A Changing World
I’m going to do something that I’ve never done before and won’t do very often, maybe ever. I’m going to share an article, in full, from Long Days Issue 01.
We don’t publish our content online for two main reasons. The first is to preserve the value of the print product we produce. Too many independent media companies have offered a cheap-as-heck digital subscription option, bloated their website with ads to compensate, sold off their publication to a Big Player, and then quietly shut their doors.
I don’t want to do that. I want to continue publishing Long Days for a long, long time, and paying writers, photographers and illustrators for their work.
The second reason is that our writers don’t opt into training AI models when they submit their work (and nor should they). Adding their works online is helping big technology companies steal their work in order to make the world so freaking bland. But this is my article and I’m choosing to share it because a huge portion of Ontario is on fire. People are being forced to flee their homes. Collins, Ontario has burned to the ground. The air quality in major cities in southern Ontario are the worst in the world. I wrote this article in August of 2025, and unfortunately it could have been written yesterday.
Thanks for reading my preamble. Hope the read below is insightful.
- Chase
A Changing World
Climate Change and the Backcountry
Words by Chase Banger
Photos by Aaron Mazurek
Our convoy was on its way to the trip outfitter, about halfway through the nearly 500-kilometre journey from southwestern Ontario to the border of Quebec. We communicated in modern walkie-talkie style, using a messaging app to coordinate from one car to the next.
It was the night before our trip on the Riviere Noire was set to begin and we were still trying to figure out whether or not there was a fire ban in the region of Quebec we were headed. Our contact at the outfitter, in the wake of a number of huge fires in the province’s treed north, had said that yes, there was, so we were planning on feeding our group of 10 on stoves alone.
But weeks of rain and online maps from the province’s fire protection agency, SOPFEU, suggested we were all clear. And when we finally got to the outfitter and chatted with our contact, we discovered we were in luck: The fire ban had lifted just days before we were set to head out.
What’s less lucky is that this is something we need to worry about at all on our annual trip into the backcountry. Drier summers and hotter temperatures are making the risk of fire—and fire bans—all too common for backcountry campers in Canada.
When you picture camping, you likely picture the peak season in August: hot days, clear skies, bugless evenings. Camping is as synonymous with summer as anything else you can think of.
But Canadian summers are transforming as the effects of climate change alter the environment we rely on.
As of August, the 2025 wildfire season was the second-worst on record, burning more than 7.3 million hectares at the time. By mid-September, that number had climbed to 8.8 million hectares. Wildfire smoke is now a regular fixture of our summers, with air quality warnings forcing people to stay indoors; it even made an appearance in one of the articles in Issue 01, as a hazy Quebec sky featured prominently in the trip.
Summer temperatures have continued to rise year over year, with 2024 matching 2010 for the warmest on record since 1948. And backcountry campers feel those effects directly as they spend 24 hours a day outside without reprieve. The heat, combined with the risk of poor air quality, can make exertion outright dangerous, and that’s before you consider add altitude on hikes, long paddles on rivers, and gruelling portages on lake trips.
Backcountry camping can already be pretty inaccessible between the cost, the knowledge required and the physical demands. Further excluding people who are physically unable to do it based on their health condition risks making these barriers even greater.
And that’s just the effects of the actual environment: Climate change is also posing a risk because of the unpredictability and increasing severity of changing weather.
In June, a friend sent me a message letting me know that her dad had to be evacuated from Algonquin Park by helicopter. Flash flooding from a major storm had wiped out many of the roads leading to and from the park’s north end, leaving him and his friend, along with hundreds of other campers, stranded.
That same storm caused another provincial park, Samuel de Champlain, to close for the entire season after it was hit by a downburst from the storm. Environment and Climate Change Canada includes heavy rainfall on its list of extreme weather events linked to human-caused climate change, along with heat waves and wildfires.
And oh, the fires. More than half of one of Manitoba’s most popular hiking trails, the Mantario Trail, burned as the province dealt with some of its worst wildfires on record. The trail is still closed, and even if it reopens, it’ll be without much of the canopy and scenery that drew hikers in the first place.
On Canada’s east coast, fires became so rampant that the government of Nova Scotia banned people from forest activities like hiking and camping, promising a $25,000 fine to anyone who was found not complying. The government had previously implemented a similar ban in 2023.
And on the opposite side of the country, Vancouver Island experienced record-breaking temperatures alongside one of the largest wildfires on record. The Mount Underwood fire interrupted planned trips of contributors to this very magazine.
All around us, the places we go are being destroyed or being irrevocably altered. The camping of my youth and of yours won’t be the same as the next generation’s, or the one after that. Without action, it may not even be possible or safe to camp at all.
Responsible camping is a form of stewardship. Using deadfall for campfires, packing out garbage, appreciating the effort that goes into our modern conveniences and even, for a few scarce days, giving them up. But being a good steward of the forest isn’t enough to save the backcountry.
The impacts of climate change reach far beyond backpacking and canoe trips. They permeate every facet of our lives. Let this be a small front on which you fight.