The Current - Think smoky skies are eerie? Experts say get used to them

Episode Date: July 16, 2026

Parts of southern Ontario are blanketed in thick wildfire smoke with air quality warnings in place. In the northwest of the province, dozens of wildfires are burning forcing many people to evacuate. Courtney Howard, an emergency physician and Chair of the Global Climate and Health Alliance, talks about how to stay safe from the smoke. Ed Struzik, a fellow at the Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy at Queen's University, talks about what the rest of the wildfire season could look like.

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This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. The smoke was terrible. It was so thick, you could just about taste it. And then we were getting burnt pine needles, ash, falling down in the community. Diane Laybourne fled to Thunder Bay, Ontario, when a wildfire threatened her small town of Armstrong. Dozens of fires are burning out of control in the northwestern part of Ontario. Ontario, forcing widespread evacuations.

The biggest thing is not knowing anything. You know what? It's really hard to think about because it's your home. It could be the only thing you've got left, and it might be gone by the time you're allowed to go back. Terrifying video of a CN train crew trapped in flames near Armstrong, Ontario, went viral this week. You can see the view from inside the train, as it is. surrounded by a wall of fire.

This could potentially overtake us here. This has gotten a little scary. Yeah. Okay, y'all need to hurry up here. Like, seriously, we're encased in flames now. Thankfully, the crew managed to escape on foot. The smoke from the fires is blanketing southern Ontario, turning the sky and eerie, dark orange yesterday.

And yesterday, Toronto had the worst air quality levels in the entire world. We came out this morning and I noticed that the sky was really smoky and it actually smells like there was a fire. So if it's happening over here, I can't imagine the people in Armstrong. It's really gross. It's not nice feeling when you walk outside. It hits you like an oven. Environment Canada has air quality warnings covering much of the southern parts of Ontario today. And more air quality alerts have been issued for Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Northwest Territories and British Columbia.

Dr. Courtney Howard is an emergency physician in Yellowknife who has studied the health impacts of wildfire smoke. She's also the chair of Global Climate and Health Alliance. Good morning to you. Good morning, Pia. Every year this seems to hit somewhere in Canada. This week, Toronto is pretty dire, I got to say. What are you thinking about as you see the images of southwestern Ontario with its dark orange skies and all the smoke in the air? I want to first send energy to everybody who is facing this.

It is scary and it's normal to feel that way. I'm particularly thinking of the folks up north who have evacuated or are facing evacuation. We had to evacuate our entire city Yellowknife in 2023, including our 100-bed hospital. So it's not only people, it's infrastructure, and it's very scary. So if you're in one of those communities that's facing evacuation, make sure that you get your go bag, your go-kit ready. Make sure your medications are in there that you have the documents that you need in order to be able to get a hold of your insurers. Stuffy for the kids, make sure you remember your eyeglasses. Those are the things that people often tend to forget.

And the last thing you want is to have to find a primary care appointment in your evacuation location to get your meds. And there's real anxiety, long-lasting PTSD associated with these events. So please make sure that you go talk to someone coming in. into community to talk about this is really, I think, one of the most healing and practical things we can do. So I'm glad we're having this conversation. That's a very fair point, that people who are directly affected in a very acute way are facing a different situation than, you know, others like myself and others here in Toronto and Southern Ontario today who are getting smoke. It's not great, though, having the smoke around. And I'm just wondering how seriously people should be taking the wildfire smoke levels that we're seeing in Southern Ontario.

Sure, yes. Smoke is one of the biggest public health. threats that we face. And people in the clips there mentioned how it feels from a cognitive standpoint, from an emotional standpoint, the change in the color of the sun, just the grayness around you, it certainly has emotional effects right off the bat. In terms of physical effects, many people describe headaches or watery eyes, sometimes a decrease in mood of concentration. We see real increases in asthma exacerbations and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. exacerbations. A couple of days in, we start to see myocardial infarction, heart attacks, cardiac arrests. We've had a few weeks of smoke here in Yelanife and I went into a set of shifts

last week and I asked what the nurses were seeing and they said cardiac, all cardiac. And we just had an emerge full of people with arrhyth, et cetera. There's actually, the smoke itself can make motor vehicle crashes more likely. So be careful when you're out on the roads. Of course, there's also more long-term effects that can affect pregnant women. We're seeing studies that show decreases in birth weight and preterm weight. So if you're pregnant, please do reduce your exposure as much as you can. And in the longer term, there's been a couple of studies that actually show potential respiratory health infections from early life exposure, the last for at least a couple of years based on the studies we've now got. And even one study that showed possible increases in brain and lung cancer and risk of cognitive.

