Latest news with #NorthernSaskatchewan
CBC
3 days ago
- Business
- CBC
When the smoke clears: Northern Sask. wildfires leave many businesses in limbo
Wildfires have burned through much of northern Saskatchewan, forcing thousands from their homes and leaving many business owners who rely on local tourism in limbo. While some have been left with nothing, even those whose businesses survived are left with uncertainty about what's next. "We were in our first week of summer operations for this season when the evacuation order came," said Cindy Ouellet, who owns the T&D Amisk camp — about 30 kilometres from Denare Beach — alongside her husband Nick. She said they had to evacuate guests out of the camp on May 28, then go through and cancel bookings up to July 5 "week-by-week." Ouellet said the aftermath of the wildfires has been "devastating" for her business. "Our season runs from the last week of May to typically the 1st of October," she said. "We do some small business operations in the winter, but that's very minimal compared to the summer months. And the month of June is our main bread and butter." 'We don't know at this point how long we will continue cancellations and when we will actually be ready to welcome our guests,' said Cindy Ouellet, the owner of T&D Amisk camp. (Submitted by Cindy Ouellet) Ouellet said she is fortunate her business is covered by a business interruption insurance policy. She had to use it once before during the pandemic, when her business was shut down for a year and a half. Not everyone has that option. Ouellet said she made a private Facebook group to help those who have suffered losses — many of them friends and "fellow business owners." She said the group is a place solely for those who need to rebuild. It will provide "all the resources possible," including RTM providers, builders, contractors and insurance information. "Seeing friends absolutely desperate and lost, suffering this devastation and then on top of it having to make really big decisions fairly quickly," Ouellet said. "Nobody should have to do that without some sort of help." Ouellet and her husband have also housed residents as they begin to return to the area and crews coming in to help rebuild. Earlier this month, owners of The Ridge on Amisk Resort announced it as a total loss after the Wolf fire engulfed the northern village of Denare Beach. "Our life savings, dreams, our blood, sweat and tears along with our hearts and souls, in one afternoon it was all taken away," the post said. Neil MacAuley, the owner and operator of La Ronge Fishing Adventures, is grappling with what work could look like once the smoke settles. He runs a third-generation charter operation that provides full and half-day guided fishing, and all the gear required. MacAuley said that as the wildfire season has gotten worse over the last couple of years, people in the community have become "a little uneasy." "You have your clients and your guests out there, and they're watching giant plumes of smoke billowing up, you know, 10 to 15 miles away," he said. "You're trying to reassure them that you know, we're going to be OK, it's safe." Neil said many of his friends lost their cabin to the Pisew fire in La Ronge. (Submitted by Neil MacAuley) MacAuley said he hopes it will be a good season for his business, but it heavily relies on the campgrounds in the area, many which have burned down. "We've already had about seven or eight cancellations already. So we're going to try and fill those up, but it's going to be tough for us." He said many of those calling to cancel have been people who have lost property in the fire. MacAuley is not the only business owner experiencing a slew of cancellations. Glen Thompson, one of the owners of Osprey Wings, an air charter company in northern Saskatchewan, said between 80 and 100 flights have been cancelled so far. "That's probably in the neighborhood of a couple hundred-thousand worth of lost revenue," he said, adding that many businesses are "suffering." Glen Thompson, one of the owners of Osprey wings, said they are waiting for the air space to open up in certain places across the province to service more people. (Submitted by Glen Thompson) Osprey Wings provides flights for tourism, mining, the public service sector and fire suppression. Thompson said it's run by 25 people across 994 planes, and services hundreds of businesses across areas north, east and west of La Ronge and Mississippi. Over the last few months, the company has been helping fire chiefs and firefighters travel around to outfitters camps and sites that needed pumps set up, Thompson said. As the fire situation improves, he said the next priority is to get back to business and help the community as much as possible. "Hopefully we can get things some semblance of normalcy back into our northern community," Thompson said. "If you've ever been to northern Saskatchewan, it's just probably one of the neatest experiences you'll ever have in your lifetime." Up-to-date info on active fires, smoke and related topics is available at these sources:
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Saskatchewan says no certified pilots available to bring water bomber into action for wildfires
