On July 22, I awake to smoky skies, just enough to tint the sky a muddy pink. The winds must be pushing smoke from the fires in northern Alberta our way. I walk outside—it’s been another hot day, too hot for this high in the Rockies. I recall my childhood summers living along this mountain corridor west of the Yellowhead Pass: months with only a handful of warm days to be treasured, never the savage heat of the past few weeks.

It turns out this is the hottest day on Earth since NASA started recording global temperature data in 1980. No doubt there have been hotter days, but not for a long time—climate scientists think it’s been more than 100,000 years. These temperatures are part of a longer trend of planetary warming driven by human activities. A NASA press release quotes administrator Bill Nelson saying, “In a year that has been the hottest on record to date, these past two weeks have been particularly brutal.”

In the afternoon, I take a book and sit under a pine, my go-to for shade when the sun reaches south of the house. Every once in a while, a whiff of smoke catches in my nostrils. I check the Alberta wildfire map. A fire has popped up near the Jasper transfer station a short drive east of here, and there’s another south of town along the Icefields Parkway. I go back in to watch an episode of House of the Dragon with my partner: another cliffhanger. “Let’s watch one more,” I beg. I get up for a glass of water, and my phone beeps as I sit back down. The fire south of Jasper is out of control and getting bigger. Jasper is on evacuation alert. 

Our show is forgotten. “Should I get gas tonight in case they close the highway by Tete Jaune?” Zane asks. If the highway through Jasper closes down, the only way out of our valley is west. They wouldn’t close that down, would they? It doesn’t seem likely, but better not to take chances. Our 1000-watt generator was efficient, but it broke down for good a couple weeks ago, and we’re using the backup, which gobbles gas. At moments like these I wish we’d already installed solar panels. 

“OK,” I say. “You better get going. You can’t get caught on the other side of a blockade.”

My phone dings again. The alert has been upgraded to an order. Jasper is being evacuated, and they’ve closed the highway by Tete Jaune. I race outside, but Zane and his truck are gone. There’s no signal west through the mountains, so he won’t get my messages, but I send one anyway: “Come home.” 

If we get lightning in this wind, the whole valley could go up like a matchbox. 

It’s dark as I gather up my must-not-burn belongings: my father’s letters, my artwork, papers from the filing cabinet, a few irreplaceable books, gifts from my daughters. On each trip out to my Subaru, the hot wind whips smoke and ash into my headlamp beam. Inside, Smudgy scratches at the bars of the cats’ oversized carrier. Ru is happy to curl up in the bed I made them, but Smudgy isn’t a good traveller. I want them ready to go if we need to—if we get lightning in this wind, the whole valley could go up like a matchbox. 

Zane makes it safely home after driving in the opposite direction from a convoy of thousands of vehicles leaving Jasper National Park. At 4 a.m., my sister Anita, her partner Tom, and her daughter arrive at our old family home on the other side of the lake. With 25,000 people leaving Jasper, it took them six hours just to get out of town. The next day when I drop off chocolate chip cookies, Tom tells me stories of fistfights at gas stations.

Jasper has been threatened with fire before, so it takes mitigation seriously. The town had removed standing deadfall left by the mountain pine beetle kills of a decade before and thinned out a lot of surrounding ground cover. I’m not worried about a wildfire reaching the townsite, but I check the map anyway. I see a red flame showing an out-of-control fire north of us—that’s new. It’s at least 40 km away over multiple mountain ranges, so no need to worry, but it still feels like the whole world is on fire. 

Now the railway and the highway have grown silent. We watch the skies and the online maps. The fires are closing in on Jasper townsite.

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The next day starts out like the one before. We ration gas and keep an eye on the weather. Rain is forecast for the following day. That should stop the fires, surely. 

Devon from the Valemount RCMP detachment stops by that afternoon. I’m at Anita’s across the lake when we see his bulky figure walk past the kitchen window. He’s here to get a headcount in case they need to evacuate this part of the valley. The fires have united outside Jasper, and they could come this way next. With the other cabin near mine, we’re just three households, seven souls.  In a way, his visit is reassuring. I don’t think the fire will make it this far, but when you’re in bed sleeping, you can’t check an online map. 

Back on our side of the valley, I collapse on the couch and fall into an exhausted sleep. I’m woken by a pounding on the door. It’s Tom: “There’s a fire up the mountain on the other side of the valley,” he says.

“Have you called it in?” I ask.

“Yep. It’s called in.” 

I walk to the lakeshore to look at the smoke. I sit for a while, listening to the lapping water and wondering if helicopters are on their way. Looking east down the valley, I see a mushroom cloud of smoke above Jasper. How can they spare firefighters when they’re battling that colossus?

