Near the Easter Seals Camp in Squamish, B.C., dozens of children from as far away as Toronto and Montreal passed the time on Monday kicking a soccer ball around a field and singing Ukrainian songs around a fire. These are some of the summer activities the camp’s staff were using to distract the young campers – a group that includes Ukrainian refugees – from the fact that they couldn’t return home.

About 150 scouts are stuck at the camp owing to the strike by flight attendants at Air Canada, which has grounded the airline’s flights and disrupted travel for an estimated 130,000 passengers a day.

The 300 or so year-round residents of Bamfield, B.C., are no strangers to power outages, often forced to go a day or so in the winter without electricity in their craggy hamlet on southwestern Vancouver Island.

But, on Thursday, many locals were on edge during their third day without power, as they sought out gas for generators to keep upward of a thousand tourists comfortable and hundreds of kilograms of salmon they had just caught from rotting.

B.C. is appealing the landmark decision of its Supreme Court that granted a group of First Nations on Vancouver Island title to riverside land in the mainland suburb of Richmond, saying the judgment raises questions about private-property rights.

Attorney-General Niki Sharma announced the appeal at a news conference Monday, saying the Cowichan Tribes v. Canada judgment must be reconsidered by a higher court because it could have significant, unintended consequences on the province’s system of real estate ownership, known as fee-simple title.

Canadian officials say it is not possible for wildfire fighters to lessen the impact of smoke drifting across vast swathes of the country and blanketing some American states, after several U.S. lawmakers complained that Canada is not doing enough to combat the smokey conditions.

Officials with the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre – a non-profit broker of staff and equipment owned and operated by federal, provincial and territorial wildland fire management agencies – held a briefing Thursday, which was attended by multiple American news outlets.

Rapidly growing wildfires in several provinces forced thousands of people from their homes and prompted air-quality warnings in cities thousands of kilometres away, while hot and dry conditions had other areas on high alert, including Nova Scotia, where the government banned most summertime activities in wooded areas.

The deteriorating conditions have added up to a wildfire season that is on track to be one of Canada’s worst on record in terms of area burned, second only to 2023.

Harsh temperatures and heavy smoke have triggered heat warnings and air-quality alerts for large swaths of the country this weekend, as hundreds of wildfires remain uncontained in Western and Central Canada.

Higher-risk conditions are anticipated in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia, prompting special bulletins from Environment and Climate Change Canada for dozens of cities and towns. Meteorologists expect dryness, heat and lower precipitation to create ripe weather conditions for intense fire behaviour.

A truck hauling heavy machinery down a highway in British Columbia’s dry Okanagan region caught fire Wednesday, sparking a blaze in the nearby bush that has forced nearly a thousand people from their homes.

Patrick Van Minsel, Mayor of the District of Peachland, is among them.

In the end, the tsunami that washed onto Tofino, B.C.’s shores was only about half the height of a school ruler, gently raising the tide and delighting the roughly 300 tourists watching just before midnight Tuesday on Mackenzie Beach.

About seven hours earlier, J. J. Belanger, general manager of the nearby Crystal Cove Beach Resort, went into high alert after news that an underwater earthquake had hit Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula with a preliminary magnitude of 8.8, one of the strongest ever recorded.

The Vancouver Island municipality of Nanaimo wants the local health authority to justify the continued existence of the community’s legal overdose prevention site as opposition mounts to the facility around the corner from its City Hall.

Nanaimo City Council deferred voting Monday evening on a motion asking the Vancouver Island Health Authority, or VIHA, to shut down the site in favour of meeting with the agency in coming weeks. The site has been operating since 2022.