It began, as these things often do, not with thunder, but with a silence so profound it felt deliberate—a void in which a continent’s lungs slowly began to burn. By late June, Canada’s boreal forests, once called the “lungs of the Earth,” had become pyres. Acres upon acres of ancient trees—some hundreds of years old, older than any nation-state currently pretending to manage them—ignited, combusted, collapsed, and smoldered, while government officials oinked from behind podiums that “the situation is under control.” As of mid-August, more than seven million hectares had been consumed, countless ecosystems displaced, and entire communities evacuated. The flames leapt across provinces, from British Columbia to Saskatchewan, blotting out the sun and choking the sky, not just above Canadian soil, but over parts of the United States and even Europe. Yet, as the world wheezed through a haze of carbonized neglect, the spectacle on Parliament Hill marched on with stunning theatrical commitment to detachment.
From their air-conditioned sanctuaries, ministers and federal agency heads—those loyal custodians of corporate fealty—took turns grunting slogans into microphones. “We are responding with historic vigor,” one of them screeched, his lips dripping with the slop of rehearsed sincerity. Another, twitching beneath the weight of his own bureaucratic impotence, blubbered that “coordination between the provinces is going smoothly.” Yet, on the ground, volunteer fire brigades slept in tents surrounded by burning earth, under-equipped and underpaid, watching their homes be swallowed while provincial governments argued over jurisdictional semantics. Indigenous communities—many of them already left in infrastructural limbo for decades—found themselves once again forgotten, their evacuation delayed by “logistical oversights” and their pleas for water tankers met with the distant hum of unmanned hotlines.
For those outside the fortress of spectacle, the fire was not a metaphor. It was not a policy brief or a campaign talking point. It was heat that blistered the skin. It was lungs rasping from days spent breathing particulate-laced air thick enough to smear across glass. It was deer carcasses curled in blackened grass. It was the elderly loaded into buses in the middle of the night, not knowing if they would ever see the trees behind their homes again. And it was, as always, disproportionately cruel to those who have spent lifetimes nurturing the land, the water, and the breath of life that flows through both. Elders from the Dene Nation spoke with quiet conviction, not of panic or vengeance, but of reciprocity—that word so alien to those in suits and ties. “The land is not ours to burn or to sell,” one woman said, standing amid cinders. “We are only its guests. We must act accordingly.”
But there was no acting accordingly from the federal government, only performance. The Prime Minister, whose PR handlers had only recently shifted his brand from “green warrior” to “moderate industrialist,” made a grand visit to an evacuation center for cameras before jetting off to a fundraising dinner in Toronto. “This is a priority,” he bellowed at the press gaggle, his eyes glazed over like a lizard in fluorescent light. “We’re investing in future resilience.” What he did not mention was that his administration had only months prior approved yet another oil sands expansion project, citing “energy security.” What he also did not mention is that “resilience,” in the neoliberal tongue, means nothing more than accepting collapse with good manners while the wealthy build bunkers.
The spectacle did not end with politics. Industry, smelling opportunity like vultures over scorched earth, quickly pounced. Pipeline companies howled that the fire season was “proof” we needed more fossil fuel infrastructure, not less. Insurance corporations, with reptilian precision, updated their actuarial algorithms to prepare for higher premiums, then issued press releases praising “climate adaptation.” One fossil fuel CEO, his mouth permanently fixed in a smile that could curdle milk, shat out the phrase “We’re here to help rebuild.” And rebuild they will—more pipelines, more roads, more contracts—on charred land that can no longer protest because it no longer breathes.
Yet, amid the ash, the people moved like water—persistent, flowing, unstoppable. Mutual aid kitchens sprang up in old community centers; donation drives stitched together towns that had never spoken before. A group of teenagers in Alberta used salvaged solar panels to build charging stations for displaced elders. A group of grandmothers in northern Manitoba coordinated food deliveries across fire lines when official channels collapsed. They moved without fanfare, without speeches, and without the pathological need to be applauded. They simply did what needed to be done, because they still remembered what it meant to belong to something larger than themselves. Their resistance was not a riot, but a ritual. Their solidarity was not a brand, but a birthright.
The fire, in this sense, was not just combustion. It was a revealer. It burned away the hollow skin of “green” policies and “net-zero” illusions. It exposed the rot beneath climate summits with catered lunches and oceans of private jet fuel. It revealed the Wall Street–Ottawa axis for what it truly is: a death cult disguised as governance. These institutions do not fail to respond—they respond precisely in line with their function, which is not to serve the public good, but to preserve the illusion of control long enough to siphon the last drops of profit from a dying world.
And so, the question that remains is not “how do we fight the fire?” The fire, literal and metaphorical, is already here. It is in the atmosphere, in the lungs of children, in the husks of towns swallowed whole. The question is: how do we free ourselves from the architecture that guaranteed this outcome? How do we stop mistaking the theater of governance for the act of care? How do we, finally, stop seeking answers from institutions that only know how to manage symptoms while profiting from the disease?
The answer will not come from above. It will not be ratified in parliamentary chambers or issued via press release. It will not be greenlit by donors or sponsored by banks. It will come, as it always has, from the ground—from the people who know what it means to listen, to tend, and to rebuild without conquest. From the ones who plant trees not for carbon credits, but for grandchildren. From the ones who do not need to be convinced that water has memory or that the soil speaks, because they never stopped listening.
This is not a call to reform. It is a call to renunciation—of illusions, of leaders, of the machinery that burns forests and calls it “progress.” It is a call to radical stillness, to stepping outside the conditioned reflexes of fear, power, and profit. It is a recognition that we cannot fix what is broken using the same consciousness that shattered it. And so the task is not just political—it is spiritual. Not in some dogmatic, institutionalized sense, but in the quiet, nameless space where action is no longer separate from awareness.
Only when the flames inside—the addiction to spectacle, the hunger for control, the worship of growth—are extinguished, can we hope to meet the outer fire with anything other than panic or denial. And in that stillness, perhaps something new can be born—not a policy, not a slogan, but a way of living that does not demand smoke as the price of progress.
Footnotes
- Canada’s 2025 wildfire season surpasses historical records in land burned, evacuations, and fatalities. (Wikipedia)
- Statements and response from Canadian federal officials and fire services. (CTV News)
- Impact on Indigenous communities and analysis of disaster capitalism during the crisis. (The Narwhal)