Wildfires Sweep Across Canada From East to West

"Unless we get one heck of a boost, it's projected to take chunks out of our town and surrounding areas. It's looking very ugly right now."

"We're begging for air support [to  help douse the fire]. It's really crucial."

Mayor of Flin Flon, Manitoba, George Fontaine

 

"It's a very serious situation that we're faced with. We do need some rainfall."

"We need that sooner rather than later, and in light of that not being in the forecast, we most certainly are putting in place every measure possible to prepare the province." 

"Resources are stretched thin because of the severity of the situation that we're facing and the intensity and the proximity of the fires."

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe 

 

"My husband was trapped on the other side of the barricade with no pills, no food, no nothing. They wouldn't let him come to me to evacuate," 

"[Reunited], we're trying to register with Saskatchewan Red Cross; I've tried numerous times."

"Worse happens, we're sleeping in the car. We'll just keep traveling from town to town to town to town till hopefully we find something."

Sandy Oosterlaken, evacuated from Denare Beach   

A wildfire in the Sherridon, Man. area is shown in a government handout photo on Tuesday, May 27, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO - Manitoba Government

 

Fierce, shifting winds threatened to propel a nearby raging wildfire into the city of Flin Flon, Manitoba where buildings, both homes and civil infrastructure would be vulnerable to the flames. The municipality 630 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg served notice to its 5,000 residents to begin emergency evacuation. A wildfire that had started over the boundary in neighbouring Saskatchewan had swiftly reached Flin Flon's northern perimeter.

 

Another thousand people are resident in cottages and homes surrounding Flin Flon. All remaining residents were directed by the city to leave before noon on Friday. Buses were driving those who don't have shelter, to Manitoba's capital city, Winnipeg. A total of 17,000 residents in Manitoba have been forced to leave their towns and homes in the last several days. 

 

Small communities and towns stretching from northern Ontario to British Columbia -- Canada's east-to-west geographic arc -- face an early fire season whipping through forests. From a blaze that started Monday near Creighton, Saskatchewan, after jumping the boundary into Manitoba and menacing Flin Flon, the wildfire has grown to 40 square kilometres, with firefighting crews struggling to contain it. As a result of heavy smoke and a drone incursion, water bombers were grounded intermittently.  

 

A wildfire that broke out across the North Saskatchewan River, in Parkland County, on May 8. (Noam Olsson photos) Photo by HO /THE CANADIAN PRESS

 

Residents of Creighton, 1,200 in number, have been ordered out of the range of the wildfire. Over 4,000 people have fled wildfires raging in Saskatchewan, under a province-wide state of emergency. Alberta, which in recent years has suffered immense wldfire damage, this year has fared comparatively better. Northwest of Edmonton, however, the 1,300 residents of Swan Hills have been ordered to evacuate, along with the 900 residents of Chateh in Alberta's northwestern corner.

 

In Chipewyan Lake, about 450 kilometres north of Edmonton, a crew of eight firefighters were temporarily trapped overnight but finally were able to drive their way out to safety. A wildfire in British Columbia that prompted an evacuation order Thursday, quadrupled in size overnight while firefighters prepared for "intensifying conditions" in the parched northeast of the province where the concentration of most fire activity is located. 

 

The blaze "displaying aggressive fire behaviour" in the Peace River Regional District near the community of Kelly Lake was about 46 square kilometres in size Friday, substantially larger from the 11 square kilometres it registered the day before, according to the British Columbia Wildfire Service.   

 

Military aircraft and helicopters are being used to evacuate residents in Manitoba from fast-moving wildfires    EPA

 

British Columbia has about 60 wildfires ongoing at the present time, 34 of which are classified as burning out of control. According to the B.C. Wildfire Service, 18 percent of the active fires were human caused, 77 percent started by lightning taking advantage of the drought situation and tinder-dry forests, and five percent of unknown causes.  

"It's been another challenging day here in Manitoba."

"[Firefighters were using] water bombers flying overhead [and] helicopters dropping buckets of water."

"But at the same time, all the smoke in the air is making the evacuation effort that much more difficult."

"Our provinces here in Canada are immense. By the time somebody makes it to Winnipeg, some of them have been on the road overnight. They've had to be on a flight for a few hours and then on a bus for several hours after that."

Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew

A Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) patrol vehicle is parked as a water bomber flies over the plume of smoke from a wildfire near The Pas, Manitoba, May 27, 2025. Manitoba RCMP/Handout via REUTERS

The Venerable, Trusted, Federal Policing Agency

"Wortman drove for about six minutes from Hunter Road and was approaching the New Annan Road intersection. He could likely see Lillian Hyslop turning the corner and walking away from him on the other side of the road. She got a little more than 100 metres down the road, just pas the big, green rectangular road sign alerting drivers to turn right for West New Annan and Tatamagouche."

