Early in the book, a meticulous and meditative account of the changing landscape of Canadian fire, Vaillant describes the Chinchaga fire of 1950 — at approximately four million acres in western Canada, the largest ever recorded in North America. “The fire generated a smoke plume so large it came to be known as the Great Smoke Pall of 1950,” Vaillant writes. “Rising 40,000 feet into the stratosphere, the plume’s enormous umbra lowered average temperatures by several degrees, caused birds to roost at midday, and created weird visual effects as it circled the Northern Hemisphere, including widespread reports of lavender suns and blue moons.” He continues, “the last time such effects had been reported on this scale was following the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883. Carl Sagan was sufficiently impressed by the effects of the Chinchaga fire to wonder if they might resemble those of a nuclear winter.”
Vaillant’s book is not about the Chinchaga fire, but the Horse River fire, also known as the Fort McMurray fire, which in 2016 destroyed thousands of homes in the boomtown-center of the Athabasca oil-sand region and forced the largest wildfire evacuation in Canada’s history. Today, for all but the most informed followers of wildfire, it is already nearly forgotten — which is to say, surpassed by subsequent fire horrors and thereby normalized almost into background noise.
