It was just a little smoke ... or rather, a lot of wood smoke blanketing southern Saskatchewan like a million campfires.
But it was hardly that sweet smell of dried burnt poplar, birch or fir that so many of us enjoy on summer camping or fishing trips. The smoke we experienced last week from the northern forest fires in and around La Ronge was the choking, eye-watering kind that somehow reminded us how connected we really are.
It was a reminder to all of us in this province – rural, urban and northern residents – that we are all connected by shared problems.
A lack of jobs in the booming cities means fewer taxes to pay for roads, schools and hospitals. A borderline drought that we might be headed for in the southern rural farming areas means a slowdown in the entire provincial economy. Similarly, a fall in oil, potash and even northern uranium prices means less royalty money to do the things we need to do as a growing province.
That dreaded smoke wafting down from the north into our eyes and throats was nothing but irritating trouble.
It isn’t just about the loss of timber, which isn’t quite the exciting industry it was 30 years ago when the then Grant Devine government was announcing the sale of the government-owned Prince Albert Pulp Company (Papco) to Weyerhaeuser that would cause a two-decade boom in Prince Albert with the province’s first paper mill.
Paper became a less-valued commodity with the sudden arrival of the electronic age.
And traditional pulp logging in the north hasn’t been the big economic player it once was, so the comparatively small section of northern forest burning won’t actually be that big a deal.
It wasn’t the economic loss suffered by the closure of Highway 2 from Prince Albert to La Ronge. This, admittedly, will be a big deal for fishing camps accessible only by air. And then there is the direct impact on the economy of La Ronge, itself, a community that’s highly dependent on the short summer tourism season to get it through the year.
It’s also the extraordinary costs to fight these fires to protect both communities and forest resources. A province that struggled to get by with a meagre $62-milllion surplus in 2014-15 and that is already starting 2015-16 with $700 million in the hole in borrowing can ill-afford any economic hit. Fighting forest fires tends to be a big economic hit, one that often quickly rises to the tens of millions of dollars.
Really, no good came out of that northern smoke last week in the same way that no good ever comes out of hail, drought or a fall in mineral prices.
But it does remind us how we are all connected as one province. One area of the province’s problems quickly become shared by all of us.
At the time of writing this, neither the community of La Ronge nor the heavily populated nearby La Ronge First Nations was threatened. That said, close to 1,000 people from communities like Sucker River, Wadin Bay and English River were already evacuated. And communities like Stanley Mission and Nemeiben Lake were isolated by roads being cut off by smoke and fire.
Imagine if 1,000 city people or rural residents had to pack up and go because of a grass fire or a train derailment? It’s pretty much the same for those who live in these places that most of us only choose to visit briefly as a nice, pleasant summer holiday.
That smoke last week somehow seemed to connect us all.
