History books will show that Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham was the first pedestrian in more than four decades to traverse between Portage Avenue and Main Street, finally reopening what is widely known as the crossroads of Canada to foot traffic after years of fervent debate.

Well, kind of. Many others have routinely jaywalked across the downtown thoroughfares since 1979, when barricades were erected to prioritize the free flow of cars and trucks. People on foot have since been crossing illegally or using an underground concourse beneath the 16 lanes of traffic at the famed intersection, proximate to the longitudinal centre of the country.

Nearly half of the people forced from their homes by wildfires in Saskatchewan will be allowed to return later this week with conditions slightly improving in the province, but thousands remain displaced across large parts of Canada.

Premier Scott Moe said around 7,000 people in the north-central Saskatchewan region around Lac La Ronge will see evacuation orders lifted Thursday. Still, he cautioned, his government is maintaining a provincewide state of emergency until further notice.

Federal officials are warning that prolonged heat waves and lower-than-normal precipitation are expected to create conditions ripe for wildfires this summer, with hundreds already burning from Northwestern Ontario to British Columbia.

A new wildfire this week has threatened Squamish, B.C. – often called Canada’s outdoor recreation capital – adding to more than 225 wildfires across the country, at least 102 of which are deemed out of control.

Joy Fiddler sat outside a hotel smoking a cigarette, as her daughter, Saffron, registered their family of nine with the Canadian Red Cross. Fleeing from an out-of-control wildfire near her Northern Ontario home in Sandy Lake First Nation, she had slept for less than an hour after arriving more than 1,500 kilometres away in Cornwall.

“All I saw was orange,” Ms. Fiddler, 51, said Monday afternoon, recalling her 11-hour wait at the Sandy Lake airport, where military aircraft and helicopters have been landing since Saturday, struggling to airlift nearly 3,000 people amid heavy smoke.

Trapped by a raging wildfire rapidly encircling his construction site in Northwestern Ontario, Neal Gillespie and 18 members of his crew were forced to huddle inside shipping containers to save their lives.

For hours, while the sky around them turned fluorescent orange and the air filled with thick fumes, the construction workers near Sandy Lake First Nation stayed stuck in the cramped space. Helicopters made several rescue attempts, though the smoke prevented any landings. Eventually, the group had no choice but to flee.