Niagara Falls, Canada is often packed with visitors, but hotel rooms in the tourist city are currently occupied by hundreds of people who did not come for sight-seeing.
Indigenous Canadians from remote communities thousands of kilometers away have been forced to flee their homes because of raging wildfires and are staying at Niagara Falls hotels.
Among them is Travis Bighetty, 38, who told AFP he evacuated Mathias Colomb Cree Nation in northern Manitoba province days ago as it was “practically engulfed by fire.”
Dressed in a grey suit and a cowboy hat he collected from a clothing drive, Bighetty said he volunteered to be relocated far from home, taking an opportunity for him and his seven-year-old daughter to see one of Canada’s most famous sites.
But after a week, he is ready to leave.
“I’d like to go back to God’s country. I’d like to go back to my reserve,” he said of the community also known as Pukatawagan.
It has been a devastating start to Canada’s fire season, with more than three million hectares of forest already scorched and tens of thousands of people displaced.
Manitoba, in central Canada, has been among the hardest hit areas and shelter capacity in the provincial capital Winnipeg reached its limit.
Bighetty said he first arrived in Niagara Falls after a harrowing escape from Pukatawagan.
“We knew the fire was coming towards us,” he said. “We didn’t know how fast.”
First he was told to leave his home for a community center.
He wanted to go back home and grab a few cherished things before evacuating, but that proved impossible.
For his daughter, that meant leaving without her favorite doll, a gift from her father.
“She was pretty attached to her doll,” Bighetty said. “She wasn’t able to bring that out.”
His daughter took an earlier helicopter and by the time he boarded, Bighetty said he saw nothing but smoke.
“There (were) actually ashes falling.”
Bighetty said he is passing the days in Niagara Falls by walking from his hotel to the striking waterway and strolling the streets.
For now, he has no idea when he’ll leave.
“They said it’d be a while,” he told AFP.
Culture shock
Dozens of Indigenous Canadians sat on restaurant and cafe patios on a main Niagara Falls street Tuesday, gathering in areas dramatically different from their usual social spots.
The city is aware that many may be uncomfortable in an urban environment, said the local fire chief and emergency response coordinator, Jo Zambito.
“They’re coming from a culture that isn’t the same as ours,” he told AFP, adding that support workers have been deployed to all the hotels housing evacuees to aid those feeling distressed.
Niagara Falls has previously welcomed people displaced by flood and other disasters in part because of its numerous hotel rooms, many of which are vacant in non-tourist seasons.
But Zambito said the city is also well-equipped to offer support because as a tourist hub, locals are good at welcoming visitors.
The number of evacuees in the city has fluctuated, but Zambito said there were roughly 2,400 Indigenous people from Manitoba currently in Niagara Falls.
Locals have generously stepped up with donations, he added, but there is concern about overburdening the health care system.
The main challenge is the uncertainty.
“We just don’t know how long they’ll be here,” Zambito said, voicing concern for the evacuees who have little information about the status of their homes.
‘I miss my bed’
Florette Richard turned her head away as her eyes began to fill with tears, while she recounted her flight from Cross Lake, in northern Manitoba.
The mother of four said two of her children declined to come east to Niagara Falls, splitting the family and forcing her away from her only grandchild, one-year-old Ezra.
Richard and her husband Norval are surrounded in Niagara Falls by others from Cross Lake, roughly 520 kilometers north of Winnipeg.
But feelings of isolation were starting to take their toll, she said.
“It’s lonely now. I miss my home. I miss my bed.”
