Back in 1989, when Billy Joel released his popular single, “We Didn’t Start the Fire”, I wouldn’t have predicted that we would be able to deliberately take the title out of context in a very contrarian and literal way nearly 40 years later. Given the spike in temperatures around the world each summer, alongside the (now routine) presence of multiple wildfires burning thousands or millions of hectares, the perpetual evacuation of entire towns (often suburbs of major cities) and the heat-related deaths, I would opine that we humans of the planet are, both literally and metaphorically, sparking the flames that create the suffocating pollution that infiltrate the atmosphere of major cities across the globe every summer. No continent on Earth has been immune to the phenomenon. My only concern is that we do not become too desensitized.
There is a tragically prophetic meme that has been recycled and reiterated numerous times each summer, especially during the past few years:
“This could be the coolest summer of the rest of your life…”
Climate change, global warming, political resistance (depending on the nation), corporate avarice, and lack of change in human behavior have collectively caused each summer to be more notoriously unpleasant, unhealthy — and fatal — than the previous one.
I won’t carry on and on about the warnings because we’ve been informed about them for decades. However, I wanted to use this opportunity to showcase how these conditions affected a city that, one would assume, given its geographical location, would be among the least susceptible.
Welcome to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Edmonton is the capital city of the Province of Alberta, and the fifth largest city in Canada by population. Situated along the banks of the North Saskatchewan River, Edmonton has the unique distinction of being the northernmost city in North America with a population exceeding 1,000,000 people.
Out of all the cities that TIA has captured since its inception in 2009, Edmonton proved to be one of the most challenging cities to photograph on account of the terrible wildfires that Canada experienced in the Summer of 2023. That summer, several provinces across Canada, from British Columbia to Quebec, were impacted by wildfires and the resulting pollution.
In Edmonton, smoke from multiple fires in British Columbia and Alberta severely inhibited the air quality in Edmonton during TIA’s visit. On two of the four days when I was there, I had to remain in my hotel room because the air quality was atrocious — something that’s acutely atypical for a city as far north as Edmonton. On these days, local authorities advised Edmontonians to remain indoors and not venture outside unless for emergencies or critical reasons. To be candid, it was rather disconcerting to witness this. It was neither healthy nor safe to simply walk outside.
Growing up, my family had always prioritized safety and health so there were moments when I faced a bit of a conundrum. Do I sacrifice my personal health and safety for a photograph (which would probably be of poor visual quality because the air was a mixture of orange, brown, and grayish particles)? Would there be any utility going outside if you can’t really capture any subject matter clearly? Do you really want to risk the ramifications of breathing and ingesting the nasty smog that’s clogging the city? Could I really travel up to Edmonton from Seattle for the first time and depart with nothing in my inventory? That would be a first.
Ultimately, I determined my health and safety were utterly unworthy to deliberate jeopardize just to satiate my passion of cityscape photography for a day or two. The worst case scenario would be to return to Edmonton at another time — preferably in spring or autumn the following year.
As a result, out of the four days TIA spent in Edmonton, the majority of the images featured in my galleries were captured during a 10-hour period of relative clarity on one day, while others were captured at night when the air quality improved slightly.
Given this environmental matter, I thought I would share aerial photography of Edmonton captured on September 2, 2023 — the weekend commemorating Alberta Day, the 118th anniversary of the province joining the Dominion of Canada.
Due to the timing of my visit, Edmonton proved to be one of the most challenging cities to photograph from the air. Given the abysmal air quality as a result of thick smoke created by regional fires during Canada’s worst summer for forest fires on record (at the time), visibility of the city was extremely poor. Even my pilot confessed that he had never observed weather conditions so dreadful during his 20 years of flying small aircraft over Alberta (but he still helped me to obtain the best aerials that I could manage). In retrospect, I was surprised we were even able to fly that day. I vaguely recall exchanging text messages with the pilot that if conditions worsened before my scheduled time, there would be the possibility of having the flight canceled altogether. This is never good news when you’re visiting a city for a finite amount of time without an inkling of when you might have the opportunity to return.
These images are meant to illustrate how climate change has impacted a number of cities that never had to consider these crippling conditions a decade or two decades ago. Today, however, it now seems extraordinarily lucky if these conditions do not occur, which is a most unfortunate aspect of our collective reality.
