It was unusually hot in Nova Scotia for late April when I was packing for a flight to Alberta. Recently finishing my first year of Forestry school, I was eager to go experience work in a different province.
I attend the Maritime College of Forest technology which is a small college in New Brunswick with nearly one hundred students total. The College was established shortly after the Second World War as an incentive to employ veterans in a time when workers were needed in the natural resource sector. The college still runs to this day and the Maritime Provinces of Canada rely on its operation to produce competent employees. At MCFT, all students are enrolled in the Forest Technology Program and to complete this program, the requirement is for all students to do a work placement during the summer between the first and second year of the program.
The school is very flexible with the job you choose provided it is related to natural resources. Some join wildfire crews for the summer, others may find themselves working with a hunting guide and some may go plant trees. There is no rule on working in New Brunswick specifically either. No limit truly exists as long as you can argue that I’m working in the natural resource sector. The school also allows a wide variety of companies to come in and try to recruit students as well. Companies from across Canada travel to our school to recruit us to come work for them.
A few months prior, Tolko Industries which originated in British Columbia but has locations in Alberta and Saskatchewan came to visit us. They told us about their mills in Western Canada which produce lumber and OSB (Oriented Strand Board) and how they run a logging operation which requires a lot of on the ground workers to help plan and harvest trees. The work sounded interesting, and it seemed like a good opportunity to learn about how the industry operates. I was also pretty keen to have an excuse to explore more of Canada so I decided to go print off a resume and interview with them. Luckily enough, I was offered a job in High Prairie, Alberta which was further North than I had ever been, and I accepted shortly after. Another guy from school, Kirk, was hired on as well so we both planned to take the same flight and travel together.
It was past midnight when we finally landed in Grande Prairie. Our supervisor reached out prior to our arrival to let us know he could pick us up at the airport and we would stay in a hotel for the night before driving to High Prairie. A work truck covered in mud pulled up outside the airport where we stood waiting and out stepped our supervisor. He wore a plaid jacket and he introduced himself as Dylan.
The following two weeks were our training period. We went over all the “housekeeping” which needed to be done. Things such as company policies and what was expected of us. We went over some more interesting things such as defensive driving (which included some memorable hands-on training) and some on the job training.
Training was enjoyable. It was a good opportunity to meet the other summer students and enjoy some more easy-going days as a group before work started and the pace picked up. Despite this, I was very eager to get started on work. Frankly all I wanted to do was get some work done but I quickly realized that certain things out of anyone's control may interfere with the schedule. Our last training period was going to be some four-wheeler training before we were cut loose in the woods, but it was postponed due to a province-wide Off Highway Vehicle ban due to the increasing risk of wildfire. I remember at one point Dylan explained to me that Alberta was in some pretty severe drought conditions meaning the heat from a four wheeler could ignite dry grass or any debris very easily. Later on during my work term, I would hear a story from another supervisor that he once parked his ATV in some tall dry grass and he later arrived back to an ATV engulfed in flames. He put the fire out, but he told me he counts himself lucky that he arrived back when he did.
As the days went on wildfire soon became the main topic of discussion. This was all new to me, being from Nova Scotia wildfire was never something I had to deal with often (wildfires happen in Nova Scotia but not nearly to the same extent as Alberta) so it felt a bit surreal. So far, every day we were driving out of town for work, during our commute was when we would see a great cloud of smoke off in the distance but with each day the clouds would either get bigger or a new one would appear closer. It felt as if the smoke was slowly closing in on us in High Prairie. These clouds of smoke were fascinating to me, but my attitude quickly changed one evening when I arrived back at High Prairie and the entire town was covered in smoke and there was an orange tinge in the air. I was anticipating an evacuation because over the past few days my phone had been constantly ringing with emergency alerts for nearby communities being evacuated but it had not truly set in until now. One day when an alert came in for High Prairie to be ready to evacuate in a few hours I decided it would not be a bad idea to pack a bag.
It seemed as if every fire crew in Alberta was dispatched (even out of province fire crews were being brought in) and it did not take long for the Government of Alberta to be spread out thinly. The number of resources which they had was simply not enough to deal with the number of fires burning in Alberta. From what I can gather, the Government’s firefighting efforts at this time relied heavily on the help lent from the forest industry. When we first arrived, I remember Dylan talking about a “Dozer Boss” course he had taken which allowed him to be called out to support fire efforts if needed. This course certified him as a Dozer Boss which allowed him to lead a crew of bulldozers through the woods to plow trees and turn up the ground to create a line of bare earth. The Dozer Boss is the one who decides where this line goes by scouting ahead and tying brightly colored ribbons onto trees which are visible to the equipment operators who will then know where to bulldoze.
The end result is a stretch of overturned dirt which would prevent the fire from spreading further.
On one especially smoky Saturday morning we were asked if we could come into our compound at the mill to help set up some defense against a nearby fire. It was made clear to the other students and I that we were not being forced to work this overtime but we felt that we were in good hands, so we decided to go in and help. Besides that we all wanted to be useful and do our part to help out. On arrival, we were tasked with wetting down the compound and the surrounding area so that it would not burn if the fire came close. We used a gas-powered water pump to suction water from a nearby pond and sprayed down everything in the compound. The fire never reached the compound, but it was getting awfully close to where we live.
At this point I knew it was only a matter of time for an evacuation order to come down. High Prairie took on some evacuees in the community hall and one evening we delivered some water and snacks on behalf of Tolko. This would be one of many times we did this sort of thing, and I was proud to be working for a company that prioritized supporting the community when it mattered.
The sense of community and support I saw in Alberta during the fires is something I will not easily forget. On one hot afternoon myself and the others were tasked with picking up essential groceries such as food and toiletries to deliver to a reserve an hour North of High Prairie which was hosting evacuees. When we arrived, we worked diligently to unload supplies so the people who needed them could have access to them. I remember dropping off the last cases of water when a man who must have been overseeing the evacuation center approached Kirk and I offering us a meal from the kitchen they had set up. We both declined, explaining that we did not want to eat food the evacuees needed to which he simply replied, “Hey man, we’re all human, all family and all in this together so you’re welcome to have a meal” and at that point we could not decline. After getting a glimpse into what the evacuees were experiencing, I added a sleeping bag to my evacuation bag in anticipation of sleeping on the floor of a school gymnasium or community hall.
It was a surprise to me when I had a message from Dylan saying that management decided to pull the students out of High Prairie in anticipation of an evacuation order and house us in Slave Lake temporarily. Slave Lake was where we commuted to daily, it’s an hour away and has an OSB mill just as High Prairie does. I was especially surprised when I was told two other employees were more than happy to let me stay with them during our time away from High Prairie. Travis and Audrey both work higher up in Tolko Woodlands and I would be staying at their house while we were evacuated. While staying there we spent most days working in the Mill’s log yard in anticipation of a fire getting close and burning the stock. If we weren’t doing that, we would either be buying supplies for evacuees and delivering them, or we would be transporting firefighting equipment such as pumps and hoses. In log yards we mainly rolled out hose and set up water pumps which wetted down log piles and surrounding area.
Our stay in Slave Lake lasted for a total of two weeks. By the end of it, myself and everyone else put in a fair amount of overtime to support the community and things finally were improving. We received word that the situation in High Prairie had improved, and we could go back.
It was interesting to see how quickly Tolko was able to move its people and resources around to adapt to a situation, and I was grateful to be a part of it. But we now had our sights set on arriving back to High Prairie and doing some work in the woods.
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