Manjushree Thapa is a Nepali-Canadian author of 10 books of fiction, non-fiction and literary translation.
In January, 2023, my partner and I booked a dream summer holiday in the Northwest Territories.
Daniel had just retired. He longed, more than anything, to travel: “I’ve always wanted to canoe on Great Slave Lake.”
I shared his wanderlust: “I wonder if the water will be warm enough to swim?”
That spring, a record-breaking number of wildfires started up through Canada’s North.
By the summertime, the Northwest Territories alone had more than 200 wildfires. Entire communities were being forcibly evacuated.
We read the news and wondered, with our trip nearing, whether we should cancel. “Wouldn’t it be like canoeing through climate change?”
(We didn’t cancel.)
We flew to Yellowknife in late July, passing several forest fires before landing on a dingy brown morning.
The air smelled of smoke and made our eyes smart.
Air Quality 5: Moderate Risk.
Had we been wrong to come?
Masked up, we wandered through Old Town and N’Dilo, stopping by the shoreline of Great Slave Lake. Over dinner, we planned out everything we wanted to do.
The next morning, we woke up to clearer skies. “Phew!” The air quality was ranked at 3: Low Risk.
Cheered, we drove along the Ingraham Trail, stopping at every lake we passed. “The water’s so warm!” We swam at the Cameron River Ramparts. “We’re swimming north of 60!”
We could hardly believe it.
But that evening, the CBC reported that a 24,000-hectare wildfire was raging only 30 metres away from Yellow Dog, a fly-in lodge where we had booked a three-night stay.
We learned that each fire was given a number. This particular fire was ZF-011.
Anxiously, we read the news.
From the Yellowknife-based cabinradio.ca, we also learned that residents from the town of Behchokǫ̀ were sheltering at the city’s multiplex. We’d driven by the multiplex the day before, puzzled by how crowded it was.
It felt bad to be holidaying in a place overrun by displaced people.
But there we were.
“Should we just go home?”
“Will insurance cover us?”
“Not if the organizers don’t cancel.”
We took in the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre, walked along Niven Lake, and drove to nearby Dettah to look around.
The air was too smoky to stay out for too long.
We retreated to our hotel room. I painted. Daniel read.
We called the owner of the Yellow Dog Lodge.
Gord Gin told us that he and his staff were safe. “We’re exhausted! We’ve been fighting the fire non-stop, but it’s finally under control.”
We shared his relief. And we assumed: “Guess we should cancel, huh?”
“There’ll be firefighters stationed here,” Gord said, “and it’ll be noisy with all the choppers and planes overhead. But if you don’t mind that, we’d love to host you.” Then he added: “It’s too smoky for planes to fly in, though.”
“But … we shouldn’t cancel?” we asked, confused.
“Let’s talk tomorrow!” he said.
By the end of the next day, we’d checked out every attraction and memorabilia shop in Yellowknife.
We swam in Long Lake with a horde of townspeople. We bought books by Richard Van Camp and Alison McCreesh and other local authors at a great independent bookshop called the Book Cellar. We even did a load of laundry at the Arctic Laundromat, though our clothes still smelled of smoke afterward.
By then, all but one of the roads out of Yellowknife were blocked by wildfires.
And planes were still unable to fly to the Yellow Dog Lodge.
An acquaintance from Nepal put us in touch with his relatives, who invited us for a home-cooked Nepali meal of rice, lentils, cauliflower, paneer, chicken curry and potato salad.
This was very comforting.
On our final evening in Yellowknife, Gord called and gave us the all-clear. “You’re good to fly in!”
“Oh! Lucky us!”
“See you tomorrow!”
The next morning, a DHC-2 Beaver flew us over a vast land covered with forests, lakes, mines and wildfires.
Beyond a patch that had been charred black by Fire ZF-011, we landed on the clean blue waters of Graham Lake.
Firefighting teams had turned the Yellow Dog Lodge into a centre of operations. We found ourselves sharing the lodge with Gord and his wife Cathy, their two summertime staff, and 28 firefighters from the Northwest Territories and New Brunswick.
During the day, planes circled the sky, water-bombing sections of ZF-011 between landings to refuel from barrels stored at the lodge.