As wildfires raged in northern Saskatchewan, a new water bomber added to the province's fleet was grounded because there was no one certified to fly it. The Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency (SPSA) was training pilots with ground school and simulators, but Transport Canada requires them to also spend 25 hours learning to fight wildfires in the specific aircraft they'll be using, the provincial government said in a statement on Monday. When the plane arrived in La Ronge on May 30, 'the operational decision was made not to remove those four pilots from active duty fighting fires protecting our communities so that they could train on the new plane, but rather to continue protecting our communities and saving lives,' said Saskatchewan Minister of Public Safety Tim McLeod, who joined the SPSA for a situational update on Monday. Earlier in the day, NDP MLA Nicole Sarauer, the critic for public safety, held a news conference where her party publicly asked why the province didn't bring the new Conair Dash 8-Q400AT Airtanker into action during the critical moments leading up to the evacuation of La Ronge a few days later. Sarauer alleged Premier Scott Moe wasn't transparent about the circumstances surrounding the new water bomber. 'We have two instances where the premier was in the public telling us that the bomber wasn't here yet, when in fact the flight data shows that it clearly was. He needs to answer for why he either wasn't being honest about the bomber being here or why he had no clue about what was going on,' she said. The SPSA said the new water bomber remained on the La Ronge tarmac only to be towed away as an encroaching wildfire breached the community's airport. A water bomber, also called an airtanker, can scoop up around 6,000 litres of water from a lake in about 12 seconds, fly it over a burning zone and release it. The pilots who operate these types of planes require specialized training and certification through Transport Canada. SPSA vice president of operations Steve Roberts noted that while the ground school and simulator training had been completed earlier this year, they needed an additional 20 hours of flight training plus the aforementioned 25 hours of wildfire-fighting-specific training in the type of water bomber they'll be flying. 'There are lots and lots of pilots that can fly the Q400 for commercial purposes, but are unable and wouldn't be qualified to fly them in a firefighting situation,' Roberts said. SPSA president and fire commissioner Marlo Pritchard said the grounded plane 'did not have a negative impact' on its firefighting because Saskatchewan brought in Q400 bombers from out of province that were used instead. 'The safety of our pilots and the safety of our crews and alignment with the Transport Canada rules required us to pivot and change to really round our focus on the operational necessities at that time,' Pritchard said. The number of active wildfires in Saskatchewan fell to 13 on Monday, with the Pelican and Ditch fires now contained. The Shoe, Jaysmith, Pisew and Wolf fires are not yet contained, but are not expected to move significantly. An estimated 10,000 evacuees have either returned home or are in the process of returning, the SPSA said. Evacuation orders are still active for the communities of Creighton, Denare Beach, East Trout Lake, Whale Bay and priority one and two individuals from Cumberland House. The province also said it will rescind its fire ban across the province as of 5 p.m. Monday. Saskatchewan wildfires: Officials seeking those responsible for "intentional human acts" of arson 'I don't understand': Evacuees question Sask. gov't response in wildfire fight nyking@ The Regina Leader-Post has created an Afternoon Headlines newsletter that can be delivered daily to your inbox so you are up to date with the most vital news of the day. Click here to subscribe. With some online platforms blocking access to the journalism upon which you depend, our website is your destination for up-to-the-minute news, so make sure to bookmark and sign up for our newsletters so we can keep you informed. Click here to subscribe.
Globe and Mail
5 days ago
- Globe and Mail
Wildfires are devastating northern Saskatchewan – a place too often ignored by the rest of the country
Bill Waiser is the author of A World We Have Lost: Saskatchewan Before 1905, which won the Governor General's Literary Award for Non-Fiction. The out-of-control wildfires raging across northern Saskatchewan have introduced Canadians to a part of the country they may have believed was largely empty. In fact, even people living in the southern part of Saskatchewan view it as the great unknown – or, as provincial cabinet minister Joe Phelps once called it, 'another country altogether.' But northern Saskatchewan matters. It could even be argued that the history of the province has northern beginnings. When the province was carved out of the North-West Territories in 1905, the northern boundary was set at the 60th parallel. That meant that more than half of the new province featured a heavy, mixed-wood forest and thousands of bodies of water, including several large lakes. Saskatchewan's geographical centre at Molanosa, an acronym for 'Montreal Lake, Northern Saskatchewan,' was about 160 kilometres north of the city of Prince Albert, well into the boreal forest. Half of Saskatchewan residents who were forced to flee wildfires can return home this week What's the difference between an evacuation alert and an evacuation order in Canada? The Cree and Dene, who had lived in the region for millennia, were a resourceful, resilient people who adjusted to the arrival of the European fur trade in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The first contact between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples happened