The first time it happened to me was in early August 2023, in Kelowna, B.C., heart of the Okanagan. A public announcement advised that people should stay indoors for the next 48 hours due to the high levels of smoke in the air. I remember looking at our two-year old granddaughter and wondering: What sort of world are we leaving her?

The source of the smoke, of course, was the huge amount of Canada’s boreal forest consumed by flame that summer. Almost 17.6 million hectares of forest burned in 2023, 230 per cent as large as the previous record year in 1989 (7.6 million). Between 1959 and 2022, the annual total area burned only exceeded five million hectares four times. Since 2023, every year has exceeded five million hectares, and with 4.5 million hectares having already burned by Aug. 31, we may well see it happen in 2026, too. This isn’t enough data to conclude conclusively that we are in a new regime, but to suggest that nothing is going on simply doesn’t pass the “sniff test.”

Europe has had a record-breaking fire year in 2026, Images of major conflagrations in France and Spain this summer have appeared regularly in our newscasts.........

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