Wild Fire: Dispatches from a Country Ablaze

by Jesse Winter

Award-winning journalist Jesse Winter takes us on a dangerous and often heroic journey to the frontlines of three Canadian wildfires, introducing readers to firefighters, volunteers and others who are facing the country’s most devastating infernos

In Wild Fire, Jesse Winter takes readers on a dramatic and riveting journey to the frontlines of some of Canada’s most devastating blazes. Weaving together incredible stories of everyday courage, danger and disaster, Winter offers a unique view into our current peril—sharing invaluable insight from those who’ve faced down Canada’s hungriest infernos.

Across British Columbia, he encounters terrifying close calls and unbelievable bravery. In Jasper, he meets the tireless volunteer firefighters who answer the town’s urgent call for help. And, in the Far North, he hears from residents who band together as the fires blaze closer and closer. At each site, he also confronts a system buckling under the pressure of previously unimaginable fire. Since 2020, wildfires have, on average, burned through five times more square kilometres than they did in the 1970s—destroying an area twice the size of Vancouver Island every summer.

As Winter journeys to the country’s most fire-prone areas, he asks what we’re getting right and also examines what we’re getting perilously wrong. From there, he makes the compelling case that if Canada wants to survive its inevitably hot future, it needs to take the hard-won lessons of such local communities to heart. The end result is an account that feels immediate and intimate, urgent and hopeful.

320 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 5, 2026

Reviews

[Allison ༻hikes the bookwoods༺ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wild Fire by Jesse Winters is compelling journalistic nonfiction, drawing on his years spent covering wildfires on the ground and reflecting on what those experiences have taught him. One of the book’s central arguments, that fire is a natural and necessary part of the forest life cycle, stands in stark contrast to the last 200 years of colonial forest management, which has been defined by an almost singular mission to suppress it. Winters makes a convincing case that this approach has left us with forests that are an “overgrown mass of fuel just waiting for a spark,” made even more dangerous by hotter, drier conditions driven by climate change. While he acknowledges the necessity of continued investment in firefighters and water bombers, he frames them as a stopgap rather than a solution, urging a deeper shift toward understanding fire’s role and moving, carefully and deliberately, toward the use of safe, controlled burns.

[Enid Wray]

Interesting consideration on the frontlines of wildfire fighting.