Is This the End of the Campfire in Canada? – Explore Magazine

I’ve gotten used to smelling smoke in the summer. Usually, it starts in July. If we’re lucky, it’s August or even September.

But this year, it started in early May.

On May 4, I woke up to a wildfire burning less than five kilometres from my front door. The BC Wildfire App on my phone said the fire was “out of control.” It wasn’t that surprising. The weeks leading up to the fire had been hot and dry. The two days before were an unseasonably scorching 30 C. Add in a historic snow drought in the region, and the deck was stacked for fire weather.

I took a morning walk to the lakeshore to watch a column of smoke billow. Somewhere in the forest, fourteen firefighters were cutting lines into the dirt to contain the blaze. Overhead, a helicopter buzzed, lifting buckets of water from Cultus Lake for the short flight to douse the flames. By the end of the day, the fire was “being held,” but not before BC Parks closed two campgrounds and a section of the Seven Sisters Trail.

By midweek, the fire was “under control.” But with no relief from the hot, dry weather in sight, the province wasn’t taking any chances. On May 7, a campfire ban came into effect across the Coastal Fire Center, covering Vancouver, the Fraser Valley, Vancouver Island and up the coast to Haida Gwaii. The ban also came into force in parts of the Prince George Fire Centre, including the Robson Valley.

Update: As of May 12, the campfire ban is scheduled to be rescinded starting on Friday, May 15 at noon for the long weekend. Please check local news and follow all updates for more information before having a campfire.

The Earliest Fire Ban on Record

According to BC Wildfire fire information officer Jennifer Lohmeyer, the 2026 bans are the earliest since the province started tracking them in 2003. The previous record was a full month later, when a fire ban was announced on June 8, 2023.

Lohmeyer told the CBC that the ban is necessary because “we’ve been experiencing warm, dry conditions for the last three weeks and that’s expected to continue.” It’s a reality that explore covered a few weeks ago that has the potential to upend summer outdoor recreation.

As we already saw in Cultus Lake, fires can close down campgrounds and trails. They can also shut down roads and highways, making travel to and from recreation destinations difficult. Then, there’s the smoke.

According to a 2024 guide published by the BC Centre for Disease Control, “exercising outdoors can drastically increase your wildfire smoke exposure.” Another study, published in 2021, found that wildfire smoke is up to 10 times more harmful to humans than other forms of pollution like smog and car exhaust.

That should worry anyone planning summer hikes or camping trips. Especially since the study concluded that “the risk of death spikes when people are exposed to both elevated levels of fine particulate matter from wildfire smoke and temperatures above 26 degrees Celsius.”

In his piece, Siler broke down a slew of arguments against campfires. They contribute to air and water pollution, are harmful to our health, and facilitate littering. Too many people see campfires as an excuse to cut down or damage healthy trees, he argued. Then there’s the way that firewood sales contribute to the spread of invasive species and the fact that people tend to hurt themselves when cutting wood and tending fires. But it’s the confluence of climate change, wildfire and outdoor recreation that really drove the point home.

“With massive wildfires raging all summer long and exhausting state budgets, and with participation in outdoor recreation booming to record numbers, maybe the negative impacts of the campfire now outweigh tradition and comfort,” he wrote.

I remember being intrigued the first time I read the piece, but not convinced. Looking back at it now, it’s hard to argue with Siler’s conclusion. And it’s an idea that others are grappling with too. Explore’s president and publisher, David Webb wrote about it back in 2021, and editor Alison Karlene Hodgins (forgive the pun) explored it last week.

The hard truth is that climate change is making wildfires hotter, bigger and more dangerous. And more than half of Canada’s wildfire ignitions are caused by humans. In some provinces, that number is even higher. Take Nova Scotia for example, where more than 90 percent of wildfires are human caused.

It reminds me of a pair of signs that once stood along Highway 3, astride the remains of a massive wildfire in E.C. Manning Provincial Park.

The first sign, erected by the Parks Division of the BC Forest Service, read “One Camper Made This 5,700 Acres Look Like Hell! Don’t YOU be careless.” When the government of the day took issue with the word “hell” on a public sign, they replaced it with a burning cigarette hung in a noose.

But the 5,700 acre fire the sign was erected to call attention to wasn’t caused by an errant cigarette butt. Nor was it an all-terrain vehicle or even a natural cause like a lightning strike. That fire, which was known at the time as “Big Burn” was sparked by an unattended campfire.

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