• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
  FEATURED
13 Canadian Fossils Linked to Massive Losses in Western Wildfires May 29, 2023
Out-of-Control Wildfire Burns Homes, Forces Evacuations Outside Halifax May 29, 2023
Hamilton Plans Heat Bylaw for Rental Housing May 29, 2023
UK Traffic Calming Strategy Produces Solid Results, Manufactured Anxiety May 29, 2023
Community Wind Farm Earns Support, Generates Income in German Village May 29, 2023
Next
Prev

An Ode to Fort McMurray (and a Hat-Tip to a Former Colleague)

May 20, 2016
Reading time: 3 minutes

Scottie Upshall/Facebook

Scottie Upshall/Facebook

 

For a couple of us at The Energy Mix, our friend and former colleague Adam Hardiman was the face and voice of the Fort McMurray wildfire crisis, even more than Alberta Premier Rachel Notley or regional fire chief Darby Allen. Adam wasn’t on the nightly news. But while 88,000 people were evacuating Fort Mac, he was one of a team of Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo employees who headed back to town to staff the Regional Emergency Operations Centre at Fire Hall 5.

Adam worked as a sports reporter before he joined our staff for about a year, so it was no surprise to see him post this article by NHL forward and Fort McMurray resident Scottie Upshall. He gets more than our usual “hat-tip” for pointing us to the story, because he’s been doing so much more than the usual over the last couple of weeks.

  • The climate news you need. Subscribe now to our engaging new weekly digest.
  • You’ll receive exclusive, never-before-seen-content, distilled and delivered to your inbox every weekend.
  • The Weekender: Succinct, solutions-focused, and designed with the discerning reader in mind.
Subscribe
Scottie Upshall/Facebook
Scottie Upshall/Facebook

In a post this week on The Players’ Tribune, St. Louis Blues forward and Fort McMurray resident Scottie Upshall recalls how hard it was to play playoff hockey when he knew his town was being engulfed by a wildfire—and his mother and three nieces were in the middle of the evacuation.

“This was right before Game 3 of our playoff series against Dallas,” he writes. “The series was tied 1–1. It was moments before one of the biggest games of my career, but all I could think about was the smoke and the fire.”

Until a few hours before the game, Upshall and his brother Brendan, who had flown in for the game, knew only that there’d been “a little forest fire on the edge of town.” Then he saw a tweet from a TV sports anchor who’d previous been a play-by-play announcer for the Fort Mac junior team. “You just know @ScottieUpshall will be playing tonight’s game for everyone in his hometown. Stay strong Fort McMurray,” it said.

“Then I started scrolling through Twitter and I saw photos of Fort McMurray,” Upshall recalls. “The big pine trees were on fire. The same pine trees we used to ride our mountain bikes through to go play street hockey every day in the summer. Not just a little fire—but like something out of a movie about the end of the world.”

Upshall’s post recalls his frantic efforts to reach his family and find friends who could help them escape, while they tried to keep him focused on playoff hockey. After the game (which St. Louis won 6-1), he heard the whole story.

“They told me that my mom and the girls were safe, but that when the local authorities had finally opened up the roads and started the evacuation, it was complete chaos. People were driving over sidewalks in a panic,” he writes. “As they were driving out of town with the girls, they could see a 100-foot wall of fire on one side of the highway. There was ash raining down on all the cars. It took them five hours to drive 10 miles.”

Upshall makes his case for rebuilding Fort McMurray, describing a hometown that

is more than a boomtown or an oil town—long before the boom, it was the community that gave him the support that built his career.

“Fort McMurray needs generosity and assistance. But I want people reading this to know that there’s more to my hometown than pictures of devastation and news headlines,” he writes. “It is not just a boomtown, where people come to make a little money before moving on. It’s a real community with hardworking people that is worth building back up. Yes, 15% of our town has been damaged, but 85% still remains.”



in Canada, Cities & Communities, Climate & Society, Climate Impacts & Adaptation, Culture, Demand & Distribution, Drought & Wildfires, Fossil Fuels, Jurisdictions, Tar Sands / Oil Sands

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

Martin Davis/Facebook
Carbon Levels & Measurement

13 Canadian Fossils Linked to Massive Losses in Western Wildfires

May 29, 2023
289
Neal Alderson/Twitter
Drought & Wildfires

Out-of-Control Wildfire Burns Homes, Forces Evacuations Outside Halifax

May 29, 2023
2k
York Region/flickr
Heat & Temperature

Hamilton Plans Heat Bylaw for Rental Housing

May 29, 2023
191

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

Neal Alderson/Twitter

Out-of-Control Wildfire Burns Homes, Forces Evacuations Outside Halifax

May 29, 2023
2k
Martin Davis/Facebook

13 Canadian Fossils Linked to Massive Losses in Western Wildfires

May 29, 2023
289
York Region/flickr

Hamilton Plans Heat Bylaw for Rental Housing

May 29, 2023
191

Waste Heat from Quebec Data Centre to Grow 80,000 Tonnes of Veggies Per Year

May 29, 2023
82
pixabay

Anti-Mob Laws to Prosecute Fossils, Kudos for Calgary, 113M Climate Refugees, Orcas Fight Back, and a Climate Dictionary

May 29, 2023
194
Inspiration 4 Photos/flickr

Cooling Upper Atmosphere Has Scientists ‘Very Worried’

May 23, 2023
313

Recent Posts

Jörg Möller/Pixabay

UK Traffic Calming Strategy Produces Solid Results, Manufactured Anxiety

May 29, 2023
54
kpgolfpro/Pixabay

Community Wind Farm Earns Support, Generates Income in German Village

May 29, 2023
47
Pexels/pixabay

Engineers Replace Sand in Concrete with Disposable Diapers

May 29, 2023
26
Sol y Playa condo, Rincón, Puerto Rico

Storms, Sea Level Rise Intensify Conflicts Over Public Beach Access

May 29, 2023
40

U.S. Megadrought Brings Private Water Brokers Into Focus

May 28, 2023
39
FMSC/Flickr

Waive Debt to Unlock Urgently Needed Adaptation Funds, Researchers Urge

May 27, 2023
30
Next Post

Trump cannot derail global climate deal

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}