Half of
Canadians feel
a “definite”
or “extreme”
level of concern
about global
heating.Dr. Courtney Howard, an emergency-
room doctor in Yellowknife and pres-
ident of the Canadian Association of
Physicians for the Environment.
We’ve been feeling similar effects
across the country; Canada’s 2019 Food
Price Report estimates that produce
costs as much as six per cent more
than last year. “Any time food prices go
up, there’s another portion of Canadi-
ans at the food bank, or just trying to
make do with cheaper, less nutritious
food,” she says.
For northern residents, melting per-
mafrost is also making it more difficult
to physically access food. The thaw in
the Northwest Territories’ Mackenzie
Valley is 10 per cent deeper than it was
20 years ago. “People are more likely to
go through the lake ice, and the perma-
frost is becoming boggier,” says Howard.
Transportation and hunting are
becoming less reliable, and that’s a
significant problem if, for instance,
your family relies on caribou meat as
a source of food. In Canada, about a
third of Métis and First Nations people
and two-thirds of Inuit people
harvest wildlife for food.
“Warmer temperatures mean
you can’t get on the snow
machines and can’t trap,” says
Bernard Stehelin, 48, a com-
mercial bush pilot who was
born and raised in Whitehorse.
A close friend of his narrowly
escaped drowning earlier this
year when the ice gave way
under his snowmobile, even though
he’d travelled this section of ice with-
out incident for 16 years.
It can also be challenging to round up
clean water and nourishing food during
and after acute climate disasters. Power
outages, which are more likely and last
longer with extreme weather events,
quickly cause food to spoil.YYYOURRR MMEENNTAALL
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Fleeing a wildfire or experiencing a
flood can provoke anxiety, depression
and even post-traumatic stress disor-
der. “After an acute event, people tend
to have the worst mental health symp-
toms in the first month or so,” says How-
ard, “but even a year later, some peo-
ple are still affected.”
In a study, adolescents who lived
through the Fort McMurray wildfire
evacuations in 2016 had almost double
the rates of depression as those in
Red Deer, which had been spared.
They were also four times more likely
to have suicidal thoughts.
Some risks are more insidious.
For example, the welfare of Can-
ada’s 200,000 farms is inextric-
ably tied to climate, and farmers
are distressed when their crops
struggle in dry weather or are
wiped out by a single storm—
events that can cut yields in half.
A University of Guelph survey
in 2015 found that 45 per cent ofrd.ca 41