John Vaillant - 21st Century Climate Reality and Fort McMurray's Community & Solidarity after the Cataclysmic Fire in 2016

John Vaillant's 2023 book Fire Weather: The Making of A Beast chronicles the gargantuan Fire that engulfed Fort McMurray, the fourth largest city in Alberta and centre of Canada’s oil industry nine years ago this May. He describes how residents, politicians, civic officials and firefighters dealt with a cataclysmic event that destroyed 2400 homes and structures, damaged thousands more, and caused over 100,000 people to flee their homes in Northern Alberta in what remains the biggest single day evacuation in the history of modern fire.

John Vaillant is one of Canada’s most celebrated writers. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, The Atlantic, Outside and National Geographic. He is the award-winning author of four books including The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth Madness and Greed, The Tiger” A True Story of Vengeance and Survival, and a the novel Jaguar’s Children. He is the recipient of the Governor General Award, The Writer’s Trust Non-Fiction Prize, and the Windham Campbell Literature Prize