1825: A fire in New Brunswick's Miramichi forest killed 160 loggers. Hundreds of others are thought to have drowned as they tried to escape via a nearby river. The villages of Newcastle and Douglastown were destroyed.
1870: A brushfire touched off a blaze in Quebec that destroyed everything in its path over a 150-kilometre swath of land, from the Mistassini River near Lac St-Jean, to Baie des Haha. Nearly a third of residents in the region lost all their possessions.
1911: A fire in remote regions of northern Ontario burned through 200,000 hectares and virtually destroyed the towns of Cochrane, Porquis, Goldlands, South Porcupine and parts of Timmins. The official death toll stands at 73.
1916: The worst fire on record in Ontario's history, dubbed the Matheson fire, swept over 500,000 hectares of land and destroyed 49 townships, including the villages of Kelso, Val Gane, Proquis Junction and Iroquois Falls. The blaze killed 244 people.
1919: A blaze known as "the great fire" burned through 2.8 million hectares of land in Saskatchewan and eastern Alberta, leaving 300 people homeless.
1922: A blaze between New Liskard and North Cobalt, Ont., destroyed 500,000 hectares of land and caused about $8 million in damages.
1948: A fire destroyed 280,000 hectares of land over a two-month period between Chapleau, Ont. and Thessalon, Ont.
1989: Drought conditions in Manitoba caused more than 1,200 fires to spring up throughout the province, burning through 2.5 million hectares and destroying about 100 homes. About 25,000 people in 32 communities were evacuated.
1998: A blaze in Salmon Arm, B.C., forced the evacuation of nearly 7,000 people and destroyed 40 buildings.
2001: A fire in Chisholm, Alta., about 150 kilometres north of Edmonton, destroyed more than 60 buildings and charred 116,000 hectares of land.
2003: More than 2,500 blazes swept through 2,650 square kilometres of land in British Columbia, destroying 334 homes and killing three firefighters. Environment Canada called it the most expensive natural disaster in provincial history, saying the cost of combating the blaze approached $500 million. The hamlet of Louis Creek, near Kamloops, was burned to the ground in early August. Two weeks later, a blaze in Okanagan Mountain Park near Kelowna quickly sent flames toward the city. About 250 homes were destroyed, effectively decimating a subdivision, and nearly 45,000 people were forced to flee the area.
