The Decibel - What you should know about Canada’s growing tick problem

Episode Date: July 14, 2025

The problem of ticks, and the diseases they carry are well known. But as the climate becomes warmer, ticks are no longer exclusively found in densely wooded areas. The arachnids are spreading and bringing Lyme disease with them to more communities.The Globe’s health and science reporter Jennifer Yang spoke to residents of Nova Scotia’s South Shore, which has some of the densest tick populations in the country, to see what the future could look like for the rest of us. She shares their shocking stories, as well as some of the latest efforts to fight the spread of Lyme disease.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

Lisa Learning and her family moved to the South Shore of Nova Scotia in 2014. And not too long after that, something strange started happening to her son. This is Jennifer Yang, the Globe's Health Science Reporter. His knee swelled up. She said it looked like a bubble. They weren't too concerned because it wasn't hurting. It was just super, super swollen. It went away and then it actually went to the other knee and it came back and eventually

became so painful to the point where this boy who was only 11 at the time was using a walker and he couldn't go to school. It got to the point where he couldn't even get off the couch. So Lisa and her husband took him to the hospital. Her husband picked him up, put him over his shoulder, and her son was just screaming in agony the whole time, all the way to the car, all the way to the hospital. It turned out their son had contracted Lyme disease from a tick. Stories like this are becoming more common in Canada, even in our cities, as tick populations spread and grow in a warming climate. But there is hope on the horizon too, with promising developments into a Lyme vaccine

and other methods to fight back against these blood-sucking arachnids. Jennifer Yang is here to talk about it. I'm Adrian Leigh, guest hosting the Decibel from the Globe and Mail. Hey Jenny, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. I'm Adrian Lee, guest hosting the Decibel from the Globe and Mail. Hey Jenny, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. So we've been hearing for a few years now that ticks are becoming more common in Canada, but just how much have tick populations grown? Well, you can think back to the 90s. At that point, there was only one known endemic population of the black-legged tick, or the deer tick, as it's sometimes called.

Since then, we are now finding these ticks all across the country. There was a survey done of ticks in 2019 where they looked at about 100 sites where these ticks were very active. These researchers are about to release the results of their latest survey and they're now looking at more than 200 sites across the country. Tick populations in Canada have exploded. Aaron Powell And why is this happening? Katie Fetcher There are a number of factors driving this growth in tick populations, but probably number one on the list is climate change.

I mean, Canada is notorious for our winters, I guess, but they're getting warmer. And now there are just more and more ticks moving into areas that are getting warm enough where these little critters can thrive. So they're setting up shop, they're having their two to 3000 babies and these populations are proliferating.

Many people don't realize this, but ticks can actually overwinter. They live for between two and four years. And even if the air temperature is in the negatives, as long as their little microclimate of where they're hiding out under maybe a layer of leaves, even under like packed snow that is insulating them in this little cozy pocket, these little guys can get through the harsh months of a Canadian winter. Nothing is sacred So what exactly are we dealing with here in terms of a threat then? Well, first of all ticks are a nuisance

You know, we are all annoyed by mosquitoes every summer which of course can also carry their own diseases But ticks like to bite and they need blood meals to survive. So it's a new little critter that we have to live with that will bite us and feed on our blood and it's just gross. Like a tick will embed itself into your skin and engorge itself on your blood and when you find it you will scream, you will panic, you will be disgusted. So that's number one. It's just a gross nuisance that we now have to deal with. And actually, the black-legged tick can carry seven pathogens that can cause human disease,

the most well-known of which is Lyme disease. And we are seeing rates of Lyme disease grow exponentially in this country over the past couple of decades. Nationally across Canada, rates of lime have increased tenfold between 2014 and 2024. And experts say that's probably a vast underestimate. You focus your reporting for the Globe on the south shore of Nova Scotia, particularly Lunenburg County.

And that's a really beautiful part of the province, one of my favorite parts of the country. So why do you look there? Yeah, I love that part of the province. It's one of my favorite parts of the country. So why'd you look there? Yeah, I love that part of the country too. I visited not too long ago. It's just so lovely. The reason I focused my story on Lunenburg County is because of what the data shows. I mentioned that in 2019, researchers did a sort of surveillance study across Canada to try and get a handle on where tick populations

were densest and biggest, and Lunenberg County stands out. It was the one site that had the densest population of ticks in the nymph life stage. That's when they're still sort of little teenagers, let's call them. And that's also when they pose the greatest risk to human health,

because they will bite you. And if they are infected with a bacteria that causes Lyme disease, because they're so tiny, they can kind of stay on your body and feed for longer before they're detected. So Lunenburg County has really been one of the ground zeros in the tick encroachment into Canada. And as a result as well, we're starting to see rates of Lyme disease and even other tick-borne diseases rise really alarmingly in that part of the country.

Nat Malkus And you spoke to a lot of folks there. Tell us about what life looks like for people who are living with these high numbers of ticks. Dr. Julie Krohn I was not prepared for the stories that I heard from people living in Lunenburg County and across Nova Scotia. The first woman I interviewed was a woman named Stephanie Tanner. She has two kids, as do I.

