Slower than normal forest fire season in northwestern Ontario wraps up

The 2024 Ontario forest fire season officially comes to an end on Thursday.

This year saw a total of 479 fires reported province-wide, burning nearly 90,000 hectares of forest. Of those, 218 fires were in the northwest, said Chris Marchand, fire information officer with Aviation, Forest Fire and Emergency Services.

"Certainly it falls well below the 10-year average, which is about 694 fires," Marchand said. "If we look to last year, we finished the season with 741 wildland fires, which impacted 441,000 hectares."

"Consistent and widespread spring rains across the province largely reduced our early spring fire danger," he said.

Fire activity did pick up toward the end of the season, thanks to dry conditions from late August to October, Marchand said.

"The most active areas that we saw in Ontario in terms of forest fire activity remain, for the most part, in far northwestern Ontario," said Geoff Coulson, warning preparedness meteorologist with Environment Canada. "Certainly, there [were] some days we were impacted by smoke coming down from those fires, also fires in northern Manitoba and northern Saskatchewan influencing the air quality from time to time in northwestern Ontario."

But, Marchand said, while Ontario's fire season was relatively quiet, that wasn't necessarily the case elsewhere.

Ontario fire crews deployed across Canada, parts of U.S. 

"We saw 786 Ontario staff, aircraft and equipment involved in multiple deployments to assist our wildland fire partners in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, B.C., Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador, as well as the Northwest Territories," Marchand said. "Ontario also deployed resources to the U.S. to support their wildland firefighting."

Marchand said early in the season, fires tend to be human-caused, which could mean anything from an out-of-control camp fire to industrial activity. As the season progresses into June and July, lightning strikes are the main cause of wildfires.

As for the 2025 season, Marchand said it's difficult to predict.

"It's very challenging to say at any stage really how we will fare next season, even in the general sense," he said. "Every fire season is highly variable, and really is influenced heavily by the short term, actual real weather trends that developed throughout the season."

"Our response to that uncertainty is to evolve and adapt as needed to the situation, to keep people safe and to protect their communities."