Hay River is coming together and healing has begun, says mayor

When Kandis Jameson lost touch with the outside world as a wildfire bore down on Hay River, she was at the heart of her town’s third crisis in 15 months.

She had been the mayor through Covid-19, and that was one thing, but at least Hay River hadn’t had to evacuate because of the pandemic.

Then a flood forced an evacuation in 2022, a wildfire just to the east triggered another one in May 2023, and when a fresh fire cut off the fibre line to the town and threatened the only highway to safety in August, that was evacuation number three.

A year has passed since the terrifying week in which Jameson had to help run the airport, send people door to door to share information with phones and internet down, and try to get thousands of people to safety in the bleakest of circumstances.

Now, she says she and her town are both making important recoveries.

“I really do think the heartbeat of our community is strong,” Jameson has concluded after a year of metaphorical green shoots like the return of many local events. “People are helping each other to get through it.”

Below, read a transcript of our interview with the mayor.

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This interview was recorded on August 15, 2024. The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Ollie Williams: A year on, how are you doing now?

Kandis Jameson: Great. It’s funny because I think that when everything settles down and things start returning to some semblance of normal, you almost get lost because you are just in that mode of trying to stay ahead of things, meeting people where they needed to be, dealing with media, having meetings. When it all was over, it was like, “Now what?”

I’m doing really well. I am one of those people that spends a lot of time outside if I’m stressed and we’ve had a beautiful summer, so I’ve been able to get outside and spend time at the beach with the grandkids and the dogs and feed my soul. I’m doing well. Thank you for asking.

As much as Yellowknife’s evacuation was a traumatic process for everybody who lived in Yellowknife, Hay River was a different level. People were driving into a raging wildfire on that Sunday afternoon, people did lose property, communication went down for days. What are your memories of those initial few days?

Seeing the darkness at three o’clock in the afternoon. We knew what that meant: this fire was on us. Sending everything you had to the universe, saying, “Please Lord, let everybody come out of this safely and unscathed.” Wondering if we’re going to get everybody out because, of course, when you have that kind of smoke and heat… can we get the planes still coming in here? That first day was just getting people out.

People helping people. People helping strangers. When redundancy isn’t there, it’s people. People stood up that weren’t supposed to be doing this or that. You called in any favour you had. Seconding a cook off a ship, which meant the rest of the crew had to stay to run the ship, but it also gave us backup if we needed that ship. Different things like that, right?

There are so many little stories. Neil Bassett, who was here fuelling up the helicopters at the airport, and I’m coming in to meet a plane and he’s cleaning the bathrooms, you know? People just stood up. It was pretty incredible to see.

When we lost communications, my heart stopped. How are we going to get through this without being able to talk to our team, without being talked to those on the outside? We didn’t have a clue what was going on, on the other side. We managed to scramble three Starlinks. There were so many people on the outside, that had made it, that didn’t know where their children were or grandchildren. Very scary times.

But again, focusing on the good stuff, there were some pretty amazing people. We didn’t have anybody at the airport. I get to the airport and I’ve got planes coming in and medevacs. I phoned Kathy McBryan because I didn’t have the combination to get out onto the runway. She gave me the combination and said: “Do you need help?” And she stood by me. The two of us were rampies, flight attendants, you name it, whatever was needed. She was there right until we had to evacuate essential services.

Here’s Hay River dealing with it, and Fort Smith was having the same thing happen. Enterprise. Yellowknife. It all built into a kind of hurricane as the week went on. Suddenly two-thirds of the territory is wrapped up in this. Later, did that get in the way a little bit, that so much had happened to so many people? Did it become harder to advocate specifically for what Hay River needed?

No. I think we’ve learned so much through everything this community has been through, from Covid to floods to two fires to three evacuations. Every time something goes wrong, you take that golden opportunity to make sure you’ve got measures in place to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

We’ve done a tonne of work in the past year trying to help people, meet them where they’re at. What do they need from us? How do we support them? How do we advocate for them? Yes, it’s been a year, but it’s been an amazing year. We need to focus on the good stuff.

There was lots happening here this past year: National Indigenous Peoples Day and Canada Day, both those events were put together by everybody coming together – KFN, West Point, the Metis, the Town of Hay River, Soaring Eagle. People need to talk and people need each other. Heritage Days, we hadn’t seen it in five years, since pre-Covid. That’s a small little group that managed to pull that off. KFN just had their hand games – they’re a very small community, they did an amazing job over there. Then, of course, the Enterprise Jamboree.

That shows how resilient the northern people are. It’s always about the people, it always comes back to community. And us northerners, if I know nothing else, I absolutely know we are resilient.

What you’ve identified there is a community heartbeat, if you like. If we were to complete the rest of the health check on your town, what is healthy? What needs a little bit of work?

We still have members in our community that don’t have a home. People who were uninsured are struggling. You can’t even begin to heal if you don’t have a roof over your head. Others are in brand new homes and moving forward.

But I really do think the heartbeat of our community is strong, and that people are helping each other to get through it. Our neighbours are hurting, and some of them are hurting more than others, so it’s ensuring we can be there for them while they go through this process. It’s never an easy one. We’ve still got people recovering from the flood, let alone the fire. But when I’m out and about, and I’ve attended a lot of these events we’ve had, it’s just so heartwarming to see people come together again. It’s so needed.

That’s the healing, right? That’s how healing starts.