After a record year of wildfires, will Canada ever be the same again?

A firefighter from an Alaska smoke jumper unit uses a drip torch to set a planned ignition on a wildfire burning near a highway outside Vanderhoof in northern British Columbia, Canada, on 11 July 2023. Photograph: Jesse Winter

Canada’s extraordinary year of wildfire finally appears to be slowing down, leaving behind a weighty legacy of charred northerly forests, acrid smoke and a huge pulse of carbon emissions that will have reverberations for the climate around the world.

Fire ravaged Canada in 2023 like no other year, by a stupendous margin. A record 45.7m acres (18.5m hectares) went up in flames, an area about twice the size of Portugal, shattering the previous annual record nearly three times over. From the spring onwards, more than 6,500 fires sprang up, unusually, across the whole country, tearing through Nova Scotia in the east to British Columbia in the west.