We got out far a kayak paddle on the Bay of Quinte this morning, managing to do so before a light rain began. April in Southern Ontario was wet and our Spring world is lush and green. The trees are coming into leaf and we saw lots of creatures, including turtles and water snakes and ospreys. We regularly thank the Creator for the beauty we experience when we are rambling about in retirement.
Before we headed out,CBC radio shared the unsettling news that parts of Northern British Columbia and Alberta are under evacuation watches because of spreading wildfires. Fires are causing widespread telecom outages in Yukon and the Northwest Territories and it's only early May.
We live in an ominously changing Canada when it comes to the weather, with large areas of our vast country under threat because of what would have been considered unusually dry circumstances not all that long ago. Some of the fires were never extinguished from last year. This is rapidly becoming the norm.
You may be aware that John Vaillant's vividly written book, Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast, has been winning accolades and and awards, including a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. While it tells the story of the Alberta wildfires that caused the evacuation of tens of thousands from Fort McMurray in 2016 it is also about this new, widespread reality created by the climate emergency. Vaillaint's book has also been published under the title Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World. Vaillant describes a computer program used to model a wild fire and its spread. It is named Prometheus, the Greek god of fire, and a trickster.
My desire is to give thanks to the biblical God who has brought all things into being, not the mythical god who was supposedly a champion of humanity yet in our context is a destroyer. This should be the greening season, a time of abundant new life, not a season of conflagration. God help us all.
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