2026 CRHNet Symposium

Opening remarks from Stephen Lacroix, the Managing Director of the Alberta Emergency Management Agency

This presentation will explore a research project titled "Learning from Indigenous Perspectives for Wildland Fire Management from Treaty 5 and 9 Remote First Nations"— a collaboration between Keewaytinook Okimakanak Tribal Council (KOTC), Lakehead University, and the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, aimed at understanding how to better support the values, needs, and resilience of remote First Nations community members in relation to wildfire management and evacuations.

Our goal is to present stories and lived experiences that members of KOTC member communities shared with us. Participants in the research discussed motivations for engagement in wildfire management activities; aspects of evacuations that caused stress; barriers and gaps that hindered participation in wildland firefighting and mitigation activities, and that undermined effective evacuations; and pathways to success, where activities overcame challenges and benefitted both individuals and the wider community. Through these stories, we can better understand the impacts of wildfire-related emergencies and gain insight into the preparedness that affects response and recovery, the hopes of community members, and the building of community-led resilience. The CRHNet Symposium theme "Living the Lessons: From Impact to Insight", aligns with the community-led objectives that shaped this research – to learn from the lived experiences of those who have been on the frontlines of Indigenous wildfire management and those who have lived through wildfire-related evacuations, and to find ways to integrate the lessons we learn into wiser practices and decision-making processes. We will discuss seven wise practices for wildfire management with remote First Nations that emerged from this research. For policymakers and practitioners, this presentation will offer considerations for and insights into how to translate lessons from the past into actions for building stronger, more resilient communities in the future.

We would also like to share a link to some of the work that has come out of this project, hosted by our Keewaytinook Okimakanak Tribal Council partners at https://kogeo.ca/catalogue/#/documents?filter%7Bcategory.identifier.in%7D=Wildfire .

Boulder, Colo. (USA) – like much of the Rocky Mountain State – is continuing to face increased threat from wildfire.

As Colorado continues to expand its preparedness and pass new laws that mandate that insurance companies take into account mitigation measures, among other new measures, the City of Boulder is also taking critical steps to mitigate risk in their community.

Boulder has been investing in tools to help make better data-driven decisions, primarily through expanded, high-quality home assessments.

Attendees will hear directly from Danielle McNutt, Boulder Fire-Rescue’s community risk reduction senior program manager and Fire Aside’s CEO, Jason Brooks, about how her agency was inundated with Wildfire Detailed Home Assessment requests (DHA) following the Marshall Fire and scaled to meet the moment.
McNutt will hone in on a tangible and real-world example: the Wonderland Hills community in Boulder.

By collaborating with one of the United States' top minds on predicting wildfire behavior in the built environment, Dr. Hussam Mahmoud of Vanderbilt University, McNutt was able to implement very specific and impactful choices.

Wonderland Hills constitutes 15 homeowners’ associations (HOA), which means that close collaboration is required between residents, community leaders, fire officials, and numerous public agencies and other regional partners.

By leveraging regional and local grant incentives for maximum impact, the City of Boulder is ensuring vegetation work by Boulder County Parks & Open Space is matched by residents to do their part to maximize risk reduction and return on limited public funds.

As a result of this vision, Wonderland Hills and Boulder homeowners now have access to high-quality, detailed, and actionable risk assessment information about how to protect themselves.

Following the talk, attendees will be able to go to their local policymakers and make a clear and compelling case as to why their community can repeat this playbook.

Concerts are a venue where popular culture and disaster risk can intersect. The phenomenon of Taylor Swift and the cultural juggernaut of her Eras Tour stops in Canada will be used to illustrate how the emergency management community of scholars and practitioners can situate concerts in the domain of emergency management.

The findings presented are based on research work by York University graduate student Talia Shortt and Professor Jack Rozdilsky who both explored: 1) Implications of the global Taylor Swift Eras Tour concert phenomenon and 2) Local Toronto experiences of the Eras tour. Both case study and participant observation methods were applied to better understand theoretical and practical aspects of concert safety.

In context, Swift’s body of work fosters deep para-social connections where young women and girls feel seen, validated, and find home in a community that actively engages in discussions around personal and social transformation. Unfortunately, in today’s polarized society Swift and her fandom can inadvertently become symbolic targets for those people invested in the preservation of traditional hierarchies and exclusionary ideologies.

Three take-aways that have been derived from study of Swift’s Eras Tour will be highlighted. First, understanding the social and culture contexts of the concert event itself are necessary for emergency managers to comprehend the potential risks present. Second, the recognition by municipalities of the necessity to treat concerts with a level of preparedness similar to that of special events and festivals is important. Third, and perhaps most important, is the need for emergency management authorities to engage in public outreach with concert goers to provide them with tips on how they can be prepared on an individual level to attend mass gatherings. The presentation will conclude with an interactive element engaging the audience in an exercise developing an individual concert safety plan.

