We evacuated our West Kelowna home of 30 years

Long-time friends of my mother-in-law retired a few years ago to Kelowna, B.C. They’re outdoorsy people and picked that spot in the Okanagan Valley to be near the parks, vineyards and mountains. Last week, the encroaching wildfires turned their lives upside down. All 40,000 residents of Kelowna were told to evacuate, so my mother-in-law’s friends drove seven hours and moved into their son’s place on the B.C.-Alberta border. Bunking in with their kid is not how they pictured their retirement. The fires that began northwest of Kelowna are leaving catastrophic destruction in their wake. Big chunks of the city have been incinerated.

What’s it like to evacuate in a speedy terror? Bonnie and Don Sherwin, long-time residents of West Kelowna, evacuated their home in the city’s Rose Valley neighbourhood in a hurry after first responders warned them they needed to leave. Like my mother-in-law’s friends, they reached out to their adult child for refuge and headed to Chilliwack, three hours away. We asked Bonnie to describe her experience for us. “It was so hot from the fires, we could hardly breathe,” she says in this Q&A for Maclean’s. “Emergency workers came and told me I needed to leave immediately. I didn’t even have time to gather the food I’d planned on taking out of the fridge and freezer—that’s how fast it was. That puts you into panic mode.”

—Sarah Fulford, editor-in-chief

Smoke from the McDougall Creek wildfire fills the air and nearly blocks out the sun as people take in the view of Okanagan Lake from Tugboat Beach, in Kelowna, B.C., last week. (Photograph by Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press.)

You won’t find a congregation in this church. That’s because an Ontario couple spent five years transforming the space into a two-storey home, with four bedrooms and two and a half bathrooms. Now, the church-turned-residence is on the market.

Canada has the potential to be an EV giant, but our lack of skilled workers is holding us back, says Olivier Trescases, director of the University of Toronto’s EV Research Centre. In this piece for Maclean’s, Trescases explains how to change that.

CULTURE PICK
OF THE WEEK

Once a niche get-together for hardcore comic-book lovers, Fan Expo has become an annual destination for all kinds of pop-culture obsessives. The four-day fest at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre—starting today and running until August 27—includes a cosplay red carpet, comic-book artist “sketching duels” and an obscure nerd (their words!) trivia competition. As always, keep those eyes peeled for famous faces: celebrity appearances this year include Star Wars’ Hayden Christensen, Wednesday’s Christina Ricci and the original cast of Scream.

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