So I really relate to like her life as a mom of children who want to run outside and need sunscreen and bug spray and all that. But her daughter, who was six, went outside into the backyard for 30 minutes a couple of weeks ago. That's it, 30 minutes. She played in the backyard. She messed around with the family chickens.

She came back in. When her mom did her tick check at the end of the day of her daughter, she had 12 ticks on her body. She said something like five of them had already bitten and embedded themselves. The horror just sort of rose with every story that I heard. Stephanie was telling me about how her husband has found a tick in his beard. She's found a tick in her dog's gum, burrowed between his tooth and his gum.

She said her and her family went to visit like a national park recently, and they went to use the public restroom. And she said the walls were just covered with ticks. She said it was like a horror movie. People describe avoiding the forest altogether, which is so sad in a beautiful place like Nova Scotia. It's just really reshaped life, I feel, in this part of the country. This sounds a little bit like a horror story and this is this must be psychologically difficult to live through even if you're not actually being bitten by ticks. How did people talk

about that just living in this atmosphere? You know, it kind of reminded me of the earlier days of the COVID-19 pandemic. You know, you're living with this ever present health risk. It's scary, it can cause serious disease, but life has to go on as well. So it was this kind of state of life where ticks and tick-borne diseases have become very normalized. People are just dealing with it. But at the same time, and this is the way Lisa Learning put it, there's this kind of underlying fear.

I spoke with a lot of folks who are really worried about seniors who are no longer going outside even into their own backyards. Some people told me about how they have bought these chemically treated clothes that they now wear when they venture outside. And you know, these clothes are very hot and stifling and it's just like not the same as going outside in your shorts and your t-shirt and your sandals. So I'm a city boy, I'm happy to admit, and I felt for a long time like ticks are gross and they're terrifying, but also kind of not something I have to really think about too

much. But is that still true? Well ticks don't like paved environments. They do dry out quite easily and they don't like the hot, hot sun. So they kind of love to live in wooded, kind of moist, shady areas. But they need blood meals to survive, which means they bite mice,

they also bite deer, and they bite birds. So anywhere these animals can travel to, they can bring little tick hitchhikers with them. And sadly, I think we will increasingly have to be thinking about ticks and dealing with ticks and protecting ourselves from them. Some of this research I referenced before,

they found ticks in the GTA. Montreal was actually one of the places that had the highest densities of ticks. And so I think more and more Canadians will have to start paying attention to this. We'll be right back. So let's talk more about Lyme disease. How serious is it?

Well, Lyme disease is caused by a bacterial infection that is spread to people through tick bites. And if you catch it, and especially if you catch it early enough, you can actually treat it fairly easily for the most part with a round of antibiotics. So it can be quite straightforward to treat, but the trick is you have to catch it. And also for certain people, and especially people who catch it too late,

Lyme disease can progress to more like disseminated versions of the disease. And there are people who are living with long-term symptoms and chronic Lyme disease, where the symptoms can be really painful and debilitating. We're talking really bad joint pain, arthritis, and neurological issues. People describe having really intense fatigue and migraines and brain fog. I heard stories about people who had to sell their businesses, quit their jobs, drop out

of university. And in really rare cases, Lyme can cause heart issues, and that can even cause death. But something that is really sad as well is that there are long-term chronic Lyme disease sufferers who are so desperate for relief that rates of suicidal ideation can be very high amongst some of these patients. And I spoke with one advocate in Nova Scotia who's even in touch with people who've

applied for medically assisted death made because they have sort of hit the end of the road for themselves in their struggle with Lyme disease. So it really is such a spectrum. It can be a sort of a minor illness that is dispensed with a quick round of antibiotics or it can be really ruinous. And you said that Lyme is an outcome if it's caught too late. What is too late? Once you're bitten by a tick, if they are infected with a bacteria that causes Lyme disease, then they can spread it to a person. But it usually takes at least 24 hours for that transmission to occur. And then there's some time where you can start antibiotics and treat your disease pretty

effectively. But I think it's people who haven't been able to detect their Lyme for months or maybe even more than a year where it becomes really debilitating and more difficult to treat. So it's even if you're bitten by a tick, there are still things that can be done, but this is why folks are doing tick checks, right?

Exactly. The faster you remove the tick, the better your chances are at escaping Lyme or other tick-borne diseases that could be spread to you. Okay, so I've heard a lot of pretty harrowing things, so I'm going to need you to give me some good news. You know, surely science is working on something here, right? Yeah, thank goodness for science.

It's true. I also reached a point in my reporting where I was like, you got to tell me some good news now people. And you know I was extremely heartened by so many of these same people I spoke with who shared their tales of horror and woe. So many of them are working to find solutions. You know Lisa Learning, who I mentioned off the top, she was you know so distraught by her experience with her son's contracting Lyme that she set about trying to develop a tick repellent spray. She really hated the idea of having to coat her kids with DEET every day

that they wanted to go outside and play, which was all the time. So she got to work developing a tick repellent spray that uses natural ingredients. And she actually teamed up with scientists at Acadia University in Nova Scotia. developing a tick repellent spray that uses natural ingredients. And she actually teamed up with scientists at Acadia University in Nova Scotia. And they worked together doing these funny little experiments on ticks, where they would just test which compounds these ticks found most repellent. And they landed on one that can be found in lemon eucalyptus. And she now has this spray that she spent five years getting registered and approved with Health Canada and it's

basically advertised as being a hundred percent effective at repelling ticks for five hours. So that's like a nice little tool that you can keep in your toolkit spray yourself with this stuff before you go outside and you'll be much more protected. These scientists at Acadia University are working to develop pesticides, also using natural ingredients, because there's a lot of concerns with like chemical pesticides.

