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The Fire Canada Banned
In 1874, British Columbia made it illegal to light the fires that had protected the land for thousands of years.
Long before Canada built a system for fighting wildfire, First Nations were lighting small ones on purpose. Knowledge holders chose the place, the season and the weather. The flames cleared dry vegetation, fed the soil, opened travel routes and improved berry patches and habitat for deer, elk and moose. They also broke the land into patches, so a later wildfire had nowhere easy to run.
The Bush Fire Act ended that in British Columbia. It arrived a decade before the federal ban on…
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