Author: Daniela Ginta Page 6 of 99

Originally published as a column on Armchair Mayor News on July 23, 2021.

This one tweet among the countless ones on social media caught my eye a few days ago. It was Tuesday, and the fires around Kamloops were once again getting rowdy and there were new potential evacuations to take place.

The tweet I read had to do with all of that, but there was a side of hope and goodness to it. The Wednesday farmer’s market was of course coming up the next day, so preparations were being made nonetheless for it, the tweet read. Be as it may, bread was to be baked and hopefully make it to the market.

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Originally published as a column on Armchair Mayor News on July 16, 2021.

Today is a heavy day. The morning held a cleaner air promise for a bit but that dissipated towards lunch time when the smoke grew thicker and heavier than it’s been this year. It’s impossible not to think of the firefighters who are exposed to so much more than what we experience even on a bad day like today, for weeks on end.

Many are wondering right now, as summer is but a fire and smoke inferno, whether this is what we should expect from now on.

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Originally published as a column on Armchair Mayor News on July 2, 2021.

Note: The piece below was published a couple of weeks ago. Hundreds of wildfires are now burning across the province and the B.C. government has finally declared state of emergency as of today, July 20th.

I started writing this column with a different angle. It was about trees in urban settings and their vital role in helping us survive extreme summer temperatures. I’ll leave that for a future piece because there is something more pressing that needs to be said.

The town of Lytton is on fire as I write this. Literally. After three days of 49 degrees Celsius, which is ungodly in most people’s opinion, a large and fast-moving fire has forced everyone out of their homes. Some ran out of their homes while the roof was already on fire.

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