More wildfires spark across Canada as evacuations ordered, buildings destroyed

More wildfires have sparked across Canada, with nearly 900 blazes on Friday from the Atlantic provinces to B.C., though the total remains below the country’s worst fire season on record.

More wildfires have sparked across Canada, with nearly 900 blazes on Friday from the Atlantic provinces to B.C., though the total remains below the country’s worst fire season on record. Friday’s cross-country tally includes 30 new active wildfires — nine of those being human-caused, 15 natural and six undetermined — bringing the total to 895 across Canada, an increase from the 858 reported Thursday, according to the national wildfire summary . People have been forced to flee their homes amid evacuation orders, including in northern Ontario , where flames destroyed buildings and blanketed smoke across much of the province.

Toronto’s air quality was ranked among the worst in the world this week, amid widespread alerts from Environment Canada warning of heavy smoke’s potential health impacts. “It’s terrible,” said Diane Laybourne, who fled to Thunder Bay, Ont., after an evacuation order in her home community of Armstrong. “Having to go out in it, you just want to get in some place where the air is clean.

It’s just a grey haze.” In B.C., a complex of fires near Boston Bar also triggered evacuations, while residents of the Jacket Lake, N.S., area were asked to leave due to an out-of-control wildfire there. Two people were found dead in La Ronge, Sask., this week, and the Saskatchewan Ministry of Community Safety says the deaths are believed to be wildfire related.

How do previous wildfire seasons compare? Of Canada’s 895 fires, as of Friday morning, 126 are burning out of control, 28 are being held and 70 are under control, officials say — while 100 require modified response and 571 are being monitored. Nearly 2.8 million hectares of land have been impacted by wildfires.

Yet the current wildfire season remains less severe than in 2023, Canada’s worst, most destructive season on record . On July 17, 2023, 1,084 fires were actively burning across the country, affecting more than 10 million hectares of land since the start of that year. Two years prior, on July 17, 2021, 1,003 fires were burning.

Michigan lawmakers criticize Canada A handful of Michigan state representatives have called on the Canadian government to improve its response to wildfires, claiming Canada has not done enough to address the “source” of the blazes. “In 2023 and 2025, I and many other elected officials across Michigan called on Canada to change their forest management practices to decrease the risk of widespread forest fires that lead to hazardous air quality downwind,” wrote Rep. David Martin. “It’s disappointing that there hasn’t been meaningful change, and that Michiganders are breathing hazardous air for the second straight summer,” reads his post on social media.

Republican representatives Jack Bergman, John James, Lisa McClain, and John Moolenaar penned a letter earlier this week entitled “Canada’s Apologies Won’t Clear Michigan’s Skies.” They accused Canada of not acting with “urgency” to address wildfire smoke in recent years, and stating “nothing has changed except that our patience has run out.” The U.S. ambassador to Canada struck a different note.

Pete Hoekstra, a former Michigan representative, released a statement on Wednesday commending the two countries’ co-operation. “This challenge knows no borders. The United States will continue to co-ordinate closely with Canada, just as we have for more than four decades of shared wildfire emergencies,” he wrote.

The ambassador praised the collaboration between Canada and U.S., saying it “reflects our partnership at its best.” Parks Canada has said “ decades of fire suppression ” has created forests dense with debris and vulnerable to fire. It also shared predictions that climate change would extend wildfire seasons in Canada.

To mitigate that risk, it wrote, it coordinated wildfire “risk reduction” projects across 719 hectares spread between a variety of sites in 2025.