Through the lens of experience

Wild Fire: Dispatches from a Country Ablaze
by Jesse Winter

New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2026
$36.99  /  9781443475822

Reviewed by Kenneth Favrholdt

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There is no more timely book to read this summer than an account of recent forest fires that have impacted British Columbia and beyond. Wild Fire: Dispatches from a Country Ablaze, by photojournalist Jesse Winter, is a first-hand narrative of fires that have scorched the Western Canadian landscape in the past few years.

Jesse Winter, based in Vancouver, has covered wildfires and other climate-related disasters since 2018 for a variety of media. His first experience was that year at Peachland in the Okanagan Valley.  He was then a “wildfire neophyte” who had no knowledge of what he was getting into. “The sheer volume of what I didn’t know has filled this book.”  

Wild Fire describes in intimate detail three major wildfires: the 2023 Shuswap firestorm in southwestern British Columbia, the 2023 wildfire that threatened Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, and the Jasper 2024 fire tornado that destroyed a third of the town of Jasper, Alberta, in two days. The book focuses on climate change and many decades of fire suppression that has allowed the massive buildup of fuel in the coniferous forests of Canada that threaten more wildfires.  To make his point, Winter makes many dramatic statements: “The seven worst wildfire seasons in Canadian history have all occurred in the last decade… Canada accounts for more than 25% of the world’s boreal forest… Across the country there are more than 324,000 square kilometres of homes, businesses, playgrounds and hockey rinks potentially at risk from wildfires.”

He provides alarming background information in his fast-moving recounting of these wildfires. Indeed, his highly personal descriptions of the fires are followed day by day, even hour by hour, which quickly moves the reader along close calls and as a witness to exceptional bravery.

We are introduced to many firefighters from different countries–flown in from Australia, Brazil, Costa Rica, and Mexico–who came to Canada to help fight these conflagrations. Twenty Brazilians with limited experience in BC, and a language barrier, witnessed the explosive growth of a fire near Adams Lake which entrapped them, but they fortunately survived.     

But at Jordan River near the city of Revelstoke, in July 2023, the death of 19-year-old Devyn Gayle, a second-year fully-fledged crew member, caused fellow firefighters to “question whether the fire she died on had need to be fought at all.”

Fires are given numbers, we learn, like K21620 located near Adams Lake in the North Shuswap region east of Kamloops. This area is a “classic wildland urban interface” where there is a mix of cottages and cabins nestled in forested areas.  Winter describes how some homeowners mitigated the risks posed by the fire before it arrived. Jim Cooperman of Lee Creek saved his family’s three-storey log home by thinning the forest around it, cutting down 60% of the trees. He was smart and lucky.

When the Adams Lake fire arrived, it raced down the hillside toward his [Cooperman’s] and hundreds of homes above Shuswap Lake. But at his neighbours, the fire ripped through the forest and on into their houses, levelling many of them. At Cooperman’s property, it reached the broad swath he’d logged and dropped from the tree canopy to the ground. It crawled right up to the rock retaining wall behind the timber-framed patio stage, where Cooperman hosts an annual music festival, and stopped cold.  

Winter began his photojournalism career in Yellowknife, a city of 20,000 citizens on Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories, where he had his first real newspaper job at the Yellowknifer.  Winter devotes two chapters to the Yellowknife fire of 2023 and heaps much praise on a local internet radio station, Cabin Radio, for keeping residents informed. Poor planning and inadequate communication by the City and Territorial government, Winter asserts, were the culprits of this debacle.  The hamlet of Enterprise, gateway to the NWT, had already succumbed to the fire in August. Fortunately, rain and changing wind patterns saved Yellowknife from the same destruction, yet residents to drove hundreds of kilometres to safety.

Winter reminds the reader of the Fort McMurray evacuation in May, 2024:

…some parallels were too obvious to ignore, not the least of which was how emergency officials were communicating with the public. Yellowknife officials – like those in Fort McMurray – were steadfastly refusing to acknowledge, at least publicly, that the whole city might have to flee. As of August 15, the plan was to shelter in place within the city, pulling residents back from outlying neighbourhoods to areas closer to the lake if and when the fire rolled in, housing them in sports complexes and arenas. No one appeared to be considering what could happen if an ember storm threw firebrands beyond the forest’s edge and into the city proper…

Winter also points out another wildfire threat, following hot on the heels of Yellowknife: “Less than a year after Yellowknife’s chaotic evacuation, and the North Shuswap’s shocking devastation, both would happen again, this time in the crown jewel of Canada’s Rocky Mountain parks. The impacts would leave hardened wildfire veterans astounded and shaken.”