in northern Saskatchewan. All major settlements in Saskatchewan were once in the north. Cumberland House, Reindeer Lake (Southend), Lac La Ronge, Pelican Narrows, Green Lake, Île-à-la-Crosse, Buffalo Narrows, La Loche, and Fond du Lac all began as fur-trade communities. Many Saskatchewan residents today would be hard-pressed to locate them on a map. By the mid-19th century, a distinct society – one based on hunting and trapping and centred around water-based communities with a trading post and sometimes a mission – had taken shape in northern Saskatchewan. It was largely Indigenous in makeup. It was also separated from the prairie south. The major trade route ran east to west from Cumberland House up along the Churchill River through Île-à-la-Crosse and Portage La Loche to Fort Chipewyan and the Mackenzie River. The region's isolation would become more pronounced in the early 1880s, when the Canadian Pacific Railway was built west from Winnipeg through Regina and Calgary. Settlement and development were largely restricted to the wheat farming on the southern prairies. Northern First Nation and Métis peoples, as vestiges of the old fur trade west, had no part in Saskatchewan's future. That certainly appeared to be the case according to the 1906 western census: less than one per cent of Saskatchewan's population lived in the north. The Saskatchewan government's gaze consequently rarely extended to the north, where it gladly abdicated any meaningful presence in favour of the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Hudson's Bay Company. It wasn't until after the Second World War that northern Saskatchewan and its rich and diverse natural resources came to be part of provincial post-war development plans. The Great Depression had staggered Saskatchewan because of its overdependence on agriculture, and after the war, the government began to look for ways to diversify the economy to try to make it less vulnerable. Northern forestry and mining were part of the new Saskatchewan in the latter half of the 20th century, but northern Indigenous peoples initially played little to no role in these resource industries. In effect, there were two northern societies: one that was white and well-off, and another that was Indigenous and poor. This colonialism extended to the provincial government. Saskatchewan may complain about a distant, insensitive Ottawa, but Regina acted much like an imperial government in the province's north. Today, Indigenous peoples are playing an increasingly larger role in new economic development. At the same time, many continue to pursue a traditional lifestyle and practise their cultural traditions as best they can. Theirs is a unique way of life with its own rhythm, centred on the land and water. Indeed, some have never left their home community – at least, up until now, when wildfires have turned them into refugees. People have complained about the wildfire smoke that has drifted southward and made outside activity difficult, if not dangerous. But spare a thought to the thousands who fled on short notice, forced to leave behind a world that has meant so much to them for generations. Thousands have begun to return, but others may not be back for some time, not knowing what the fires will have destroyed. And it will take longer to rebuild what they have lost. That's why the largely Indigenous firefighting crews have battled so hard to save what they can. For Canadians, especially those living in Saskatchewan, this may be 'another country altogether' – but for so many displaced people, it's home.
CTV News
13-06-2025
- General
- CTV News
‘Everybody feels the loss': Northern Sask. wildfire evacuees return home to La Ronge
There are mixed emotions in La Ronge, Saskatchwan as some evacuees returned to a home while others returned to ruined remains. Allison Bamford reports. Thousands of evacuees started returning home to Northern Saskatchewan today, after raging wildfires forced them to flee more than a week ago. Fires levelled several houses and cabins in areas surrounding La Ronge. Within the townsite, two businesses were lost - Robertson Trading and Rona next door. 'I'm still in the process of processing, if that makes sense. I drive by here everyday. I find it hard to believe,' said Scott Robertson, co-owner of the fur trading company. 'Everybody feels the loss.' Wildfire Scott Robertson stands in front of the rubble where his family trading post once stood. The trading company was a cultural pillar and popular tourist attraction in the community for nearly six decades. It closed permanently last year when Robertson retired. He made sure to still open the doors periodically when demand called for it. Inside, Robertson housed about 100 furs and countless Indigenous artifacts, artworks and clothing -– items that told the history of the fur trade, settlers and Indigenous peoples. 'I always felt that this town should have some kind of an art gallery, a cultural center. And so we hoarded all kinds of stuff, hoping one day, somewhere, somehow, that would evolve,' he said. 'By doing that, by keeping all of our eggs in one basket, it turns out to be a gigantic mistake.' wildfire A photo of Robertson Trading before it burned down. The day after officials issued a mandatory evacuation order, a stray ember set fire to Rona, Robertson said. He watched from the parking lot across the street as his building went up in flames next. 