Fire artifacts go to New York

A Kelowna woman who took her pleas for action on climate change to Parliament Hill earlier this year is now sending some of the few items she recovered from the ashes of the 2023 McDougall Creek wildfire to New York.

Heather Mackay’s precious keepsakes will be displayed during the United Nations General Assembly High-Level Week and New York Climate Week.

She was contacted by the Climate Action Network Canada last spring about joining a delegation to Ottawa to speak to MPs about the need to take greenhouse gas emissions more seriously. They then connected her with the Sierra Club of Canada, which is putting on the pop-up exhibition featuring artifacts from people across Canada who were recently impacted by wildfires, floods, or hurricanes.

“I went to Parliament with them in June and they reached out and asked if I would mind, which is a scary thing to send the only things you have, but I felt like it would be a good way for people to see what happens when these fires occur,” said Mackay.

The hairstylist, mother and grandmother, lost the home she rented on McNaughton Road in West Kelowna in last summer’s fire.

Mackay still gets emotional talking about the small items she salvaged from the rubble. All they managed to find were four salt and pepper shakers, the inside of a snow globe and a trinket dish.

“My hope is that people, when they see these things, especially the snow globe, the inside little burnt guy, I just hope that they see that this is real. This is actually happening around the world and to Canadians and we’re just regular families leading a regular life. You go to work one day, then you come home to nothing,” said Mackay as she held back tears.

Her family has found a new rental near Kelowna General Hospital. She says being further away from the forest helps ease her anxiety. The first anniversary of the McDougall Creek wildfire hit her pretty hard.

“My anxiety skyrockets when I’m around a lot of trees, which is weird when you look around your community and you think, no, I can’t live there.”

Rebuilding her emotional stability has been the hardest part.

“We have our basics of everything we need -- and a lot of debt -- but it’s just every time I think that I’m almost normal, then something comes up and I’m like oops, no, I have some trauma still.”

Other people whose artifacts will be part of the Protect What We Love exhibition in New York on September 24 include survivors of the 2021 Lytton wildfire and the floods later that year that washed over parts of the Fraser Valley.