\n<\/p>\n
Road closures, evacuations, travel chaos and stern warnings from officials have all become fixtures of Canada\u2019s wildfire season.<\/p>\n
But as the country goes through its second-worst burn on record<\/a>, the blazes come with a twist: few are coming from the western provinces, the traditional centre of destruction.<\/p>\n Instead, the worst of the fires have been concentrated in the prairie provinces and the Atlantic region, with bone-dry conditions upending how Canada responds to a threat which is only likely to grow as the climate warms.<\/p>\n Experts say the shift serves as a stark reminder that the risk of disaster is present across the thickly forested nation.<\/p>\n Related: <\/span>Canada wildfire season already second worst on record as experts warn of \u2018new reality\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n In recent weeks, tens of thousands of people in communities across the country have been evacuated due to the wildfires. Saskatchewan and Manitoba have been the worst hit, home to more than 60% of the volume burned in Canada. But the fires have also seized strained resources in Atlantic Canada, where officials in Newfoundland and Labrador are struggling to battle out of control blazes.<\/p>\n In response to the crisis, Newfoundland premier John Hogan said on Wednesday morning he would temporarily ban off-road vehicles in forested areas because the province \u201csimply cannot afford any further risks, given the number of out-of-control wildfires we have\u201d.<\/p>\n The ban follows a similar move by Nova Scotia, where a 15 hectare (37 acre) out-of-control fire is burning outside the provincial capital of Halifax. In addition to barring vehicles in wooded areas, Nova Scotia officials also shut down hiking, camping and fishing in forests: a decision reflecting the troubling fact that nearly all fires in the province are started by humans.<\/p>\n \u201cConditions are really dry, there\u2019s no rain in sight, the risk is extremely high in Nova Scotia,\u201d the province\u2019s premier Tim Houston told reporters. \u201cI\u2019m happy to make sure that we\u2019re doing everything we can to protect people, to protect property and try to just get through this fire season and really just pray for rain.\u201d<\/p>\n Fires have even erupted in Ontario\u2019s Kawartha Lakes region, a collection of rural communities less than 100 miles (161km) north of Toronto that are a popular summer destination for residents of Canada\u2019s largest city.<\/p>\n For a country of sprawling landmass, fires have long been a common feature of the hot spring, summer and fall. But for the last century, a mix of geography, climate and industry meant that the biggest and hottest fires \u2013 and the vast majority of destruction \u2013 have been concentrated in Canada\u2019s western provinces.<\/p>\n That changed in 2023 when Canada experienced its worst-ever fire season and the thick haze of smoke blanketed the US<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had fire everywhere. We had evacuations everywhere. We had smoke at a scale that was remarkable. And so for the first time, we had a different thought about wildfires as a country. With all of the smoke, it became a global conversation. This year is repeating all of that,\u201d said Paul Kovacs, the executive director of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction at Western University. \u201cThis is a national issue. This can show up anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n Kovacs, whose organization focuses largely on preventing structural loss, said more buildings have been destroyed this year compared with 2023, and warned that a majority of the residents of the most fire-prone parts of the country, like British Columbia and Alberta, have not yet taken steps to protect or \u201charden\u201d their homes from fire risk.<\/p>\n He hopes that a broader national recognition of fire risk, however, spurs people in other parts of the country to reassess how vulnerable their home or business might be to a fast-moving blaze.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s the behavioural change we\u2019re hoping to see next because there will be many years of fires to come. The size of the burned area will not go back to where things were 25 years ago. This is just our new reality and we need to be prepared. We change in mindset and a recognition that this can, and probably will, happen in so many parts of our country.\u201d<\/p>\n Already, nearly 7.5m hectares (18.5m acres) have burned across Canada in 2025, far above the 10-year average.<\/p>\n Despite the national threat, there is no \u201cone-size-fits-all\u201d approach to reducing risk, said Jen Baron, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of British Columbia\u2019s Centre for Wildfire Coexistence.<\/p>\n \u201cBritish Columbia and Alberta have long been the poster children for this wildfire problem for a long time, but other regions are beginning to experience some of those same challenges. This speaks to the pervasiveness of climate change: even if a location was relatively low fire risk in the past, with the extended droughts that we\u2019re seeing, that\u2019s no longer the case now and into the future,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cEven though some parts of the country are having a wet year on average, things across the board are still warmer and drier than they were in the past,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Related: <\/span>Canada: generations old and new scramble to contain fires burning at record pace<\/a><\/p>\n That uncertainty has prompted a multimillion dollar funding effort<\/a> from the federal government to study risk and adaptation because \u201cthere are very few parts of Canada that would be totally protected from wildfire\u201d, said Baron.<\/p>\n With an international focus on wildfires<\/a>, experts like Baron hope the recent years of immense blazes and choking smoke can spur a response that acknowledges the legacy of the forestry industry practices<\/a>, urban encroachment into the wilderness and the Indigenous stewardship of forests<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re just starting to catch up to the scale of the problem. Wildfire is a natural ecological process, but it\u2019s become increasingly challenging to manage with changing climatic conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n Baron said the \u201cmild\u201d nature of this year\u2019s western fire season also provides a glimpse into the country\u2019s future.<\/p>\n \u201cInstead of one big fire year every 15 or 20 years, every year will be big in some part of the country,\u201d she said \u201cWe really don\u2019t know exactly how climate change is going to continue. It doesn\u2019t drive things in linear ways. And we can\u2019t predict where there\u2019s going to be a drought next year. But it will be somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n