Western Canada: Feeding the foreign firefighters battling Canada’s blazes

Good morning. Wendy Cox in Vancouver this morning.

Canada has had to rely on thousands of foreign firefighters to help provinces battle the worst forest fire season on record.

The South Africans made a remarkable entrance when they landed at the Edmonton airport earlier this spring, singing and dancing. There have been reinforcements from Mexico, Brazil, Australia, the United States, France, South Korea and the Dominican Republic.

BC Wildfire Service officials have said all that come to Canada have a working proficiency in English. But still, life in the remote camps where firefighters eat and sleep and work dangerous, long hours, must resemble the United Nations.

So what to feed them? Reporters Alanna Smith and Xiao Xu each talked to a camp chef and it turns out, that takes a lot of trial and error.

In B.C., the Canadians don’t care much for brussels sprouts, but the Brazilians liked them just fine. Some crews want rice and potatoes, others want exactly the opposite. Jalapenos in the salad prompted caution from one crew about whether there was anything else spicy hiding in the vegetables.

Kyla Rever, the head chef at the Basset Complex camp, near High Level in Alberta, runs the industrial kitchen that serves food cafeteria-style to firefighters who live out of the 84-room facility while stationed in the area.

She served pasta to a South African crew, anxious about how it would go over. It was a hit, but not as much as the buckets and buckets of ice cream the crew consumed for dessert.

“It was just vanilla. Boring vanilla. But they just absolutely loved it,” Rever said. “They were just so happy, and it was nice to watch them.”

David Tucker is currently cooking for about 200 firefighters at the Gillies Complex camp, in British Columbia’s Cariboo Fire Centre.

He has been trying to learn a word or two in Portuguese and Spanish, so he can communicate with some of his diners. On Thursday evening, for the first time, his chefs wrote menus in both Portuguese and English, which pleased the Brazilians.

“I think that makes them feel welcomed,” Tucker said.

He thinks of it as a small act of appreciation for a group of people who are making a difference at a difficult time in Canada. “I think I just would like people that I share this country with to understand the sacrifice that other people are making,” he said.

This is the weekly Western Canada newsletter written by B.C. Editor Wendy Cox and Alberta Bureau Chief Mark Iype. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here.