Alberta

May 17, 2016 - As the wildfire raged and 90,000 people including kids, the elderly, and hospital patients were forced to flee from Fort McMurray on the only highway that would take them to safety hundreds of kilometers to the south, Canadians saw a very different city than they are used to.

It was no longer just a symbol, an easy target in the ongoing conflict between those who want oil to stay in the ground and those who see it as key to their livelihood.

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - A massive wildfire burning around the oil sands hub of Fort McMurray, Alberta is about 1 km (1,094 yards) away from Enbridge Inc's Cheecham crude oil tank farm, but is under control for now, emergency officials said on Monday.

The blaze near the tank farm was stable because the wind was cooperating as Enbridge's industrial firefighters tackled the blaze, the officials said at a news conference.

13 May 2016 - At the end of the day the $10-billion wildfire that consumed 2400 homes and buildings in Fort McMurray may be the least of the region's problems.

'For me, climate change is the face of this problem,' says Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne

If you’re trying to figure out how Alberta’s already hurting budget is going to get battered by the Fort McMurray wildfires, don’t get too bogged down in the reports of massive losses in oil production shutdowns. You’re better off keeping an eye on the way the oil price responds to the drama playing out in the Alberta oil patch.

The simple fact of the matter, a fact that many invested in a destructive oil industry do not want to now face, is that a fire whose early-season extreme intensity was fueled by human-caused climate change is now doing what Canada would not.

Politicians are reluctant to mention the role of global warming in the destruction of Canada’s oil sands capital.

The Fort McMurray fire disaster brings out the eloquence in Canada’s politicians. They talk movingly – and I think sincerely – about the devastation wreaked on the inhabitants of the northern Alberta city.

They praise the generosity of those Canadians who help. They put partisanship on ice. In one memorable instance last week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau crossed the Commons floor to hug Rona Ambrose, the teary-eyed interim Conservative leader.