Reports are sparse and unconfirmed: Bucketing has proven ineffective. The PetroCanada has exploded.

The helicopters arrive around the time Tom comes to say their family is leaving. The other cabin is evacuating too. I walk back to the lake to watch the helicopters dumping bucket after bucket on the fire. Then they leave and the valley grows quiet. We are alone, just Zane and me. No trains. No traffic. Just us.

That evening, the fire arrives in Jasper.  

At first, reports are sparse and unconfirmed: Bucketing has proven ineffective. The fire has reached the town. The PetroCanada has exploded. A photo pops up online of flames devouring Maligne Lodge, a firefighter looking on. Then the first official report: “At just before 6 p.m. this evening, portions of the South Fire in Jasper National Park reached the outskirts of the Jasper townsite after being driven by strong wind gusts from the south and southeast.”

It rains that night. In the morning, there are puddles on the road, and we see the first online videos. Is the entire town gone? No one seems to know.

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Days pass before we know the extent of the destruction. Over 350 structures were burned, including Anita and Tom’s home, but much of the town was spared. The firefighters saved all critical infrastructure, including the hospital. (Not the old Seton General where I was born, but its replacement.) The Athabasca Hotel—where as a kid I would stare in awe at mounted moose and elk heads while Grandma used the phone—is still there. As are the distinctive peaked roofs of the Astoria, where my mother called my father from an outdoor payphone just hours before he died. 

Photos emerge of Bear 222 and her two cubs alive and apparently well after escaping the flames. The grizzly family had been relocated out of Jasper last year after they were caught eating food at a picnic area, but they were back this spring and living near Jasper Park Lodge. Because Momma Bear is outfitted with a GPS collar, we know they found shelter in the Athabasca River as the fire raged around them.

Driven by strong winds and weeks of high temperatures, the fire travelled 5 km in the 30 minutes before it hit Jasper, according to Alberta’s public safety minister. I hear flames reached well over 100 m, and that the fire threw off fireballs—can that be true?—and produced its own lightning. Ron Hallman, head of Parks Canada, said the firefighting crews faced “hell on Earth.” How could a monster like that be contained? It couldn’t.

The next time I pass Jasper, I see the spires of charred trees lined up against the horizon like spent matches. As I get closer, I’m relieved to see sprigs of green pushing through the blackened earth. Along the shoulder graze Jasper’s famed elk. If you’ve ever visited, you’ve probably seen “the ladies” walking along the highway or passing through town. They’ve made it safely through the fire. Grazing near them are two mule deer. I’ve never seen deer and elk graze together. “Amidst the ashes, life finds a way,” quipped Jasper National Park on X.

At the time of writing, the Jasper Fire Complex has burned over 33,000 hectares of forest and taken the life of one firefighter. The fire is now classed as “held,” and welcome rains have fallen, which should decrease fire activity. But this good news comes with an increased risk of unstable slopes and falling trees. 

Residents have been allowed back in the homes that were saved, and traffic is moving on the highway. I’m grateful the road is open; it’s a big step to reopening the town, and many businesses in Jasper and Valemount rely on summer tourism. Jasperites are beginning the task of rebuilding their lives and homes. At the same time, I know this way of life is unsustainable. The vehicles that give us the freedom to travel are also contributing to the aggressive burning that turned the Jasper fire into the monster it became.

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This isn’t the first wildfire to take a home in my family. In 2021, my sister Elaine’s house overlooking BC’s Lake Okanagan was burned down by the White Rock Lake Fire. A few months later, she was interviewed by The Tyee. She was one of the few people interviewed who spoke about climate change. “I feel what we’ve done here is profoundly wrong,” she’d said. “I’m not happy with the world we’ve left.”

When I first read the piece, I was sitting with Elaine in her kitchen. “I can’t think about the quail that were taken by the fire,” she’d said, shaking her head. Her garden, where the quail made their home, was burned along with her house. Offering them water and seed was part of her daily routine. 

We must call for the largest emitters to pay their way and change their ways.

The quail are mostly scattered or gone, but the last time I visited my brother-in-law, I heard their familiar squeaky-toy call while I stood in the wreckage of the old garden. I wish Elaine could hear them too, but she can’t. I’d forgotten she’d told the interviewer she didn’t expect to live long enough to see the tree and animal populations recover. 

Elaine saw her culpability in this crisis, and I see mine. I need to do better. We all do. We need to cry for a change in priorities. We must call for the largest emitters to pay their way and change their ways. We must begin to see that we are part of a vast biosphere, and what we do matters. We may not be able to reverse all of what climate change will bring, but in the years ahead, every fraction of a degree will matter—not just to us, but to our descendants and our non-human kin.