of decline. So there are really a lot of reasons to stay inside with your windows closed and wear an N95 mask of people outside. Yeah, so let's talk more about what people should be doing. You just said people should stay indoors as much as they can. What else can people be doing? I know a lot of sports activities, day camps and so on and so forth have been, a lot of them canceled here in Toronto, but what other actions can people be taking? Yeah. So we recommend when the smoke rolls in, close your windows, close your doors. If you have the means, it's great to get an air filtration device and get that going inside your house and try to keep the PM2.5 levels down. So it's the particulate matter less than 2.5 microns that we study in most of the studies that we do. And that's

because they're small enough that they can actually go all the way down into your lungs and then cross over into your bloodstream. So some of these impacts are actually from inflammation in the bloodstream. And so we want to reduce how much those can get into our lungs. An N95 mask that's well fitted to your face can reduce exposure by up to 90%. And so if you combine those and try to get the PM2.5 in your house down below 12. 30 would be sort of the maximum potentially acceptable, but really above that, it's not good. And then paired with that, you need to remember to undo all. all of that when the clear air window comes because the smoke tends to come in and out. So when you see beautiful blue sky outside, open your windows, open your doors,

blow the fans so that it's blowing the air out so that you can clear out the air that is inevitably leaked into your house because none of our houses are 100% sort of tight in terms of their building envelope. You know, we mentioned what's happening in northwestern Ontario. residents say that Collins First Nation in that part of the province, it's now gone. It's burned down. Pardon me. See the smoke's in my throat. All 20,000 residents of your hometown of Yellowknife were evacuated, as you say, back in 20203, including the patients at your hospital. What does this all do to a community sense of safety after undergoing an evacuation like that when they're back home or worse in situations like Collins where homes are destroyed? This is complex because certainly community is the best part of the whole thing. People check on their neighbors.

I remember when we arrived home in the Yolenex Airport, there were so many volunteers helping people get their luggage into their cars that I didn't even touch my own luggage. I was popped into a little minibus and brought home. It was the degree to which people make you feel loved and, and care for you is really one of the most wonderful experiences I've ever had. And I think it can pull communities together. But at the same time, so many individuals within those communities will be coping with post-traumatic stress disorder will have lasting anxiety. You see increased rates of different types of substance abuse challenges. And there can be relationships that have been disrupted

through the events of the evacuation as well. And so we still see when the smoke rolls into yellow knife I see on Facebook, yellow knife face, but people say, oh, gosh, I felt I smelled the smoke and I didn't feel good so there can be triggers for PTSD. And, you know, it took us, we really had to lean in as a medical community to reestablish relationships. We have done every well-being activity together that you can imagine. We went paddleboarding.

We have done art together. We have done soak and ice water. and you really have to rebuild. And those effects can be lasting. So really do what you can to take care of your neighbors, come together. And we know that some of those relationships are what can really help us build the teams we need in order to create a healthy path forward

that can last beyond these smoky episodes. Dr. Howard, it's been really good to hear from you this morning. Thank you for your time. Yeah, thank you so much, really sending energy out to everybody. Canadians know how to take care of each other and what you do in the next couple of weeks will really, really matter. Not only now, but into the future. A good reminder. Thanks again.

Dr. Courtney Howard is an emergency physician in Yellowknife who has studied the health impacts of wildfire smoke. She's also the chair of Global Climate and Health Alliance. Hi, it's Thomas LeBlanc, host of Celine Understood. A deep dive into the cultural, political, and economic alchemy that created Celine Dian. And there are more seasons I've understood. Follow our feed to learn more about other big stories in the news like the rise and fall of cryptoking Sam Bankman-Fried, or the controversy behind another notable Quebec institution, Pornhub.

And if you're already a follower, thanks. Please tell your friends about us. We're joined now by Edward Struzik. He's a fellow at the Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy at Queen's University. He's also the author of Firestorm, How Wildfires Will Fours Will Fours, shape our future. He's in Edmonton. Ed, good morning. Good morning, Pia. We heard earlier how multiple communities are being evacuated in northern Ontario right now. There are reports, as I mentioned, that the community of Collins has completely burned. We're seeing out-of-control fires burning

in B.C. Fraser Canyon right now. How bad is the wildfire situation in July of 2026? Well, really, it was a fairly slow start to the fire season. Here in Alberta, people are complaining more about mosquitoes than they are smoke. There's only, I think, about eight or nine wildfires that are active. But things are starting to ramp up because it's getting warmer and drier. And the forecast, generally speaking, is that we're going to see a lot more fire and a lot more smoke as the summer moves on. So you said it's been a slower start to the season. Why is that just cooler weather in parts of the country? Yeah, you know, it's just these crazy weather patterns. You know, Alberta, Edmonton, for example, had the rainiest June on record.

You know, it was really unusual. There's just an incredible amount of flooding. We're seeing really different weather, erratic weather patterns right across the country. And so, you know, you've got these concentrations of fire in one spot, and wet weather and another. And it's really a symptom of climate change. The jet stream is acting very erratically. Okay.