They've got this one fungus that they found that is naturally occurring and harmless to people, but actually quite lethal for black-legged ticks, so that's something that's in development. And I guess one of those sort of holy grail solutions that will be a huge piece of the sort of overall solution is a vaccine. One person I interviewed in Lunenberg is actually part of a clinical trial that's studying a

vaccine that will protect against Lyme disease. And it's now in phase three already, which is kind of the final phase before the company can apply for market approval. And I spoke with Pfizer, which is the drug company that's co-developing the vaccine, and they expect to get the results of their latest phase by the end of the year. And apparently, if all goes well, they may apply for licensing as soon as next year. That's genuinely great news.

It does feel like there had been these vaccines for pets, which is a real nexus for ticks, but it's taken some time to get to something like that for humans. Yeah, so many people I spoke with were like so upset about this. They're like, why does my dog have a vaccine for Lyme, but I don't?

And it's a really good question with a pretty interesting answer. I mean, there actually was a vaccine for Lyme disease that debuted in the late 90s. It was called Limericks, or L-Y-M-E-R-I-X. And this vaccine came out onto the market at basically the worst possible time. It was unveiled around the same time

as the notorious paper published by the scientist Andrew Wakefield that drew a link between autism and MMR vaccines. That paper has been widely debunked, has been now retracted, you know, but it set off a new phase in anti-vaccine hesitancy and resistance. And so this vaccine kind of debuted into this climate of anti-vaccine sentiment. And a lot of people who took it, some 100 people, said that they experienced side effects. And there was a class action lawsuit that was filed against

the vaccine maker. Subsequent investigations did not find that the vaccine caused any of these side effects, but the drug company wound up settling that lawsuit and pulling the vaccine from the market. So we haven't seen one ever since, although we may now see a new one if all goes well with these ongoing clinical trials. Mm-hmm. So that's what's happening with science. What about fighting this on a broader political level? You know, is there political will for governments to take this problem more seriously as it gets bigger? Yeah, I sort of asked a couple of researchers this question as well.

I think the prevailing feeling is that the government could be doing a lot more to get ahead of this problem and to tackle it now. In Nova Scotia, the advocate I spoke with just recently submitted a petition to the Nova Scotian legislature and they're calling for a number of action items. Number one being they'd like to see specialized tick-borne disease clinics. A lot of people who get bitten and sick from tick bites have a lot of, you know, challenges just getting the help they need and the help they want. So they would really like to see the establishment of a specialized clinic to help these patients. They were also calling for just more education and

awareness. The advocate said that even in Nova Scotia, where tick populations are so huge now and so dense, a lot of people still don't understand the risk, are sort of underplaying the risk, or just not even paying attention at all. And she worries a lot that there are so many things people could be doing that they aren't, to better protect themselves. And she worries a lot about tourists who visit Nova Scotia

and have no idea that ticks are a thing there. And they were calling for a task force. They'd really like to see concerted, I think, government effort to fight this public health threat. You know, we saw in the COVID-19 pandemic that government, health care can really come together in this collective way to come up with really

fast and effective solutions. I think they'd like to see a little bit more of that energy in confronting ticks and the diseases they spread. Here on the decibel over the years, we've had a couple episodes about ticks and it feels like now things are maybe accelerating a little bit more. Can you just paint us a picture of the future we should expect, especially as our country continues to get warmer? So unfortunately, I think the story of what's happening in Lunenberg County and other parts of Nova Scotia

is going to increasingly be the story of a lot of other localities across the southern kind of third of Canada, which is where the bulk of Canadians live. Every year ticks are expanding their range and finding new places to live and to set up populations and people are also increasingly building subdivisions that you know encroach into forested areas. So just these like opportunities to come into contact with ticks are just increasing every year. So I just think this new, you know, ticky life that I sort

of heard about in Nova Scotia where you're being vigilant every time you go outside, you're checking your children head to toe every night, you are having to take rounds of antibiotics to deal with your latest Lyme disease infection. I just think more and more Canadians are going to have to be sort of living that reality in the years to come. I truly hate to hear it. But I guess thanks for joining us and letting us know all the same, Jenny. I hate to tell it, but I think it needs to be told, unfortunately.

Thanks for having me. That was Jennifer Yang, the Globe's Health Science Reporter. That's it for today. I'm Adrian Lee. Kevin Sexton produced this episode. Our producers are Madeleine White, Michal Stein, and Ali Graham. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our Senior Producer, and Angela Pacenza is our Executive Editor. Thanks for listening!