Ten times Canada helped the U.S. with its wildfires, instead of whining about the smoke. 

Here are some times Canada helped the U.S. with its wildfires instead of whining about the smoke. 1994: Québec started parking 2 CL-415 water bombers in Los Angeles County every autumn, crew included. That arrangement has never stopped. It's still running today, 33 years later. 2000: The U.S. had its worst fire season in a decade, over 7 million acres burned, and we sent more than 1,300 firefighters and specialists south. 2015: When the Kettle Complex fire crept to within 5 kilometres of Grand Forks and Christina Lake, crews crossed the border to help fight it before— it crossed into American territory. 2017: Alberta sent wildland crews to Montana during one of that state's worst seasons in decades. 2020: After California's governor put out a public plea, 60 firefighters from Quebec flew down to help battle the North Complex fires. That same year, 594 Canadian firefighters and specialists deployed to the U.S. Also in 2020, as Oregon's Labor Day fires became one of the most destructive events in that state's history, Roughly 280 firefighters from BC, Alberta, Manitoba, and Ontario joined the fight. In 2021, 40 Quebec firefighters flew to Idaho for orientation, then headed to Schneider Springs Fire burning through Washington's Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest. At the time, 59 major wildfires were burning across the western US all at once. We had our own fires, but we still showed up to help. In 2024, when things turned quite bad in California, Quebec sent 2 more CL-415s to Los Angeles on top of the pairs already stationed there. 2025, when the Palisades and Eaton fires killed 31 people and tore through Los Angeles in January, Canada sent its biggest recent response, including 4 Quebec water bombers, crews of firefighters, senior staff embedded with CAL FIRE. Some American flew a drone into one of our planes, punched a hole into it mid-mission.

The crew got it patched up and flying again within days.

Last year, Ontario sent fire ranger crews from Dryden and Sudbury down to Grand Rapids, while 10 more firefighters from Manitoba Manitoba landed nearby. And last week, a Canadian helicopter pilot was killed fighting the Gold Mountain Fire in Colorado. He was married. He had two kids. His body had to be recovered by a dive team. As of today, so far this year alone, more than 40,000 fires have burned across the United States, many of them sending smoke into Canada. America, nobody cares about who the greatest country in the world is. We just want you to be a decent neighbor.