‘It’ll take years to recover’: Manitoba communities reflect and rebuild after deadly wildfire season

Months after wildfires tore through Manitoba, many residents are picking up the pieces and trying to rebuild. Joseph Bernacki reports.

Chief David Monias of Pimicikamak Cree Nation said one word comes to mind when he recalls the deadly fires that swept across the province this summer.

“Fear; I had fear,” Monias said.

He said watching 160,000 hectares of his nation’s traditional land burn from nearly every direction this year was terrifying.

“When I saw the amount of fire that was there, it was coming towards us from the west, moving towards the northern side and then from the southern side. I thought, ‘Oh, my God, we’re going to lose our homes,’” Monias said.

“We’re going to lose our livelihood and what are we going to do with the people?”

Thousands of members of the northern First Nation were evacuated, and they were out of their homes for weeks. They came back to a changed landscape, as wildlife habitat, forests and water were all impacted.

“We’re still very much into a land-based subsistence,” Monias said.

“When that’s destroyed, it’s hard to recover from that. It’ll take years to recover from it.”

It’s not just communities trying to rebuild. Many tourism hubs across the province are out thousands in missed revenue.

Pit Turenne, co-owner of Aikens Lake Wilderness Lodge, said his fly-in resort north of Nopiming Provincial Park lost 33 days of their limited season due to threatening wildfires.

“(We lost) just over $1 million of revenue that we weren’t able to collect this year,” Turenne said.

“A lot of those customers will be back next year, but in our industry, our commodity is the dates on the calendar.”

Turenne said the fires at Aikens Lake crept up to their doorstep before they got it under control. He said they thankfully sustained no significant infrastructure loss.

“The last fire on Aikens Lake was in 1980,” Turenne said.

“It was 45 years in between fires. Hopefully it’s another 45 before the next one.”

Don Lamont, executive director of Manitoba Lodges and Outfitters, said two-thirds of their members were impacted in different ways. Lamont said fire suppression and lessons learned will be on the agenda at their AGM next week.

“Everybody’s got to have sprinklers,” Lamont said.

“They’ve got to take any deadfall away from their operations. I mean, they just have to get ready.”

Lamont said measures like cutting brush back may mitigate future losses. It’s top of mind for Chief Monias at Cross Lake as he plans for community safety next year.

He said his nation would like to teach reforestation practices to members, including building a functioning sawmill.

“If we can harvest those trees that are susceptible to fire and so forth, we can actually create safety for our community,” Monias said.

He said the First Nation had a working sawmill in the 1960s that was of vital use for building up the community.

“People built their own houses back then, and then we could build cabins, sheds and so forth,” Monias said.

“It was self-sustaining, a self-reliance on lumber that we created on our own. It’s empowering for our people. It creates jobs, it creates business, and I think it’s going back to the old ways.”