Canada Burns
How you can help
The smoke comes first settling over the forest like a held breath, turning the sun a bruised orange that elders say looks like it did in the old stories.
*video by Lyndo Tyler
This land has burned before. It knows fire as medicine, as renewal, as something older than the maps drawn without asking. But this is different. This burns faster, hotter, angrier, it’s burning through territories that hold centuries of memory in every root and riverbed.
One evacuee, Lyndo Tyler, described watching their home burn, saying they still “can’t believe this happened.” They’d only just gotten everyone out in time, and hours later, still hadn’t been able to sleep.
That’s the story playing out again and again across these communities. Elders who have never left their territory, not once in eighty years, now sleep in gymnasiums turned shelters hundreds of miles away.
And it isn’t just houses. It’s the medicine plants that only grow in certain hollows. It’s the trees marked by ancestors, the trails walked for generations, the stories that live in the land and can’t simply be rebuilt on a different plot of ground.
It is absolutely heartbreaking to watch First Nations communities, many of whom can only access their homes by boat fleeing in terror.
I’ve collected a few places to donate and will update this post as I come across more.
Redcross Indigenous Communities Fund
Gofundme - including many fundraisers by communities and individuals
Anishinabek Nation 7th Generation Charity : They provide emergency supplies, temporary shelter, and essential resources.
For all of our Canadian friends, known and not yet known, we send our love. Fire is so dangerous. Sad to hear of the extensive nature of the fires. My wife and I visited CN first for Expo '67 in Montreal. We love Canada. We worked to certify our brakes in BC at Highland Valley Copper. We played golf in Banff. We worked IndyCar races in CN. All of the teams race my brakes. We vacationed with our sons in Ottawa. Look for CP hotels in Banff and Ottawa. We supplied brakes for Midas Canada and CTC (Canadian Tire Corp). Thanks, Canada.
Your strength as people of resilience and power and mutual support will help your community survive and rise above this tragedy. We stand in solidarity with the proud First Nations of Canada at this painful time.