"It was around 9:34 a.m. when Wortman either drove across the highway or made a U-turn, stopped near Hyslop, took aim at her head with his laser sight and shot her, killing her instantly. She was his seventeenth victim in about eleven and a half hours."

Excerpted from 22 Murders, Paul Palango

Two years ago, in April, Gabriel Wortman, a Halifax, Nova Scotia denturist, 51, set out on a nightmarish vendetta against people he knew, innocent of the knowledge that they would be hunted down and murdered by a man known to be violently irascible and controlling, who collected firearms and decommissioned RCMP vehicles. He would end a two-day killing spree by killing 22 men and women, some of whom he knew, others complete strangers, including an RCMP constable.

 

Those two days in April constituted the deadliest mass shooting event that Canada had ever experienced. And the federal police agency tasked with maintaining peace and good order failed to demonstrate on that singular occasion that they remain the stuff of legendary policing history. An enquiry was called, and now the Mass Casualty Commission is in the process, begun in February, of hearing testimony to enable them to reach a consensus on how this mass murder spree failed to be apprehended on the very first day that thirteen people in Portapique, lost their lives.

 

Gabriel Wortman committed mass murder in Portapique, where he and his common-law wife had a cottage, and set fire to homes of many of those he shot to death. 911 calls went out immediately the first of the killings began on his murderous rampage and he eluded capture as RCMP began entering the town. He spent the night in hiding, and by 6:36 a.m. the following morning set out to continue his killing spree. The enquiry heard that the RCMP failed to make use of its Alert Ready system which would have ensured an audible warning was circulated to the community and beyond.

 

The RCMP blocks the path to Gabriel Wortman's property in Portapique during a criminal investigation into the shootings. (Jonathan Villeneuve/Radio-Canada)

Reasonable speculation has it that notification of the community and its further surroundings would have alerted people to danger, and possibly saved an additional nine lives. It took too long for police to begin sending out alerts, including the predator's description -- and took even longer for additional alerts to be circulated warning that he would be driving an RCMP look-alike vehicle. Initially, back in Portapique, the first three responders to the "shooting" came close to firing on an innocent person thinking him to be the shooter.

 

He was actually a man visiting his father who lived in Portapique and had gone out to look for his brother, who, hearing inexplicable sounds had gone out to investigate. The man had gone to a nearby forest, shining his flashlight, when he discovered the body of his brother, shot dead. This was the man the RCMP constables mistook for the killer, but they lost sight of the figure when he turned off his flashlight because he saw the lights illuminating figures in the distance that he thought might be the killer.

 

Another RCMP constable saw the killer bearing an "unsettling grimace", drive past him in the opposite direction on the highway on the second day of the massacre when a hunt for the murderer was well underway. "If I stop and this is the bad guy, I'm going to get shot here, I'm going to get killed", the constable told lawyers for the enquiry. He drove on before finally turning back, thinking if he attempted to turn, on the tight two-lane highway he could be ambushed. When he finally drove in the direction the killer had taken, he had lost him.

 

Soon afterward, Wortman encountered RCMP Const. Heidi Stevenson, who recognized who he was, rammed his vehicle, and was shot to death by Wortman in a follow-up exchange of gunfire. The killer took Const.Stevenson's firearms and set off again. On another occasion, RCMP came across another victim on April 19. Heather O'Brien 55, was on the phone with a friend while seated in her parked Volkswagon Jetta. Wortman fired several shots into the vehicle that hit the woman. And then sped away.

 

When RCMP arrived they checked the woman's condition, declaring there was no pulse and her digits were 'cold'. They would not permit paramedics to approach, nor would they allow the woman's daughter to go to her mother's vehicle, telling them it was unsafe to remain there, the killer could be nearby. "You need to go. It's not safe for you to be here", one constable said to the woman's daughter. It was later discovered through the woman's Fitbit that she was registering a heartbeat nearly eight hours after being shot.

 

Twenty-two people died on April 18 and 19. Top row from left: Gina Goulet, Dawn Gulenchyn, Jolene Oliver, Frank Gulenchyn, Sean McLeod, Alanna Jenkins. Second row: John Zahl, Lisa McCully, Joey Webber, Heidi Stevenson, Heather O'Brien and Jamie Blair. Third row from top: Kristen Beaton, Lillian Campbell, Joanne Thomas, Peter Bond, Tom Bagley and Greg Blair. Bottom row: Emily Tuck, Joy Bond, Corrie Ellison and Aaron Tuck. (CBC)