Fire ZF-011 was still smouldering across the lake. Every now and then, a tree would catch on fire.
“Candling,” Gord called it.
“Nothing to worry about – till next spring,” he explained. “Some of these fires burn underground all winter long.”
It was a very odd holiday. Daniel fished; we swam; I painted; we read.
Meanwhile, the lodge’s staff and the firefighters put in long days of work.
Some of the firefighters were 20-year veterans; others were new to the job. We chatted with them at mealtimes.
They were doing important work. Their morale was high.
We all shared a laugh about the timing of our trip.
In the end, we were glad we had come.
We told Ollie Williams of Cabin Radio as much.
He described us as “undeterred” tourists in a feel-good story on his news website.
Reinvigorated, we flew back to Yellowknife in time for our main adventure: a canoe camping trip on Great Slave Lake.
Our guides Nicolas and Hannah from Jackpine Paddle assured us and the seven other outdoor enthusiasts in our group: “There are no wildfires where we’re going.”
The plan was to paddle around Etthen Island over nine leisurely days.
The sky was bright and blue on the day we started our trip.
And the day after that.
And the day after that.
We were off the grid the entire time, and blissfully unaware of the news.
A week passed by on Great Slave Lake in near-idyllic conditions.
The Northwest Territories sit on rock formations that are four billion years old: “The oldest rocks on Earth,” our guides told us.
We saw fossils of stromatolites, the first form of life to breathe oxygen, which left striations on the rocks.
We saw red-cross shield bugs and reindeer moss and raspberry bushes and shrubby cinquefoil and lots of fireweed.
We lost count of how many trout we caught and released.
We saw four black bears, always from a safe distance.
And we swam at the end of each day.
“We’re swimming in Great Slave Lake!”
“Can you believe it?”
On the eighth day, Nicolas and Hannah told us there was a severe wind warning for the following day.
We had to paddle extra hours to reach our final stop a day early.
“And our last day will be a rest day.”
It was smoky that day, but we paddled by sheer rock-cliff faces that silenced us with their splendour.
“Four billion years old.”
I felt like I could stare at those rocks all day.
On our last full day on Etthen Island, the wind blew relentlessly from morning on.
Daniel joined others in practising wet exits. I painted. Others fished, napped, read and lazed about.
The wind grew fiercer as the day wore on.
The lake became wild, churning up mud from the bottom.
There was no swimming that day.
That afternoon, someone noticed a column of smoke rising from the horizon.
“Look over there!”
“What’s that?”
The column grew steadily and soon covered the sky.
The sun turned maroon in the haze.
It was eerie.
The day suddenly darkened. Storm clouds thickened overhead. A thunderstorm flashed over the island, then ended as swiftly as it had begun.
Ash drifted down on us as we ate dinner that evening.
We realized we’d been canoeing through climate change after all.
The following morning, though, the sky was blue. The air was clean. The lake was placid again.
“Oh, thank goodness!”
“I was so worried.”
Our float plane picked us up as scheduled.
A three-person group had flown in to start the trip we’d completed.
“Have fun,” we told them as we parted.
“It’s gorgeous out there,” we said. “You’ll love it. We had such an incredible time.”
The pilot flew low because of poor visibility. The air in the cabin reeked of ash. Our eyes watered and our throats hurt.
In Yellowknife, the air quality was ranked 8: Dangerous.
We dutifully put on our masks.
We left our hotel room for a farewell meal of local lake trout at Bullock’s Bistro.
We flew home the next morning.
Our dream holiday had taken place as scheduled.
We felt incredibly lucky to have had such a great time.
“Wasn’t that amazing?”
“It really was.”
“Wow.”
Two days later, the Northwest Territories government declared a state of emergency.
Though Fires ZF-011 and ZF-015 had been contained, Fires ZF-085 and ZF-012 were closing in on Yellowknife. The city’s 20,000 residents were given two days to leave the territory altogether.
In shock, we read the news.
We read about the evacuation: Everyone we’d met in Yellowknife was scrambling to safety, fleeing catastrophe.
When would they be able to return home?
Would the fire destroy their homes? Their town? Their lives?
Worst-case scenarios haunted our thoughts – though we hoped for the best, of course.
We felt completely shaken, as we read and reread the news.