The first forest fire that I can remember as a kid, was 50+ years ago.  It was just West of the community of Nain.  It was the month of August, and the fire was on an island 30 kms from town.  The wind was blowing from the fire in to town.  The smoke was very thick, it was really hard to breathe, and we could not see a mile - it was that thick.  After the fire, may be 3, or 4 years later there was plenty of drywood, or as some would call it, Deadwood.

Even though we dont have many trees, what we have is very important to our well-being.  The trees shelter a lot of the things we collect and harvest, such as black bear; porcupine; partridge; rabbit and many more; including berries and bakeapples (cloudberries).

We had 2 major fires close to our homestead at Webbs Bay in the late 1990s.  The fire was WNW of the cabins at about 10 kms away.  It was very windy so our families had to evacuate the cabins in mid-July. The other fire was across the bay from the cabins to the South East.  May be 3 kms away.  They were medium-sized fires, but after about 3 years the wood was clean enough to harvest for firewood.  So, fires do help with the supplying of wood for heat, but I guess it can be looked at as good and bad.  Bad because it kills a lot of birds and animals that we harvest for food.

There has been a large number of forest fires in our region over the years.  Large and small.  Most every Bay in our area has had a fire ever since I can remember.  Evidence shows very old fire if one knows how to find it.  For example, if you dig in to the ground and find charcoal beneath the top soil.  This year, in 2023, we had a forest fire that came to within 15 kms of our homestead at Webbs Bay.  Webbs Bay is located approximately 30 kms north of Nain, which our family has occupied for more than 150 years.  In my opinion, this is very scary because of the changing environment, due to what we now call, climate change.  Our snow is not of the same density, structure, or strength; plus we dont get as much as we used to.  The snow has weakened, is drier and does not last as long in to the year as it used to.  Our snow is melting much earlier in the year, making our winter and spring seasons shorter, and our summer, or pre-summer season longer.  This year we had very little snow, as well as very little rain (this past summer).  The ground was very dry for much longer.  This summer season with the big forest fires West of us, we had to deal with a lot of smoke in and around our community, as well as at our cabin at Webbs Bay.  At one point we could not see past ~200 metres.  The smoke was very thick and linger for days, even in to a few weeks.  This pollution affects those with breathing issues, such as asthma, and our older folks.