Looking out over a budding meadow with blackened tree stumps on the edge of Banff National Park, Cliff White points to a dark thicket of trees where the empty plot ends.
“The next fire in here is going to be incredible,” says the former Parks Canada fire management co-ordinator, standing in the expansive Carrot Creek fire break.
The meadow was shorn more than 20 years ago by Parks Canada to slow future wildfires in their tracks before reaching Banff and Canmore.
But it’s a fraction of the dense, naturally fire-prone forest blanketing the Bow Valley, where fear is growing that a shower of embers, like those that destroyed a third of the structures in Jasper, Alta., last summer, could hit Alberta’s most popular tourist destination….