Disaster recovery often shortchanges communities by prioritizing quick fixes over lasting resilience, leaving local voices unheard and local capacities untapped. Communities need an approach that strengthens resilience from within. This storytelling session draws on recovery experience from the B.C. atmospheric floods and other events to show how resilience grows when communities lead their own recovery. Grounded in more than a decade of work with Samaritan’s Purse, the session demonstrates how shifting from a reactive, deficit-based mindset to a proactive Asset-Based Community Development approach transforms recovery from frustration to empowerment, connection, and long-term capacity building.
Participants will learn how community-driven initiatives such as faith-based financial aid coalitions, mental health and wellness events, and multi-sector resiliency task forces demonstrate the power of local leadership when supported by the right tools, relationships, and frameworks. The session introduces the Resiliency Roadmap, which focuses on accompanying, empowering, and connecting as a model for fostering trust, strengthening social capital, and increasing community ownership. It also highlights Asset Mapping, a strengths-based approach that identifies and visualizes local resources and capacities to support positive change and resiliency in communities.
Aligned with the conference theme of Community-Led Resilience, this session emphasizes that resilience is not about returning to what was but about building forward. Communities become stronger when personal resilience is supported within existing networks, collaboration is intentional, and local organizations engage in emergency management conversations before disasters strike.
The session demonstrates how a whole-community approach can reduce long-term risk, enhance preparedness, and support more equitable recovery systems. It encourages emergency managers, community organizations, and policymakers to recognize and invest in the capacities already present within communities, using recovery as a catalyst to strengthen local networks and coordinated planning.
Now is the moment to shift from reactive recovery to community-led resilience. This session offers a clear path forward, empowering practitioners to activate local strengths, elevate community voices, and build recovery systems that are more connected, better prepared, and resilient for the long term.

In both 2023 and 2024, Hinton supported neighbouring communities during major wildfire events while managing extended smoke and increased demands on local systems. The experience highlighted a common reality for many smaller and rural communities: strong emergency response capacity is essential, but it must be paired with longer-term planning and coordination to strengthen resilience over time.

Through the Roots for Resilience program, the Town of Hinton, The Resilience Institute (TRI), and the Canadian Red Cross (CRC) worked together to begin that shift. The partners completed a Climate Risk Assessment, a Climate Resilience Gap Analysis, validated and evolved through conversations with community organizations and residents that surfaced current strengths, capacity considerations, and priority areas for action. These inputs informed the development of Hinton’s Community Climate Resilience Plan, which outlines a set of practical steps the Town and partners can take to strengthen the resilience of vital interdependent local systems (e.g., social, ecological, economic, health, emergency management, and built environment).

This presentation will share how the partnership approach supported alignment across organizations, how the understanding of resilience has evolved locally, and the early actions now underway.

Indigenous communities in Canada are becoming increasingly vulnerable to climate-related extreme events such as wildfires due to several interconnected environmental, sociopolitical, and governance-related factors. The systematic destruction of their land-based resource governance and traditional fire stewardship practices through colonial fire ban policies has disrupted their long-standing ecological relationships that further eroded their and-based knowledge and their livelihoods. The continued adoption of a Western, top-down fire control and management system centered on fire suppression has constrained Indigenous leadership and the inclusion of Indigenous knowledge in wildfire preparedness and management. It is critically important to empirically investigate how these changes are affecting Indigenous communities. In this context, between April and August 2025, we collected primary data by participating in land-based cultural camps, sharing circles, and storytelling sessions with Elders and knowledge keepers in the Lac La Ronge Woodland Cree community. These engagements provided key insights into the experiences from the 2015 and 2025 wildfires, Indigenous fire management practices, land-based coping strategies, and structural challenges in wildfire governance. Our findings revealed that the 2025 wildfire season marked a sharp increase in severity of fire, fueled by prolonged drought, low river levels, rapid snowmelt, and erratic wind speed. The lack of institutional preparedness for the wildfire hazards was noticeable during the 2025 wildfire season. Community Elders described the 2025 evacuation as chaotic and inequitable, marked by poor communication, delayed transport, and fragmented coordination. The absence of a unified command structure left nearby communities unsupported, revealing jurisdictional complexities and governance failures. The lessons from 2015 & 2025 demand a paradigm shift toward more inclusive and anticipatory wildfire governance.

This interactive session invites emergency management practitioners to contribute theirexpertise to an ongoing national research project on Mass Care planning in Canada, conducted by JIBC, Emergency Management and Climate Readiness BC, and community partners. With its focus on shared language, operational clarity, and community relevance, the session directly supports the conference theme “Community-Led Resilience and Inclusion” and complements the 2026 Symposium theme “Living the Lessons: From Impact to Insight.”

The session’s primary objectives are to (1) present emerging project findings, including preliminary terminology, models, and conceptual frameworks; (2) gather practitioner, community, and researcher feedback; and (3) collaboratively refine elements that will inform the project’s major outputs.

Participants will engage with three focused activities: a Terms and Concepts Stress Test, exploring how well core terms and concepts emerging from the research hold up— or don't — in participants' own organizational and community contexts; a Playbook Design activity, where participants react to and shape the concept of a non-prescriptive, resource-based community “Playbook” for mass care planning; and a Gap Spotting activity, where participants review and annotate a concept map presenting the project's current understanding of key players, roles, and interdependencies across core masscare functions — identifying what's missing, misrepresented, or context-dependent inways the research has not yet captured.

Disaster and emergency management (DEM) is increasingly complex. Understanding who makes up the DEM system, the roles they perform, and the relationships which influence system capability and performance - before, during, and after a disaster - is essential to building societal resilience. This presentation critically examines DEM as a complex adaptive system, using New Zealand as a case study.