John Vaillant’s “Fire Weather” should make a chill run down your spine

At the time of this writing, Alberta has been under a provincial state of emergency for more than a week. Around 90 wildfires were burning in the province, with almost two dozen out of control.

More than 20,000 people had been evacuated from their homes and more than 500,000 hectares had been burned in what officials are calling an “unprecedented” early fire season. Smoke from the fires has reached Ontario and even into Western New York; conditions are expected to worsen.

Meanwhile, in British Columbia, residents of Fort St. John were on evacuation alert as the Stoddart Creek Wildfire gained force. And on the south coast of B.C., residents were almost a week into a “Special Weather Statement,” with daytime highs 10 to 15 degrees above seasonal norms.

We are clearly living in what Vancouver writer John Vaillant refers to as “the Petrocene Age.” As he writes in his stunning and powerful new book “Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast,” the Petrocene Age is “the period of history in which our Promethean pursuit of fire’s energy, most notably crude oil, in conjunction with the internal combustion engine, took a quantum leap to transform all aspects of our civilization and, with it, our atmosphere. This period covers, roughly, the past 150 years, and it is peaking now.”

It’s a simple enough description and one with which it is difficult to argue. As Vaillant explores it over the course of the book, however, one comes to understand how terrifying the notion truly is.

“Fire Weather” is centred on the May 2016 wildfire that largely destroyed Fort McMurray, Alberta. Roughly half the book chronicles, in at times upsetting detail, the rise and run of the fire, the evacuation of the city, and the heroic efforts on the part of firefighters and ordinary citizens.

Scrupulously and thoroughly researched, these sections have the momentum of a thriller — or a horror novel — as the implacable, relentless flames drive through the city, seeming at times alive. Vaillant writes, “This begs the question: Is fire alive? After all, it meets so many of the criteria” before listing some of those criteria, including growing, breathing and travelling “in search of nourishment.” At others, the fire seems to be defying the laws of physics as we have come to understand them (“In order to do this [change direction], the fire had to burn against the prevailing wind.”).

Equally horrific, however, are the other sections of the book, in which Vaillant documents the rise of the Petrocene, the truly staggering scale and cost of our addiction to fossil fuels, and the rise of climate science. Through the book, Vaillant underscores the relationship between the effect of atmospheric CO2 and the climate changes seen not just in the boreal forest (where the Fort McMurray fire occurred) but in locations as far reaching as California and Australia, both of which have suffered “unprecedented” fires since 2016.

Even the footnotes are terrifying. “The record-breaking ‘heat dome’ of June 2021 that killed nearly six hundred people in British Columbia alone,” Vaillant writes, “was, with the exception of the Halifax explosion, the largest mass casualty event on Canadian soil since confederation.” The idea of a “mass casualty event” being relegated to a footnote will give one a sense of the stakes and scale with which Vaillant is working.

With “Fire Weather,” Vaillant, whose previous books include “The Golden Spruce,” “The Tiger,” and “The Jaguar’s Children,” and who is one of Canada’s most respected non-fiction writers, has not only delivered his best book, but probably one of the finest books of the year. Despite its density, and the disturbing nature of many of its scenes, “Fire Season” is an absolutely compelling read.

“Fire Weather” is also, it must be said, an essential book, if not a call to arms then, at the very least a survey of where we stand. There are no easy answers here and only, in the end, a warning: “no one has been here before, or seen its consequences. No one can truly imagine what this means for life on Earth.”

In this context, every time an official refers to a fire or fire season as “unprecedented,” a chill should run down your spine.

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