And you said, look, Canadians. my dear fellow Canadians, we still have a few months of summer to go and we can expect things to be different. What can we expect in terms of wildfires for the rest of the season? Well, let's just not talk about summer. I mean, we've got now El Nino ramping up in the South Pacific, which is going to make things a lot warmer in various parts of the country. And so we could actually see an extension of the fire season well into the fall. Remember, the Northwest Territories, you know, burned the Lurier Research Station burned, I think, It was in 2002, and I was there in September, and it burned at the end of October, because everyone

assumed that there would be but a foot of snow on the ground. So we're seeing, you know, and we're also seeing these zombie fires, fires that are, you know, burning over the wintertime. So I think we could, this is going to be the interesting thing, is that what's this situation going to be in the fall? Are we going to see more fire extended into the, into the, into the, well into the fall seasons. You tell me, Ed, what's it looking like from this point?

Pardon me? You tell me what the next few months are going to look like in terms of forecasting and all those things. Do we have a sense? You know, I think that I'm just looking at the forecast from Thompson Rivers University, which has got really an excellent forecast program. I think the short term is that we're going to see a ramping up of fire probably well into August, and I suspect because of El Nino, we're going to see an extension of fire well into the autumn months.

Okay, so that's where we're at. The other thing that's been happening, the last number of weeks, we've been seeing so much more wind and storm activity over the past couple months, really. How has that been playing into the wildfire season? Well, you know, you can ask people in New York City and all the way down to Maryland today. They're getting smoke from the fires in northwestern Ontario, and it really is the symptom of another thing that we're seeing is changing weather patterns. We're getting an increase of 50% windy weather in Western Canada and a doubling or tripling at Eastern Canada. And so the wind just carries the smoke a lot farther than it did, say, 10, 20, 30 years ago when, you know, things were a little bit cooler and moisture.

I'm glad you brought up the United States because last year some Republican politicians blamed Canada's poor forest management for wildfires and the smoke that was drifting south, is drifting south today as well. How good a job is Canada doing it managing our forests to prevent wildfires? You know, I think that we're just as good or better than the United States. And I kind of laugh at some of these reports because they always blame Canada, but admit the fact that, Minnesota is burning, you know, pretty big right now. You know, they're actually, you know, out of control in many parts of that state. We do a pretty good job of fighting fires. We're still doing a lot of catch-up in preventing fires or, you know, reducing the impact of those fires.

And it's largely because of, you know, the fact that we've spent about 100 years trying to prevent fires from burning. And, you know, we stopped indigenous people from doing prescribed burns. We're getting back to that now and it's improving, but I think we're not doing it fast enough. So every time there's one of these awful fires and these wildfire emergencies, we take notes collectively and we hopefully learn lessons. So what lessons have we learned from previous wildfire emergencies? I'm thinking, you know, Fort Mac, 2016, Lytton, 2021, Jasper, 2024, these really acute, not even acute, but like, focused, but huge fires at, what are the lessons we have learned? I think the lessons are that this is not going to go away.

You know, the three worst fire seasons we've had occurred, I think, in the last five, six years. And, you know, the year that Fort McMurray burned, that wasn't really a big fire year. But we are seeing these more and more of these high severity fires in this warming climate. And, you know, there hasn't been an overall increase in wildfires. It's just the number and size of large and very large fires is increasing. And so that's basically what we can expect in the future. If that's what we can expect, Ed, you know, back in 2023, it was Canada's worst wildfire season on record.

You were on this show, and you said that our country needs to be investing more into wildfire science and response. What do we need to be doing? I think more of that, you know, you look at universities like Thompson universities, small, you know, they recruited Mike Flanagan, who I think is one of the, you know, best wildfire scientists in the world. They've built up a great program, but I think we need to do a lot more of that. That, I think, is the model for the future. And the problem is, is that most of our universities, which produce these wildfire scientists are struggling, you know,

with funding issues. And we need the provinces and the federal government to step up to correct that. We heard from Dr. Howard just how dangerous, if you're hundreds of kilometers away, a wildfire smoke can be. And there are communities, obviously, every year that are directly impacted, Ed. And I think people listen to this say, who, like, how do we just deal with this? How do we live? What is your message to Canadians? You know, I guess it's sad to say, but, you know, get used to it.

And, you know, there are many ways you can protect yourself. know if you can afford a really good air filter, that's one thing. You know, wear masks when you go outside. You know, people that live in, you know, the line of fire and the small boreal forest communities should look at, you know, what kind of, how vulnerable they are to fires. You know, if you're like me where I've got all of these ornamental junipers and spruce trees all around my house, you know, I have to consider the fact that if fire tears through Edmonton's River Valley, I'm in trouble. And so these are hard questions that people have got a face down the road, is how can we make ourselves more resilient?

And I think we're only coming into, you know, that realization. And unfortunately, it's going to take a lot more big fires and a lot more evacuations to get people to wake up to the fact that this is not going to go away. We will leave it there for now, Ed, but no doubt we will be talking again as this summer and as you say, the fall progresses. Thank you very much. Thanks, Pia. Ed Strzic is a fellow at the Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy at Queen's University. It's also the author of Firestorm, How Wildfires Will Shape Our Future and Dark Days at Noon, The Future of Fire. We reached him in Edmonton.

You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca.ca slash podcasts.