I stood at the edge of Lac La Ronge last week, watching cabin owners load essential belongings into aluminum boats. The morning air carried both smoke and purpose as residents prepared for what might come next. Some families have owned these modest cabins for generations – weathered structures that have withstood Saskatchewan’s harsh winters and brief, glorious summers.
“We’ve been coming here since I was a little girl,” says Marlene Abney, 64, as she secures photo albums in waterproof containers. “But I’ve never seen fire behavior like this before.”
Northern Saskatchewan’s wildfire season has arrived with unprecedented intensity this spring. According to Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency data, over 120,000 hectares have already burned across the province – nearly triple the five-year average for this time of year. The constellation of fires near Lac La Ronge has grown from sporadic hotspots to a sprawling complex that provincial officials are struggling to contain.
For residents like Thomas Ratt, a member of the Lac La Ronge Indian Band, the shifting relationship between community and fire represents something profound. “My grandfather taught me that fire is medicine for the land,” he explains, adjusting the face mask protecting him from the thickening smoke. “But climate change has transformed these natural cycles into something else entirely.”
Environment Canada’s climate monitoring shows northern Saskatchewan has warmed at nearly twice the global average rate over the past century. The resulting landscape – drier forests, earlier spring thaws, and more lightning activity – creates perfect conditions for what fire ecologists call “extreme fire behavior.”
The technical term hardly captures what I witnessed near the community of Stanley Mission, where flames crowned through jackpine stands at speeds that veteran firefighters described as “shocking.” Provincial crews, reinforced by teams from Ontario and Manitoba, have established structural protection units around key infrastructure while focusing containment efforts on the southern fire edge closest to larger communities.
Inside the Emergency Operations Centre in La Ronge, I met Incident Commander Elaine Sanderson, who hasn’t slept more than four hours at a stretch in over a week. “The challenging part isn’t just the fire intensity,” she says, studying the digital map where red polygons representing active fires keep expanding. “It’s the sheer number of values at risk – cabins, cultural sites, traplines, and communities.”
What makes these northern Saskatchewan fires particularly concerning is their early arrival. Historically, the province’s most active fire periods occur in late June through August. This year’s mid-May conflagrations have exhausted local resources before the traditional peak season even begins.
At the Grandmother’s Bay evacuation center, Elder Martha Charles sits with her great-grandchildren, teaching them to string beads while they wait for news about their community. “We’ve always lived with fire,” she tells me in Cree, which her grandson translates. “But now the old knowledge and the new reality don’t match anymore.”
Climate scientists at the University of Saskatchewan have documented this mismatch through decades of research. Their models project a 50% increase in fire-conducive weather conditions across the boreal region by mid-century, with particular vulnerability in Saskatchewan’s northern forest zones.
Back at Lac La Ronge, I meet Jake Sanderson, a third-generation fishing guide whose family cabin sits directly in the path of the advancing western fire complex. Rather than evacuating, he’s chosen to stay and implement FireSmart principles around his property – clearing combustible materials, wetting down structures, and installing sprinklers powered by portable pumps.
“Some call it stubbornness,” he acknowledges, trimming low-hanging spruce branches near his cabin. “But this place is everything to us. If there’s a chance to save it, I have to try.”
Sanderson represents one response to the crisis. Across the lake, I found the Robillard family taking a different approach – methodically documenting their belongings through photographs and carefully removing irreplaceable items.
“Insurance can replace the structure,” explains Marie Robillard. “But it can’t replace my grandmother’s quilts or my children’s first artwork.”
The Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency has established a tiered response system that includes evacuation alerts, orders, and structural protection triage. Officials must make difficult decisions about resource allocation when fires threaten multiple areas simultaneously.
For the Métis communities with deep historical ties to these landscapes, the wildfire threat extends beyond property to questions of cultural continuity. Traditional hunting territories, medicinal plant gathering areas, and ancestral sites face unprecedented fire exposure.
“These places hold our stories,” explains community historian Raymond McKenzie, who’s been documenting cultural sites through GPS mapping to assist firefighting prioritization efforts. “When a sacred place burns, you lose more than trees. You lose connections to ancestors.”
The provincial government has allocated additional emergency funding for northern fire response, but local leaders question whether enough prevention work occurred before the crisis. The Lac La Ronge Indian Band had requested increased funding for FireSmart initiatives and community-based fire guardians for years.
As evening approached on my final day in the region, I joined a volunteer crew helping an elderly couple prepare their cabin for possible evacuation. The sunset glowed unnaturally crimson through the smoke as we worked. Despite the circumstances, I was struck by the quiet determination and neighbor-helping-neighbor ethos that defined the response.
The reality for northern Saskatchewan’s cabin owners and communities remains precarious as these early-season wildfires continue growing. Provincial officials predict challenging fire behavior for at least another week, depending on weather conditions.
What’s clear is that northern Saskatchewan stands at the frontier of climate adaptation. The decisions made in coming years – about forest management, community protection, and climate policy – will shape the future of these beloved northern landscapes and the human communities intertwined with them.
As I left the region, Marlene Abney’s parting words stayed with me: “We’ll rebuild if we have to. Northern people always have. But I hope someday we address why these fires keep getting worse instead of just getting better at reacting to them.”
