A month after being displaced by the region’s largest wildfire, hundreds of evacuees from Deer Lake First Nation in northwestern Ontario are returning home.
The first plane out of Toronto, where roughly 885 people have been staying for the past four weeks, left on Friday, Chief Leonard Mamakeesic told CBC News.
The community is first bringing back its essential workers, who will then be able to prepare the First Nation for the large-scale repatriation of the rest of its members.
“Everybody’s happy, right? Everybody wants to go home. It’s really exhausting here. They want to be able to sleep in their own home,” said Deer Lake’s head councillor, Jeremy Sawanis. “It’s so noisy in Toronto, too.”
The remote Oji-Cree community, located in Treaty 5 territory, is about 600 kilometres northwest of Thunder Bay. It’s only accessible by air or winter road.
Its evacuation was prompted by Red Lake 12, a wildfire that’s now more than 194,000 hectares in size. However, the fire is moving away from the community, and crews are starting to take down the sprinkler systems that have been protecting the First Nation’s homes and essential infrastructure.
For Sawanis, being in Toronto has been a big culture shock.
“I spend my whole time out in the bush, right? This just gets depressing after a while,” he said. “I should be out fishing and hunting, [I] need to be on the land.”
Meanwhile, more than 2,000 evacuees from Sandy Lake First Nation remain in communities in southern Ontario, also because of Red Lake 12. Its evacuation was assisted by the Canadian Armed Forces earlier in June.
Mamakeesic hopes all of his community members will be back in Deer Lake by Tuesday. There’s been high demand for planes over the last few days, with members of Keewaywin First Nation also returning home, which pushed Deer Lake’s repatriation back a day or two, he said.
“Everybody is still with us. We have not lost anybody,” Mamakeesic said. “That is my main goal — get everybody back home safe.”
Earlier this week, fire information officer Alison Bezubiak of Aviation, Forest Fire and Emergency Services (AFFES) told CBC News that recent rainfall and cooler temperatures have offered reprieve to FireRangers on the front lines.
However, as the weather has been warming up over the last couple days, the wildland fire hazard has worsened, and is considered primarily moderate across the southern half of the region and high across the Far North.
“More rainfall is expected over the weekend into Tuesday,” Ontario Forest Fires said in its latest update, on Thursday evening.
Since the evacuation began, Mamakeesic said, he’s learned three key lessons: patience, the importance of working together and the value of communication.
He’s been satisfied with the accommodations provided in Toronto and the security services offered by ISN Maskwa, an Indigenous emergency operations centre, which were supplemented by his own members, he said.
“[I have] gratitude for all the patience and people that have reached out to help us. There are surrounding tribal councils that have reached out, the Lions Club as well, and there’s people that have reached out [from] surrounding organizations as well — they’re dropping off donations,” Mamakeesic said. “People do care.”
People can check the status of the wildfires closest to them by accessing Ontario’s interactive forest fire map online.
