It was pleasantly cool yesterday evening during my walk along the Otonabee River. Over the day, the smell of ‘campfire’ smoke from the raging northern wildfires intensified and the sun became an eerie copper disk in the peach-coloured sky. The river had gone still, as if hushed and waiting beneath the cloud of haze. Houses along the shore had become fluid watercolour paintings, colours and textures blending in a soft fabric of grey and green. As I set my gaze on a favourite cottage by the river, its reflection caught in the still waters, I thought the scene beautiful…

My heart then reminded me that this wasn’t a mist rising off the river but the yellow-brown dust descending from the corpses of millions of burnt trees, sent here by a cruel northeast wind.

Today, the Ontario government reported heavy smoke conditions in the Northeast Region due to a large number of fires in eastern Ontario and Quebec—with fires worse than usual this year in Quebec. More than 160 fires are burning, most out of control, in Quebec. Smoke drift is travelling as far as just north of Timmins, down through Sudbury and past Parry Sound. Environment Canada issued Air quality warnings today for Peterborough, where I currently live.  

Global News reported today that “relentless wildfires have devoured 3.3 million hectares of land across Canada so far this year—roughly 10 times the normal average for the season.” In the last 24 hours, 21 new fires were discovered across Ontario, amounting to 159 active fires provincially. According to Global News, “Searing hot, tinder-dry conditions, similar to what was seen in western Canada, has only worsened the situation in Ontario.” And Quebec.

There is an old willow tree on the river bank by the path I walk daily. Its massive arms stretch out over the water and one arm leans low over the path so you must bend down to walk under it. The derecho last May had cracked the tree open. But the sturdy willow continues on, undaunted, as all Nature does, thrusting up suckers from its large limbs toward a future of many more willows. It’s a favourite tree of many a walker who like to sit on its generous arms and look out over the river. Each day I touch its bark and say hello.

I think of my old friend. How a fire would take it.

First its leaves would sizzle and take flight in a requiem dance. The trunk, a funnel of fire and smoke, would sway and groan then crack with a final death shout to the roaring hissing fire. Like flying kites, leaf corpses would join embers of curling bark and soar in a vortex of billowing coal black fury. The river would flow through a killing field, black stumps and burned debris flying with the vagaries of a mischievous wind. Covered in a film of thick and oily debris, the lonely river would grow dark and surly, smothering its own aquatic forest—the algae, benthic invertebrates and fish.

And I would weep…