People cross Elgin Street on rental e-scooters as haze from wildfire smoke is seen in the air in Ottawa on June 25, 2023. Nearly all of Quebec and parts of Ontario and Manitoba were impacted by advisories of poor air quality.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
Poor air quality advisories affected nearly all of Quebec and parts of Ontario and Manitoba as wildfires continued to rage across the country Sunday, while thousands remained evacuated from Quebec’s northern communities.
“Forest fire smoke can be harmful to everyone’s health, even at low concentrations,” Environment Canada said in a smog warning for the Montreal Island area.
The agency warned that high concentrations of fine particulate matter from forest fires would cause poor air quality until Monday morning.
Similar statements were in place for most of the province. Environment Canada also warned of dangerously poor air quality Sunday in Winnipeg and most of Manitoba and northwestern Ontario, along with Ottawa and other parts of eastern Ontario.
The smell of smoke was inescapable Sunday, and yellowish smog blurred Montreal’s skyline.
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According to IQAir, a Swiss pollution technology company that monitors air quality, Montreal had the worst air quality in the world Sunday morning. It showed an air quality index of 243, a “very unhealthy” level of air pollution with a fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentration reaching more than 38 times the World Health Organization’s annual air quality guideline value.
Quebec’s largest city fared much worse than the second in line, Kuwait City (air quality index of 187), and other notoriously polluted cities like Delhi, India, or Lima, Peru.
The Mont-Tremblant Ironman race, scheduled for Sunday north of Montreal, was cancelled due to air quality concerns “for the safety of all involved,” the Ironman Group said in a statement.
Environment Canada recommended staying indoors, keeping windows shut, and using an air purifier with a high efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter. For those who must spend time outdoors, the agency recommended wearing a respirator mask such as a NIOSH-certified N95 to reduce exposure to fine particulate matter.
There were more than 460 active wildfires throughout the country on Sunday, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, with most of them in Quebec, Alberta, Ontario and British Columbia.
More forest area has already been burned than any other year on record, CIFFC data shows, a record-setting season that prompted Canada and the United States to replace an “ad hoc” approach to helping each other battle forest fires with a formal agreement on Thursday, after wildfire smoke from Canada affected millions with polluted air on the American East Coast earlier in June.
Thousands of people from communities like Senneterre, Val-d’Or, Obedjiwan, and Mistassini, in northern and northwestern Quebec, remained evacuated Sunday, according to the Ministry of Public Security.
“Due to low precipitation and rising temperatures, flammability indices vary from very high to extreme in several regions,” the ministry warns on its website. “These weather conditions could reinvigorate existing wildfires and lead to the outbreak of new fires.”
According to Quebec’s wildfire agency, SOPFEU, there were 81 active fires Sunday in the province’s “intensive zone,” where most of the population lives. Wildfires have burned nearly 1.2 million hectares in the zone this year, more than 130 times the average for the past decade at this time.
Lebel-sur-Quévillon, a town of about 2,000 in northern Quebec, was ordered to evacuate Thursday for the second time due to wildfires this season.
Denis Lemoyne, a city councillor of Lebel-sur-Quévillon, said in a video update Sunday that “smoke and temperature conditions are quite intense,” but that rain forecast for the next few days would help.
Chibougamau, a northern Quebec town of more than 7,000, was on high alert and authorities warned Saturday on social media that it, too, could soon be forced to evacuate for the second time this season.
In Ontario, air evacuation of the Fort Albany First Nation on the province’s James Bay Coast was set to continue Sunday, according to an update posted on the community’s Facebook page as crews battled a nearby fire.
There were no new evacuation orders related to wildfires in the western provinces, although several communities were under evacuation alert in B.C.’s Peace River Regional District, District of Tumbler Ridge and Northern Rockies Regional Municipality, as well as Alberta’s Municipal District of Greenview.