REGINA - I’ve had my mind on a lot of stuff lately, so this particular News Watch column is going to be a bit of a mishmash of what is going on in the world right now.
The main thing going on in our world, though, is the wildfire situation in northern Saskatchewan. The ongoing fires and the evacuations from communities across the North, including places like Pelican Narrows, Creighton and the La Ronge area, have dominated the news.
Also dominating the news are the various reports of the issues some of the evacuees have faced in fleeing from this chaotic situation. It just seems right now like a lot of what you are hearing is “the bad news”. That seems to be reflected in the daily wildfire updates held by the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency, where on a daily basis officials seem to be getting grilled about all of what’s going wrong.
The one untold story of this whole, awful situation is that communities are still standing, and let's hope that keeps up. I had fully expected to wake up one morning to hear that Creighton and Flin Flon had burned down. Or that La Ronge had burned down.
The fact that those places have remain largely intact -- for the most part -- is at least some good news, especially since it sounds like firefighters had their hands full in both places. I guess I have been conditioned to expect the worst after what happened in Jasper, Alberta and elsewhere.
Now that there has been some rain, hopefully maybe we have turned the corner with the whole situation. I hope people also tune in to the “Day of Caring for Wildfire Evacuees” planned for this Thursday across our radio stations to help those affected. And of course, stay turned to the news for any further updates. For those directly impacted who are seeking further assistance, contact the SK Wildfire Inquiry Line toll-free at 1-855-559-5502, which is available 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily.
Living here in the south, we haven’t been impacted directly by nearby fires, but we sure have been impacted from time to time by the smoke, which has caused some air quality statements to come out.
This is probably as good a time as any to encourage people who can be affected by the smoke — especially seniors, and those who have to deal with respiratory issues from time to time (ie. myself) — to slow down, to not exert yourself too much, and by all means to stay indoors and out of the smoke.
Honestly, I don’t recall the smoke being this bad when I was growing up in the province. In fact, the air was better even when I lived in Ontario. When I first moved to Ontario years ago, we often had days of air quality advisories due to “photo-chemical smog,” and those usually happened on some of the hottest days of the year. Those sorts of days would always knock me out and leave me fatigued, mainly because I wasn’t used to it.
But this has been worse. Just the smell of smoke is everywhere on bad days. The thickness of the air reminds me of what Toronto would look like on days when the smog would hit. I’ll tell you, I didn’t sign up for this when I returned to the West. A big selling point of moving back was to "escape Ontario’s pollution". So much for that notion. Now, we are getting fire pollution pretty much every year, it seems.
I know that it’s a worse situation for the people up north who have been evacuated from their homes, but they shouldn’t have to put up with fires threatening their homes and lives, and everyone else shouldn’t have to put up with all of this smoke. There needs to be a second look at forest management practices, or something, to figure out a way to cut down on these fires happening. Better laws to discourage people from starting fires in the first place might be a start.
In other news — in a bid to try and escape the smoke outside, I have been sitting at home this past weekend scrounging around the YouTube feeds, looking for interesting stuff to watch. Turns out you don't want to live in Los Angeles right now -- there are people protesting ICE out in the streets and President Donald Trump deploying the National Guard against it-- over the objections of Governor Gavin Newsome. I dunno if I want to be there right now.
It turns out you also don’t want to live in Oklahoma or Texas right now, either. I tuned into some more interesting coverage of storms and storm chasers on the weekend, chasing after tornadoes or even running away from them.
Apparently Sunday night saw a big hail event in many of those parts, with hail the size of grapefruits. So yeah, things are scary.
I notice Oklahoma City is taking on Indiana in the NBA finals, a series that few people are tuning into because not a lot of people care about Oklahoma City or Indiana — apart from the people who live there.
I tuned in to one all-sports radio station where the host was pointing to the subpar TV ratings and posing the question “why aren’t you watching?” — implying the public ought to be glued to their sets watching the exciting last-second heroics of the series.
To which my response is “why aren’t you asking that question about the Canadian Open golf? Or the French Open tennis? How about the rivalry between the horses Sovereignty and Journalism at the Belmont Stakes?”
I was annoyed about how these American radio hosts were once again promoting the NBA over all these other sports, and lecturing us about why we needed to care about it. I would have had more respect if he said “hey, the Stanley Cup is on, why aren’t you watching Florida and Edmonton?” What a joke.
The truth is that I have gotten fed up with these rich primadonna athletes in charge of things in the NBA, moving around from team to team, and have lost interest for that reason. But I also kind of feel like I have seen it all before from that league. So OKC blows a lead and Indiana wins on a last second shot from Tyrese Halliburton. Big deal! Indiana did the exact same thing to Cleveland!
Part of it is that during the COVID era, when all the leagues were cancelling games and people realized that there were far more important things than watching sports, it kind of put life into perspective and I turned my focus to the things I really cared about. For me, that included football and auto racing. So I turned in to the ‘Riders on Thursday night and definitely tuned in to NASCAR this weekend. And tuning in baseball games is a regular part of my routine, and like heck am I going to interrupt that.
I’m kind of finding that with these wildfires happening, once again it’s putting life into perspective right now. So, yeah, sports are great, but there are other priorities. Anyway, that’s all from me for the moment.