The Jasper story involves a century of fire suppression in the national park coupled with the pine beetle epidemic. Recounts Winter: “Unlike Yellowknife, Jasper was prepared and the evacuation went smoothly. But the wind increased and the result was a ‘fire cyclone,’ probably the most intense in Canadian history. Much of Jasper survived due to the heroic efforts of firefighters. A risky ‘Hail Mary’ decision to use areal ignition for two controlled burns on nearby hillsides pulled the fire away from the town.”

But Winter does not shy away from criticism of the BC Wildfire Service and the local regional district. Winter, for that matter, makes a poignant statement about the future of wildfires in BC, Canada, and the world: “These fires are not aberrations. They are no longer “infrequent.” They are our new reality and will continue to be so for decades to come.”

In closing, Winter states:

We have to stop treating wildfires like a monster in the deep, dark forest, something we’re too afraid to look at until it catches us by surprise. We have to stop treating wildland firefighters like unskilled labourers working summer jobs. We must recognize them as the highly skilled year-round emergency responders that they are and recognize the level of resources they require. Most critically, we have to learn how to live with wildfire again, respecting both its awesome power and also its vital role in sustainable, healthy landscapes.

Unfortunately, there are no photos in the book of the wildfires. Winter describes, but his vivid and dramatic descriptions fill those gaps.  Missing also is a map or two that would locate these wildfires that the public came to know by name from the television news. Images are not hard to find.

The book is easy to read: Winter literally situates the reader in the midst of the action. Jargon is explained:  the reader will learn a variety of fire-fighting terms – Nomex (a flame-resistant fabric), Pulaskis, (a combination axe and adze), duff, (the layer of flammable forest debris), IA (Initial Attack) crews, and IMT (incident management team).

The acknowledgements made in the book’s end are personal–Winter’s parents who instilled in him a passion for the outdoors, and many individuals who Winter met and obtained information from, although some of their names have been changed or omitted to protect their identity.

“Dialogue quoted in this book is drawn from formal recorded interviews” or from notes he “made in the field,” Winter notes. But much of the information he gathered was a challenge. Many of the reports and government documents Winter relied upon were obtained “as leaks from sources who risked their careers to share them” and when they were made public were released with “important details redacted.”

With reference to the Jasper wildfire, “early statements by officials at a press conference … were vague, saying somewhere between one-third and behalf of the town had been lost.”

Professional press access could have helped provide crucial context but journalists couldn’t get into town. … Parks Canada largely refused to allow journalists into Jasper for nearly a month after the fire. When asked about this by understandably frustrated journalists, Parks Canada claimed it was protecting the privacy of Jasper at “a time of profound loss, devastation, and grieving.”

However, Winter states: “The biggest lesson of all from Jasper isn’t political; it’s a message about the type of fires now possible in our current climate-heating world.”

In Wild Fire, Winter has written an important and prophetic book about our role with wildfire that should be heeded and acted upon. It is truly a must-read!

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Kenneth Favrholdt is a freelance writer, historical geographer, and museologist with a BA and MA (Geography, UBC), a teaching certificate (SFU), and certificates as a museum curator. He spent ten years at the Kamloops Museum & Archives, five at the Secwépemc Museum and Heritage Park, four at the Osoyoos Museum, and was past archivist of Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc. He has written extensively on local history in Kamloops This Week, the former Kamloops Daily News, the Claresholm Local Press, and other community papers. Ken has also written book reviews for BC Studies and articles for BC History, Canadian Cowboy Country Magazine, Cartographica, Cartouche, and MUSE (magazine of the Canadian Museums Association). He taught geography courses at Thompson Rivers University and edited the Canadian Encyclopedia, geography textbooks, and a commemorative history for the Town of Oliver and Osoyoos Indian Band. Ken has undertaken research for several Interior First Nations and is now working on books on the fur trade of Kamloops and the gold rush journal of John Clapperton, a Nicola Valley pioneer and Caribooite. He lives in Kamloops. [Editor’s note: Kenneth Favrholdt has recently reviewed books by Larry Grant, with Scott Steedman, Ross Peck, W. Keith Regular, and Dr. Jennifer Grenz for The British Columbia Review.]

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

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