‘I swear I can smell changes in the air before anyone else can’

Jenna works as a 24-hour caregiver at a harm reduction home for youth. “I’m the kind of person who if I see anyone who looks like they need assistance, I feel the need to stand up for them,” said Jenna. “It gets me into trouble sometimes.” She has a dog named DJ, and two cats that, according to her family, she cares for too much. Her Friday nights are spent playing trivia. “Fun facts are actually fun to me,” said Jenna. During the summer of 2021, while numerous wildfires burned near Kamloops, British Columbia, Jenna was working as a server in a local restaurant. 

I was living in my home in Brock, on the north shore of Kamloops. I heard fire updates on the news. I remember receiving the notification of an emergency, 10 kilometers northeast of Kamloops, on my phone. Far away, the sky was getting dark. The smoke was coming. It was close. I realized it was going to be an awful summer.

I could smell the smoke in the distance. I swear I can smell changes in the air before anyone else can. I don’t know if it’s a me thing or my asthma, but I could smell the air getting thicker. Sometimes I can feel particles in the air. 

After the second or third day, I realized the smoke was going to stay for a long time.  Some days the sky was bright deep red. Other days it was dark brown ashy smoke. The smells were just burning all the time. The news kept saying the fires are still happening. They’re not getting any better. And day after day, every couple of hours, I’m checking the news. You don’t think it’s ever going to go away.

I was a waitress at a restaurant where we had a patio. I always got put on the patio for some reason. I informed my employer that I have really bad asthma and I can’t work outside. They said, “Oh, I have asthma too. It’s not affecting me.” I’m like, “It’s affecting me. You’re not working outside.” The employer made me work outside day after day.

Even if there’s no one eating outside, I’d still have to wait outside just in case customers come. It was so frustrating. There was ash falling from the sky. It was white. It was the middle of summer, but it looked like it was snowing. I was breathing in ash. Everything was covered in a thin layer. I would have ash in my hair. Every half an hour, I had to wipe off the tables.

Whenever I could, I would go into the freezers. Sometimes I would feel so emotional finally getting to breathe, even for three seconds. I would just cry, thinking I had to go back outside and keep working. 

I tried to call WorkBC. They kept saying they’d come to my place of work and try and get things changed. I wanted them to, but at the same time, I didn’t want to get in trouble or get fired. I don’t like causing any issues or confrontation. It was such an internal battle of what to do. There are so many invisible disabilities or medical conditions that can affect people and people just don’t care if it’s not obvious. It was a lot to handle. 

I talked to my coworkers and they felt bad for me, but they couldn’t do anything about it. Asthma is a hidden Illness, so I don’t think people actually understand how bad it is and how much it affects people. If you can’t breathe you can’t function properly. No one really could understand what I was going through. Everyone’s just so used to breathing.

I had to get a doctor’s note to say that I’m not allowed to work outside.  I had to pay $50 for a doctor’s note to say I have asthma. This was during Covid so my doctor was so frustrated that I had to get a doctor’s note for something so ridiculous. 

I was upset, frustrated, and I felt not listened to. I felt belittled. And just so much anger. Anger at my employer, anger for the environment, anger for my health, and myself. I was angry at my family for leaving the windows open and not caring about my health. I usually am a climate activist . But I couldn’t even think about it because I was just so focused on not being able to breathe.

No matter what time of day it was, I couldn’t go outside. For the whole summer, I was stuck in the house. It was horrible for my mental health. Everything felt so secluded. Some of my family members would still go out camping or do outside stuff but I wasn’t allowed to, so I’d be left by myself in my house.

At some point between August and September, I realized things were getting better. I could feel the smoke lifting. The days would feel longer because you would wake up and there wouldn’t be as much smoke. That made me a little more hopeful. But there was always this fear that it was going to come back.

It makes me scared to live in BC, especially Kamloops. I love BC and I’m considering moving to Kelowna for school. But I don’t know if I can do that because I don’t know if I’ll be able to breathe. Since 2021, it’s been happening every single year. 

I had so much hope that you could change this, change that, and everything’s going to be amazing. Now as I get older, I don’t know if anything’s ever going to change. I’m so pessimistic about climate change. I can’t even think about it. I can’t watch movies about it, I can’t even talk about it because that’s how terrified I am. We humans are killing the world. 

I love the environment to the point of digging through the compost to make sure that it is clean. I love nature to the point where I believe that animals should rule the world. We should go back to how Indigenous peoples used to live: preserving nature, taking care of the animals, and respecting  the environment. Living beings are the most valuable part of what life has given to us.

This story is a part of a series created by Thompson Rivers University students and led by instructor Jennifer Chrumka as part of the Climate Disaster Project.