Priorities

Editor, Times-Union:
On July 12, Canadian pilot Nicholas Dale died fighting the Gold Mountain wildfire in Colorado. He was 56, from British Columbia, and left behind a wife and two kids. Colorado’s governor called him a hero. Residents lined the road as his body was carried from Gunnison to Grand Junction.
Three days later, four Michigan congressmen released a statement blaming Canada for smoke drifting into their state, demanding action from Ottawa.
Nobody mentioned that a Canadian had just died protecting one of our states.
Right now Canada has nearly 900 active wildfires, over 2.3 million hectares burned, and more than 1,600 First Nations residents displaced. Meanwhile, we’re not exactly smoke-free ourselves: 49 uncontained large fires here as of July 16, almost 40,000 wildfires and 3.6 million acres burned this year, including six major fires burning in Minnesota alone.
So before Michigan’s politicians pointed fingers north, it might’ve helped to check NOAA’s smoke-tracking tools, which they have access to. Much of the smoke over Michigan is actually coming from fires in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan — and northern Minnesota. Smoke from hundreds of fires merges into one plume and gets pushed around by weather systems neither country controls.
Canada didn’t aim that smoke at us. The wind did.
We’ve had a wildfire mutual-aid agreement with Canada since 1982, and it’s gone both ways for decades. Canada sent specialists to Oregon in 2019-2020. We sent nearly 2,800 personnel north during Canada’s brutal 2023 fire season. Canadian crews and airtankers helped us fight the 2025 Southern California fires; later that year we sent 20 crews and 154 specialists back to Canada. That’s the relationship — we help each other when the continent’s on fire.
A quick primer for anyone who needs it: wildfires aren’t something you just “turn off.” Canada is the second-largest country on Earth, with over 347 million hectares of forest, much of it roadless wilderness hundreds of kilometers from the nearest town. Water bombers slow fires down; they don’t erase millions of burning trees. “Better forest management” doesn’t scale to a landmass that size.
There are real conversations worth having — about forest policy, funding, protecting vulnerable communities, and the drought and heat making these fire seasons worse every year. Blaming Canada isn’t one of them.
A Canadian pilot died protecting Colorado on a Sunday. Three days later, some of our own politicians decided Canada needed a lecture because wind carried smoke across a border.
Tim Boone
Warsaw