Awarded by Flowing Quills ~ week of June 1-7, 2003
1916
The day dawned hot, with clear blue sky, on the twenty-ninth day of July, in nineteen sixteen. Grass and shrubs were tinder dry, as settlers cleared their lands with fire but once sparks flew no one could stop the flames that raged across the land defying every human hand. And Kelso burned on that hot day as flames licked at the day’s dry hay in nineteen sixteen Father Gagne did his best to save those of his town who followed him to hide behind a rocky cut but there’s no mercy in fires’ wrath, that sucks all life breath in its path And Nushka burned down to the ground not a building left there to be found in nineteen sixteen As high winds fed the firestorm the heat made fish in rivers boil. Five hundred thousand acres burned, devouring homes, consuming woods while people fled any way they could. In Porquis Junction and Iroquois Falls the air heard weeping voices call in nineteen sixteen They jumped a freight train to escape the wooden town in the wilderness surrounded by a wall of flames but the train passed through the inferno’s ire and they could not run from the raging fire And Matheson was devastated the fire could not be abated in nineteen sixteen Two hundred twenty five all died, more than five hundred without homes, forty-nine townships up in smoke a part of our past that must be told an ominous distinction to have to hold The worst forest fire in Canada’s history filled that day in July with such misery in nineteen sixteen june 2003
