let alone evacuate people? Well, it was a bureaucratic nightmare trying to navigate their system to get the help that we needed. In our community of our size, it's a huge community. We only have one fire truck. Wow. And with limited supplies of hose and pumps. And so I had asked for a truck, water truck, and there was slow incoming, and we're not getting anything. So it was difficult. It still is, we still have not enough hoses.

Hoses and pumps get destroyed in a fire. When you're tracking the hose right into the fire, you get tree stumps, you rip some of the hose, you make holes in there, and then it's no good to you. I mean, do you feel like this is the Manitoba government that needs to be stepping up to do more, or is it the federal government, or both? Well, I think both of them, you know,

we have to look at the, what is it that we need to do, right? Make sure that everything's so collaborative, that we're not playing a jurisdictional game, your territory, my territory, your people, my people. You know, we gotta get away from that. It's just fire has no recognition of boundaries or jurisdiction. It will attack anybody and anything.

And we have to do the same thing when we're fighting the fire. Let's not piece me, let out, let's do it jointly and put our resources together, all the firefighters and all the, their bombers, what other tanks they call them. I mean, I understand your community faced a similar wildfire evacuation two years ago. I mean, given that this is something that has happened so recently that your community is so vulnerable to this, do you feel like these levels of government are taking this

seriously enough? Well, it doesn't feel like they are. I mean, now they are, there's time to put more resources together. Premier Wapkenau has been good to take my calls and assist me where he can. He provided a used fire truck to our community, but we're still waiting for that. We also need air purifiers to get rid of the smoke inside the house. This stays with you for a long time. Mine was sticking to me at least for two days to two and a half days just to get rid of

the smoky smell. Wow. And you can't return people with that when they have asthma, COPD. So we're going to have to figure out how we're going to do that. Where are you now? I'm in Winnipeg right now. It's the two offices running around trying to help out with the logistics here and hoping to go back to Crosslake to relieve my council has been there since day one and start planning for what would the return home look like and how do we plan for that. I mean it's a little ways off

yet but I think preparedness is always the key and we have to do the same thing here. We have to prepare for the differential return of our people and they'll still be expecting fresh water. There are sewer tanks empty and so forth. Water and food, groceries are plentiful at the stores. You know, there's a lot to prepare for. Where are other members of the community? Like I understand they're scattered in different places, right? Yeah, they're in Winnipeg. Most of the members of the community? Like I understand they're scattered in different places, right? Yeah, they're in Winnipeg. Most of the majority of the people are in Winnipeg. Some people are in Palm, some people are in Brandon.

Some people are in the Portis de la Prairie and some people are in the Dolphin. So they're in various communities, depending on what hotels we can catch to put people in. And I mean, are you in touch with many of them? How are people holding up right now? Well, it's hard to say, and that's what we do. I do visit there once on some hotels.

But most of the time I go on Facebook to do live updates and they all follow me there to give them an update on what the fire situation is like, but also, you know, what we hear, their concerns about food, eating, accommodations, and so forth. And we are trying to problem solve those issues as they come along. I know you spoke to media maybe a week ago about, like, your frustrations trying to get some people to evacuate. Like, some people didn't want to leave, is that right? Well, there's some that feel like this is not gonna come here. This is gonna be a, this is gonna blow over

like last one and stuff like that. The other one came very close and it was stopped in a dead-end extracts by muscacan water, a lot of moisture in that area. So it died there. and it's tracked by muscacan water, a lot of moisture in that area. So it died there. And so our, our fire alarm two years ago, we had to evacuate everybody within three hours in the middle of the night. Wow.

And this one, we started preparing when the smoke started coming in. We started removing people with breathing problems to the city. The main thing is that they're, they were out there. So that's what counts. At this point, do you have any sense of when people might be able to go home? You know, I've been asked that question by so many people. Right now we have the hot spots from the United States firefighters. So they're providing us with updates as to where the fires are, how we should have read to our community. So we're still on a day-by-day basis here. So it's not up to us, the office of

the fire commissioner, as well as our CMB, they make that decision as to up to us, the office of the fire commissioner, it's also RCMP. They make that sort of decision as to want to open up the roads in our community. But we have to prepare for everybody, right? So, you know, they told me 10 to 12 days yesterday, but they said, don't quote me, they said, because there are not anything going to happen with the fire and with the winds and stuff like that. It's so unpredictable and unstable that they can't give us a definitive date. Do you have any sense of what you'll be returning to? Well, back to our homes.

So far the fire didn't get to the houses. So far the fire didn't get to the houses. We did have flying emperors that came and our fire spotted them and they took care of them. So it's relatively how they left it. Chief Moniez, thank you so much for this and I hope that you and your whole community get to go home really soon. Well, I'll cross to my friend's every day. I go to that meeting. Thank you. Take care.

All right. Thank you. All right. That's all for today. For more information on wildfires affecting your community, check our website, cbc.ca or your local CBC Radio One station. I'm Allie Janes. Thanks for listening to Front Burner, and we'll talk to you tomorrow.