'I'm just taking it one day at a time. We're not going to resurrect this building. I can't see it happening,' he said. Besides losing the business that's been in his family for the last 56 years, Robertson came close to losing his cabin. Flames surrounded the property as Robertson's brother fought with a single pump to save the building. But their sister's property about 100 metres away could not be saved. 'Happy to be home' About 7,000 residents from La Ronge, Air Ronge and the Lac La Ronge Indian Band were allowed to go back into their communities as of Thursday morning. A mandatory evacuation order was issued on June 2. Maggie Roberts kissed her doorway as she walked back into her house. 'I'm just happy to be home that's all I can say,' Roberts told CTV News. 'My house is still here (and) my truck.' Roberts didn't know what she'd see coming home, after she heard the fires were just up the hill from her house. 'We're good friends with the doctor who lives up the hill, so he was taking care of the place,' she said. La Ronge mayor Joe Hordyski stayed behind to help his community. 'I made it perfectly clear that I would not allow our firefighters to defend our community without me being there to support,' he said. Power and utilities are running in the area. The emergency department is open, and the rest of the community's healthcare services will be available in the coming days. Schools will reopen next week. But the mayor said it won't be a complete return to normal. 'There's still going to be fire activity happening. There are choppers still putting things out, and there's activity to the south of us,' Hordyski said. 'We've been reassured that the community will be safe. And we didn't want to prolong the evacuation.' The Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency is on the ground to support the repatriation. Mental health resources are also available.
CTV News
12-06-2025
- General
- CTV News
‘Everybody feels the loss': Northern Sask. wildfire evacuees return home to La Ronge
There are mixed emotions in La Ronge, Saskatchwan as some evacuees returned to a home while others returned to ruined remains. Allison Bamford reports. Thousands of evacuees started returning home to Northern Saskatchewan today, after raging wildfires forced them to flee more than a week ago. Fires levelled several houses and cabins in areas surrounding La Ronge. Within the townsite, two businesses were lost - Robertson Trading and Rona next door. 'I'm still in the process of processing, if that makes sense. I drive by here everyday. I find it hard to believe,' said Scott Robertson, co-owner of the fur trading company. 'Everybody feels the loss.' Wildfire Scott Robertson stands in front of the rubble where his family trading post once stood. The trading company was a cultural pillar and popular tourist attraction in the community for nearly six decades. It closed permanently last year when Robertson retired. He made sure to still open the doors periodically when demand called for it. Inside, Robertson housed about 100 furs and countless Indigenous artifacts, artworks and clothing -– items that told the history of the fur trade, settlers and Indigenous peoples. 'I always felt that this town should have some kind of an art gallery, a cultural center. And so we hoarded all kinds of stuff, hoping one day, somewhere, somehow, that would evolve,' he said. 'By doing that, by keeping all of our eggs in one basket, it turns out to be a gigantic mistake.' wildfire A photo of Robertson Trading before it burned down. The day after officials issued a mandatory evacuation order, a stray ember set fire to Rona, Robertson said. He watched from the parking lot across the street as his building went up in flames next. 'I'm just taking it one day at a time. We're not going to resurrect this building. I can't see it happening,' he said. Besides losing the business that's been in his family for the last 56 years, Robertson came close to losing his cabin. Flames surrounded the property as Robertson's brother fought with a single pump to save the building. But their sister's property about 100 metres away could not be saved. 'Happy to be home' About 7,000 residents from La Ronge, Air Ronge and the Lac La Ronge Indian Band were allowed to go back into their communities as of Thursday morning. A mandatory evacuation order was issued on June 2. Maggie Roberts kissed her doorway as she walked back into her house. 'I'm just happy to be home that's all I can say,' Roberts told CTV News. 'My house is still here (and) my truck.' Roberts didn't know what she'd see coming home, after she heard the fires were just up the hill from her house. 'We're good friends with the doctor who lives up the hill, so he was taking care of the place,' she said. La Ronge mayor Joe Hordyski stayed behind to help his community. 'I made it perfectly clear that I would not allow our firefighters to defend our community without me being there to support,' he said. Power and utilities are running in the area. The emergency department is open, and the rest of the community's healthcare services will be available in the coming days. Schools will reopen next week. But the mayor said it won't be a complete return to normal. 'There's still going to be fire activity happening. There are choppers still putting things out, and there's activity to the south of us,' Hordyski said. 'We've been reassured that the community will be safe. And we didn't want to prolong the evacuation.' The Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency is on the ground to support the repatriation. Mental health resources are also available.
