When you get really close to a wildfire, the sun looks red, you can smell woodsmoke and it starts raining ash.
But as Torontonians woke up Tuesday morning, even though most of the forest fires were burning thousands of kilometres away in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, the sky was still blanketed by a dusty grey haze.
Wildfire season officially starts on April 1, and the number of fires typically starts to rise in May. For urbanites who’ve been historically insulated from the threat of forest fires, however, there’s a new way to mark the calendar: the day the smoke reaches the city.
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency issued an air quality alert for much of state through Wednesday as smoke from wildfires burning in Canada settled across the upper Midwest. (AP Video / June 3, 2025)
Natural Resources Canada’s wildfire smoke plume map shows a kaleidoscopic swirling of psychedelic colours, concentrated over Manitoba and northern Ontario but spreading as far south as Oklahoma and Florida. Major cities on both sides of the border are in the path of the plume, including Winnipeg, Minneapolis and Chicago — but through a meteorological quirk in wind patterns, Toronto escapes relatively unsmoked, as a gap between plumes is projected to open up over the city in the coming days.
The smoke originates from a series of intense wildfires sweeping across parts of Manitoba and northwestern Ontario.
The smoke originates from a series of intense wildfires sweeping across parts of Manitoba and northwestern Ontario.
While previous summers have brought air quality advisories, and even prompted schools to keep children inside during recess, Toronto public health authorities don’t currently have any warnings due to the smoke, “unless you experience symptoms such as coughing and throat irritation,” in which case people are advised to reduce physical activity or stay inside.
The provincial environment ministry’s air quality health index ticked up to 4 out of 10 on Monday evening, nudging into the moderate risk category.
But, while the health risk remains minimal, the increasingly common urban smoke is indicative of a long-term trend toward more and bigger forest fires, driven by climate change.
The number of fires and area burned across Canada has doubled since record-keeping began in 1959. They’re projected to double again by the end of this century.
During the particularly bad year of 2023, more than 17 million hectares of forest burned across Canada, more than double the previous record and six times more than an average season.
This season, nearly 1,700 wildfires have already broken out, burning an area larger than 1.9 million hectares, slightly more than the 10-year average.
Dramatic images of people fleeing their homes in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, where states of emergency have been declared and more than 17,000 people have been evacuated, don’t bode well for the coming months. Two people were killed while attempting to flee a wildfire in Lac du Bonnet, near Winnipeg.
But all that seemed very remote to many until the smoke surrounded the CN Tower.
“Until you can actually smell the smoke in the air, wildfire is often not recognized as a real problem,” said Dr. Mike Wotton, a Research Scientist with the Canadian Forest Service stationed at the University of Toronto who specializes in wildfire behaviour.
Wotton says he’s been frustrated by the way that wildfire isn’t seen as a priority by decision-makers, despite the fact that it’s projected to get far worse.
“We’ve had a decade’s worth of challenging fire years and Western Canada has been more of the epicentre of where fire activity is happening,” he said. “If you’re a provincial policymaker, it’s tempting to think ‘Oh, that’s not our problem.’”
But the dramatic images — including of mansions burning in L.A. this past winter — have helped wake people and politicians across the country up to the threat posed by wildfire, he said.
“We’re going to have to cope with this level of fire that we’re seeing, moving into the future for several decades. And we have to figure out how to cope with that as a society.”
While it’s hard to predict whether a particular wildfire season will be bad or not, the long-term trend clearly points to more and bigger wildfires because climate change only has to raise the temperature by a degree or two and the conditions in the forest that are conducive to ignition become far more prevalent.
“Many parts of the country have had warmer-than-usual winters. Some areas have had less snow than usual. All that means is that things are drier going into wildfire season,” said Ryan Ness, director of adaptation research at the Canadian Climate Institute. “The wildfire season can start sooner and run longer, and under those conditions, there’s more chance of fires getting out of control once they are ignited.”
People in areas who thought they were safe from wildfires may not be so safe anymore, said Ness, pointing to a fire that knocked out power in Labrador last month, when typically there would still be snow melting on the ground.
“In really urbanized places like Toronto, there’s not really any continuous forest left for an actual fire of any magnitude,” he said. “But the smoke ultimately has a much more pervasive impact on many more people.”
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