Alberta woman organizes rescue mission for horses from Yellowknife

The line of southbound vehicles waiting to fuel up at Fort Providence, N.W.T., on Thursday, less than a day after the city of Yellowknife was ordered to evacuate, was "kilometres long," Sienna Kellar recalled.

She was going the other way, though, as part of a small convoy of trucks and horse trailers driving north, straight to the evacuating city. There were some animals to rescue.

Kellar, from Innisfail, Alta., is a professional horse trainer who grew up in Yellowknife. She learned to ride at North Country Stables in Yellowknife and has kept in touch with the owners. 

On Wednesday morning she got a message from them describing the wildfire approaching the city, and their stables. The fire was about 16 kilometres from their barn. 

"I grew up there, I started riding there when I was seven years old and I mean, those horses I learned to ride on are still the horses that are there," she said.

"You don't want those horses to die."

She knew that North Country Stables didn't have the trailers to move all the animals: 22 horses, some goats, mini ponies and mini donkeys. Kellar decided she had to act.

"You just know that if you don't go and make the call, that they're going to have to be released into the wild to fend for themselves, you know. And I couldn't do that," she said.

Kellar started phoning friends and family and anybody else who might have a horse trailer and the inclination to drive 18 hours toward an active wildfire zone. It didn't take long, and by Wednesday evening they were on the road — eight people in four trucks, each vehicle hauling an empty horse trailer. 

They took turns driving. Several times they were slowed by police or blockades set up to prevent people from driving toward the evacuation zone. Once they explained their mission, though, they were allowed through.

"When we hit Enterprise [N.W.T.], I think that's when it really hit all of us how dangerous what we were doing was, because Enterprise was completely burned down," Kellar said.

"Like, everywhere you looked, every single house, building, shop, was burned to the ground."

By Thursday evening, they reached North Country Stables. They weren't sure how easy it would be to load the horses up; Kellar said many of them had never been in a trailer.

Then there was Norman — a 28-year-old horse who wasn't able to move very well anymore. Kellar said there was talk of maybe euthanizing him because they didn't think he'd endure the journey south. 

But it all went "way better than expected," she said, and about 90 minutes later they were back on the road, this time with a full load of animals. Even Norman.

"So many people were crying that Norman made it out of Yellowknife," Kellar said.

On Friday, they reached Grande Prairie and what would become temporary home for most of the animals.

Mark Benoit and his partner have a farm there with plenty of room to roam.

Benoit is originally from Hay River, N.W.T., and his family lost their farm there, at Paradise Gardens, in last year's floods. He remembers how people stepped up to help his family out at that time, so he was happy to offer up his space when Kellar called.

"Pay our dues back, right?" Benoit said.

While Kellar and the others were on the road, Benoit got busy building some more pens for his incoming guests. Local businesses helped him out by offering supplies at a discount.

"I had my mother and my brother and my two kids helping, and the wife, and we just buckled down and got it done," he said.

Most of the rescued horses are now at Benoit's farm, along with six goats, a couple of mini horses and a couple of mini donkeys.

"They're doing beautiful, enjoying the sunshine, rolling in the dirt, eating lots of food. They got lots of green grass here,"  he said on Saturday.

"It was a hectic first day but ... everybody's settled and everybody's enjoying themselves."

Kellar ended up getting home at about 9 p.m. on Friday, a little more than 48 hours after her convoy left. They had barely stopped along the way. It felt "surreal," she said, thinking of how they'd just been in Yellowknife, briefly, a day before. 

They were also exhausted.

"We had a little clink of whiskey and then we all went to bed," she laughed.