WINNIPEG – “It was literally red, like, red, really dark.”
That is how Victoria Lafreniere described the situation she was in earlier last week, as wildfires burned near her business, about 220 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay, Ont.
Lafreniere owns Pasha Lake Cabins, a fishing lodge in northwestern Ontario. She’s lived her whole life in the north and has never experienced anything this severe before.
“We had a fire four kilometres away (and) we were using flashlights to get everything ready to be able to up and leave,” she said. “There were embers flying everywhere; it was crazy.”
Lafreniere says they are still on standby to leave but says the conditions have since improved over the last couple of days.
She says the situation was worrying.
“I built this place for my children and myself and we’re only five years in. I was terrified just knowing how much you put your everything into this, and you could just lose it within seconds,” she said.
“I’ve seen on the news that there’s places that are fairly close to us, like Armstrong, and they’ve lost communities. There’s two other resorts that were lost, like near Thunder Bay, and I can’t even imagine everything you worked so hard for, just being blown up, literally.”
Lafreniere says the current situation in northwestern Ontario is severely impacting her business.
“We actually have seen a very significant loss of revenue,” she said. “We were having a really good year, and I had a full week this week. We had full cabins, everything, and now we’re only down to a little bit less than half of what I was going to have this coming week, so it’s really put a damper on our season so far.”
“I’ve had a lot of people cancel the rest of the season as well, just because of the worry of the air quality and not knowing what could happen going forward, because we do have multiple fires that are still around us,” she said.
Over 950 wildfires continue to burn right across Canada, with nearly 200 of them in Ontario. The fires are producing thick, blanket-like smoke, which has prompted Environment and Climate Change Canada to issue air quality warnings.
Flooding impacting Manitoba campgrounds
Meanwhile, many campgrounds in western Manitoba have been closed due to flooding.
CTV News recently spoke to a campground owner along the Shell River, north of Russell, Man., which is about 350 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg.
Karen Goraluk owns and operates Asessippi Beach and Campground. She says she lost 14 of her 22 campsites after the campground was hit by two major floods in three weeks.
“The land fell into the river,” she said. “It’s very sandy, and it just started to eat away — the first flood, and the second flood took a whole bunch more, so that area, it’s half gone.”
With just eight campsites left, Goraluk told CTV News the campground is unable to generate enough revenue to keep operations open.
“I don’t think we’ll open this summer, just with everything that’s happened,” she said.
Campers face limited availability
Despite the unpredictable weather impacting many campgrounds, demand for campsites still appears to remain high.
Winnipegger Alicia Mitchell says she and her family were unable to secure any camping sites within Manitoba for the whole summer and were forced to go out of province to camp.
She says they are constantly checking to see if there are any cancellations within the province, but so far, no luck.
“You can sign up for a notification if you go on after the bookings open and you are trying to make a booking, and it says there’s nothing available; there’s a place on the site that you can hit and get notifications and you will be notified about that specific booking,” she said. “If you put in the date, the details of the site, you’ll be notified, if something comes up.”
Mitchell says she is hopeful something will come up this summer but says she will be more proactive next year to secure a site.
“You have to kind of be prepared, know what site you want, do some research, plan ahead, mark out your first site second say third, fourth choices, and be on top of the game when it comes to logging on in the morning, having all your passwords in place and being prepared that way,” she said.
-With files from CTV’s Milan Lukes
