Canada Day Long Weekend Recap

Canada Day celebrations in the Grande Prairie Forest Area

The Canada Day long weekend saw celebrations of our nation take place all across the province of Alberta, including the Forest Protection Area. Alberta Wildfire took part in numerous parades (unless they got rained out), enjoying many interactive events with the public.

Along with celebrating Canada’s 151^st birthday, there were also more birthday celebrations for Bertie Beaver, who turns 60 this year. Bertie Beaver is the mascot of the Forestry Division, and has been an integral part in promoting forest conservation and environmental education programs throughout the province for decades.

A special birthday cake for Bertie Beaver!

Long weekends during the summer months see the Forest Protection Area of Alberta experience a large number of visitors, with many people choosing to use cooking and warming fires as part of their experience. While many people practice good techniques, such as never leaving a campfire unattended and always ensuring a campfire is completely extinguished by soaking, stirring, and soaking their fire again, there were still some wildfires this weekend that could have easily been prevented.

While Canada Day celebrations were taking place, Alberta Wildfire wildland firefighters were at work putting out fires. In total, from Friday morning until Monday at midnight, there were 19 new wildfires in the Forest Protection Area. 1 of these wildfires is under control, 2 of these wildfires have been turned over to the responsible parties and the remaining 16 have been extinguished. Of these wildfires, 13 have been deemed to have been caused by campfires. All of those wildfires were preventable.

In order to improve public safety, changes were made in 2017 to the Forest and Prairie Protection Act, which included new violation tickets including tickets for leaving a campfire unattended. For more information, please visit http://wildfire.alberta.ca/compliance-and-enforcement/fppa.aspx.

Alberta Wildfire reminds Albertans and visitors to practice campfire safety to ensure Albertans can enjoy healthy forests for years to come.