2 articles on Wildfires: Record Breaking Wildfire Season & The Latest Legacy Of Canada’s Wildfire Smoke? Wisconsin’s New Beer-And-Burger Pairing
Article # 1: 100,000 SQUARE KILOMETRES BURNED THIS RECORD−BREAKING WILDFIRE SEASON
AREA BURNED IS THE SIZE OF LAKES ONTARIO, ERIE AND MICHIGAN COMBINED
Canadian PressPublished: Jul 17th, 2023
Canada’s record−breaking wildfire season has now seen 100,000 square kilometres of land scorched as blazes continue to burn out of control across the entire country.
The total area burned is roughly the size of Lake Ontario, Lake Erie and Lake Michigan combined.
“There are some very, very large fires still burning and a number of them are out of control so that number is going to continue to rise,” Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair said in an interview Thursday of the vast amount of land that’s burned.
Canada surpassed the record set in 1989 for total area burned in one season on June 27 when the figure totalled 76,000 square kilometres, and communities have faced evacuation orders, heat warnings and poor air quality for months.
The majority of blazes are now in Western Canada, and British Columbia has the greatest number, with more than 370 of the country’s 878 active fires, Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre data shows.
More than half of those fires were burning out of control as of Sunday afternoon.
The Northwest Territories reported Sunday that a firefighter died from an injury sustained while battling a fire near his home community of Fort Liard the day before. No other information will be released until his family has been notified.
He was the second firefighter to die in under a week, after 19−year−old Devyn Gale was killed by a falling tree Thursday near Revelstoke, B.C.
Based on forecasted conditions, Natural Resources Canada expects the wildfire season will continue to be unusually intense throughout July and into August.
As of Saturday’s national fire situation report, Quebec has seen the largest area of scorched earth this season, with 43,145 square kilometres burned — an area slightly larger than Vancouver Island and slightly smaller than Nova Scotia.
The good news, Blair said, is that conditions are expected to improve significantly in Eastern Canada if the seven−day weather forecast holds true.
“The situation is far less dire than it had been even a week and a half ago,” the minister said, though he acknowledged that very serious out−of−control fires continue to burn on the East Coast, and in Ontario and Quebec.
The government has yet to tally the costs associated with the wildfires, but Blair said they are expected to be considerable given how far the fires have spread, and how long, and intensely they’ve been burning.
The other silver lining is that, so far, flames haven’t compromised critical infrastructure in communities the way they did in Fort McMurray in 2016, when fire destroyed thousands of homes and buildings, he said.
“We have not seen that type of damage as a result of these fires,” he said.
Article # 2 The Latest Legacy Of Canada’s Wildfire Smoke? Wisconsin’s New Beer-And-Burger Pairing
‘BLAME CANADA’ — WHAT ELSE WOULD THEY CALL IT?
Courtesy of Barrie360.com and Canadian PressPublished: Jul 15th, 2023
By James McCarten in Washington
Another fragrant, hazy phenomenon is turning heads in the United States — only this time, beer fans in Canada will happily take the blame.
It’s one of the newest IPA offerings from G-Five Brewing Company in Beloit, a southern Wisconsin community of about 36,500 people an hour’s drive southwest of Milwaukee, a city synonymous with suds.
“Blame Canada” — what else would they call it? — is an easy-drinking session India pale ale inspired by the smoke-filled skies that were plaguing much of the U.S. Midwest and northeastern states earlier in the summer.
It was the product of a collaboration with fellow Wisconsin brewers Rocky Reef, a partnership that happened to come together in mid-June when the wildfire smoke was at its worst, said Tim Goers, G-Five’s head brewer.
“When you have a business that is cyclical like that, you don’t want your patrons to be outside because of air quality, so it does hurt business a little bit,” Goers said.
“We were going to hold on to it for a week, but it was just dumb luck timing that the wildfire haze came back,” he said.
Naturally, that’s when the conversation turned to 1999’s “South Park: The Movie” and that now-anthemic song-and-dance number, “Blame Canada” — a riff on the show’s tongue-in-cheek fondness for making fun of Canadians.
That’s when it caught on like the proverbial wildfire.
Out of 12 available options on tap, “it’s our number 3 best-seller right now, and it hasn’t even had a full month of sales.”
“We got to the point where when we kegged this beer up, it was pretty awful outside. We were, like, ‘It’s too coincidental — we can’t hold on to this beer.’ So we released it.”
Even the label on the can is one many Canadians could get behind — a red silhouette of the familiar Toronto skyline in flames, with a smoky mountain range and white Maple Leaf emblem in the background.
If the beer alone isn’t enough, patio patrons can pair it with G-Five’s latest Burger of the Week, “Canadian Wildfire,” a ground ribeye burger made with spicy maple syrup, the requisite back bacon, jalapenos and pepper jack cheese.
“If you have an IPA or a hoppier beer — ours aren’t, like, crazy hoppy — that will help cut some of the spice of the burger. So they actually ended up pairing really well together.”
Instead, most Americans will be contending this week with a fearsome heat wave that’s already punishing much of the southern U.S., with record-setting highs that are expected to reach 49 C in spots.
Much of the U.S. is now getting a reprieve from the smoke, although there are still air quality issues in northern states including Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota and parts of northern Wisconsin, Environmental Protection Agency data shows.
And Goers said he’s well aware that wildfire season on both sides of the border is only just getting started.
“It’s a tongue-in-cheek, fun thing for us as a brewery, but as a nation and for people that are going through it, it’s pretty awful,” he said.
“It’s kind of sad to me — I have a lot of empathy (and) sympathy for what the heck is going on … it’s the 14th of July, and typically the dry season hasn’t even started.”
G-Five used to source some of its malt barley from Maker’s Malt, a specialty producer near Saskatoon that caters specifically to the craft beer industry. But between the COVID-19 pandemic, shipping issues and recent droughts, the brewery has been forced to switch to a supplier closer to home.
“It hurts to see,” he said. “Now, does it hurt us brewing beer? No. But, you know, that’s not all my life is surrounded by.”
In the meantime, Goers said while he’s hoping the wildfires don’t flare up as badly as they did last month, G-Five will keep the “Blame Canada” recipe handy and break it out again if circumstances change.
But if a Canadian craft brewer wanted to bat the ball back with a tart seasonal offering called “Team America: World Police,” for instance, he’d be all in.
“I’m not the biggest ‘South Park’ connoisseur — I might have watched a couple (episodes) in high school just so I could have something to talk about with my friends,” Goers said.
“That would be hilarious.”
Patricia is the Business Mentor and owner of Grow Vantage and a Past President of the Barrie Chamber of Commerce. She applies over 30 years of business experience (from start-up to corporate) to mentor entrepreneurs. Since 2011, she has held over 6,500 coaching and training sessions in-person and online. Through Ask For Directions Training, her entrepreneurial training program (and parent company Grow Vantage), and as a business coach, she works with start-ups who are new (or who have lost traction) to design, launch and grow their businesses. Along with 20 other expert instructors she teaches strategies in marketing, sales, communications, and finance, as well as practical techniques to increase productivity, and manage their businesses. In other words, everything entrepreneurs need to learn to grow and run their businesses successfully, and avoid the costly mistakes they can't even see coming - that lead to delays in growth and getting stuck.