No Warning Before the Flames: Indigenous Community Questions Ontario’s Wildfire Response
- Jul 19
- 6 min read
Updated: Jul 19
The roaring wildfires had already reached the mainland where Lac Des Mille Lodge campgrounds are located before Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources finally agreed it was time to evacuate, according to lodge owner Robert Laforge.
Two weeks earlier, Laforge had reported fires in the region after spotting smoke billowing over Byers Lake on June 30.
“We were told that we weren’t in any danger, and that they were monitoring it,” he told our reporter. “They felt like they had it under control…but nobody called us. Nobody told us and we were the first resort in its path. Not a soul attempted to get a hold of us to let us know the danger that we were possibly in.”
In the days that followed, smoke filled the air to the extent that they felt like they were “right on top of the fire.” Still, MNR issued no evacuation notices or warnings to residents in the surrounding area.
After multiple failed attempts to get the ministry to react, a family friend who works within MNR urged Laforge to evacuate, though an official warning from the ministry still hadn’t been issued.
On Monday, July 13, two weeks after spotting the first warning signs of a wildfire, Laforge asked all his guests to leave the premises, clearing downed trees to free up paths they could use to get out of the area as the fire raced toward them. His decision came after hearing from a supervisor at the Thunder Bay fire management office that the fire had advanced about five kilometres, though Laforge says he was still being told there was no real danger.
By 8 p.m., however, with the fire now on the mainland and his wife and children panicking in the background, he urged MNR to issue the evacuation notice needed to trigger the insurance on his lodge. Only after identifying nearby “spot fires” caused by high winds did MNR finally acquiesce and order an evacuation.
“We were pretty frightened at that point,” he said. “I was certain our resort was going to be gone.”
Laforge says he was told that MNR would issue evacuation notices “if the fire gets to the river leading out of the main lake, which is only a few kilometres away from us.” But with the safety of his family at the top of his mind, he says that would be cutting it “too close.”
“It took me telling him that I’m seeing flames right in front of my eyes,” he lamented. “You could see a fireball in the sky and it was right there at our property…that’s what upset us is that it took this long to (order an evacuation).
Upon arriving back at the campground the next day to check on his property, he found two trailers and two boats burned to the ground.
“I don’t know how, by a miracle of God, it must have shifted and just stopped burning, then raged on,” he said, adding that nearby resorts were scorched as a result of the fire. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It was like the fire picked and chose what to destroy.”
With little equipment working and a faulty water tank, Laforge used a garden hose to try to quench as many of the fires as he could. Not long after, they heard the rhythmic thumping of helicopter blades as four MNR choppers landed at their campground.
“We hugged them and thanked them,” he said, watching as they set up sprinkler systems. “We were so grateful that they finally arrived.”
However, having been forced to leave the campground again for safety reasons, Laforge says he doesn’t know if his property will still be standing by the time he returns.
“We came back Wednesday to salvage what we could, but that was the last time we were at the resort,” he said. “All the roads and access are blocked…we fear that even though we got sprinklers, they’re not going to stop a raging fire. So we don't know if it's still there or not. We’re just praying that it is.”
Laforge argued that MNR’s response to these fires has been out of character. With nine years of business under his belt, he says the department usually issues a fire ban when conditions become as dry as they had been. As the grass on his grounds turned yellow with vague memories of the land downpour, however, he was surprised MNR never issued a fire ban this year.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “I can’t speculate, I just know that they’ve been better in the past.”
Laforge's criticisms come amid renewed scrutiny of Ontario's approach to wildfire preparedness and funding. While Premier Doug Ford has defended the province's response by saying there is "no limit" on emergency wildfire spending, provincial budgets have repeatedly allocated less for emergency forest firefighting than the province has ultimately spent during recent fire seasons.
Ontario budgeted approximately $237 million for emergency forest firefighting in 2021-22 before reducing the planned allocation to $100 million the following year. The budget was later increased to $135 million and, most recently, $150 million, despite the province ultimately spending approximately $271 million during the 2025 fire season.
The 2025 budget also reduced overall funding for the Ministry of Natural Resources by $60.3 million, including a $42 million reduction in planned emergency wildfire funding.
Critics argue the issue is not whether additional money becomes available once fires are already burning, but whether enough funding is allocated before wildfire season to support prevention and preparedness measures that could reduce the severity of disasters in the first place.
Feeling like the government agencies put in place to protect them have failed, Laforge says he’s “not surprised this happened,” as conditions were ripe for disaster.
“I’ve heard some stories out there that the government is telling people about how they’re doing everything right,” he laughed. “If that’s doing everything right, that’s pretty scary and I have to rethink what I’m doing because I have my family out there.”
According to Laforge, some people had to be warned by neighbours about fires in the middle of the night.
“They were all sleeping.”
Dale Wirta, owner of Cushing Lake Resort, called his neighbour at Thousand Lakes Resort as the fires swallowed the surrounding area in quiet vigour. They were unaware of the fire creeping onto their property, perhaps saved only by Wirta’s warning call.
Wirta echoed Laforge’s account of events, telling our reporter that they received “zero notification that the fire was even close.”
“I went to bed, then got a text at about 10:15 saying that the fire had jumped and wasn’t that far from us,” he said. “The fire was extremely close at that time.”
In a panic, Wirta raced from cabin to cabin, his fist pounding against their doors in attempts to wake everyone up as the fire engulfed a nearby resort.
“Forty-five minutes after getting that text, Thousand Lakes Resort was on fire.”
Those escaping the campgrounds did so in scenes akin to an apocalyptic movie, with fire on both sides of the road and smoke distorting their vision as they navigated by following the red taillights of the vehicle directly in front of them.
Back at the campground, Wirta was still hopeful that his property would survive. By Tuesday, the fires had still not reached Cushing Lake Resort, though there were hot spots “within 200 metres” of it.
“We were told that fire crews and property protection crews were coming in,” he said. “They never did.”
As a result, by Wednesday morning, Wirta’s resort was no more.
“We lost everything,” he said, adding that at least one protection crew coming through the area would have saved Cushing Lake Resort. “We lost over 50 trailers, 12 cabins, two garages, the main lodge, restaurant, bar, convenience store, living quarters…everything is gone.”
All of this, he says, could have been avoided.
Leading up to the first fire, there were reports of machinery starting fires on the dry landscape.
“It was a no-brainer,” he argued, baffled by MNR’s decision not to implement a fire ban. “Everything was dry. You could rub two sticks together and it would have started a fire.”
Now waiting for insurance companies to decide his financial fate, Wirta is taking refuge at a friend's place in Thunder Bay, mourning a resort he spent years building.
Though his livelihood was upended and his business reduced to ashes by the unrelenting fire, he's adamant the fault doesn't lie solely with nature.
“MNR dropped the ball,” he said. “People have lost everything. And it could have all been prevented.”
