June passed slowly for Canberran Simon May who, after a long day of managing wildfires, would return to a dry camp, frequented by bears, without alcohol or deodorant.
The ACT Rural Fire Service aviation officer came back with a swag of heartwarming stories after a month of serving in an international team currently fighting Canada's worst wildfires on record.
He was sent to Alberta's Slave Lake Forest Area to help manage seven fires covering 240,000 hectares of land, aptly named the "Grizzly Fire Complex".
After working 14-hour days, Mr May said the Australians found it hard to sleep at night with the solstice sun still shining bright past 11pm. However, spirits were renewed when morning briefings at the Canadian camp always began with the South African team's soulful singing.
In Alberta, firefighters from every Australian state and territory also worked with teams from Aotearoa New Zealand and USA.
Mr May said it was also interesting working with First Nations firefighters in Alberta, who had cultural knowledge and were "very close" to the land.
Mr May's Canadian role as an air operations branch director was to manage 22 light to heavy helicopters at the complex. The choppers included A Stars (known as B3 Squirrels in Australia), Bell 212s, and Blackhawks choppers.
He also looked after "air tanker requests" where large tankers, coordinated by small bird dog planes, would pick up and drop retardant from the base, and water from nearby lakes, onto the fires.
Differences in Australian and Canadian firefighting
"They don't use phones as much as we do," Mr May said.
Moreover, the Canadian grid system to map fires was an effective method of identifying fire grounds needing air support which he wanted to see implemented in the ACT.
The Australians were also briefed about local fire conditions and behaviours along with the dangers of bears, bison, cougars, wolves and moose.
"You couldn't have deodorant, sunscreen or anything that smells, the bears are attracted to it," Mr May said.
He said they were "incredibly well looked after" in an alcohol-free camp with the best food he had tasted in four overseas deployments. They also learned the Canadian name for a beanie - a toque.
He had helped fight Canadian wildfires in 2017 and 2015 and worked with some of the same Canadian team members this year.
"It was good to see them," Mr May said.
"Firefighting is a brotherhood ... whether it's Australia or Canada.
"Canadian firefighters came to Australia to help us in 2019 and 2020. It was awesome to be able to go back and actually repay that favour to assist them."
As part of the incident management team in Alberta, Mr May was joined by Ryan Lawrey (fire behaviour analyst) and Chris Lambert (resource officer) from the ACT Parks and Conservation Service.
Six out of the seven fires managed by the team were contained before Mr May flew home. The remaining Australian contingent of on-ground firefighters are due to return next week.
"Even with the amount of aircraft and the large air tankers and the scoopers we had available to us, a lot of times that the fire behavior was what they called 'beyond resources', that in the end we just had the let the fire keep going because it was just pointless," Mr May said.
According to the Canadian interagency forest fire centre, there were still 625 active wildfires across the country, out of which 182 were under control as of Wednesday, July 5.
Canada's wildfires are far from over with further Australian firefighters likely to be deployed in the coming weeks and months.
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