A Nova Scotia man has been charged for allegedly starting the eastern Canadian province’s largest-ever wildfire.
The charges against Dalton Clark Stewart, 22, come only days after a Quebec man, inspired by conspiracy theories, pleaded guilty to 14 charges of arson after deliberately lighting forest fires.
Stewart, from the town of Villagedale, is facing three violations of the province’s Forests Act: lighting a fire on privately owned land without permission of the owner or occupier, failing to take reasonable efforts to prevent the spread of a fire and leaving a fire unattended.
Those convicted under the Forests Act can be fined up to C$50,000 (US$37,000) and face as much as six months in prison.
“The court will determine the outcome of the charges, including any penalties,” Nova Scotia’s natural resources department said in a statement.
The wildfire near Barrington Lake caught the attention of officials in May. Unseasonably dry conditions and strong winds helped it grow to 23,525 hectares, shattering a five-decade record and pushing Nova Scotia’s scarce firefighting resources to the brink. It also degraded the region’s air quality, with Environment Canada issuing a warning for nearby communities.
For a province that typically measures the total amount of the region burned in hundreds of hectares, Barrington Lake fire also highlighted the vulnerability of the Atlantic province to wildfires.
In June, the Nova Scotia premier, Tim Houston, said he had asked the federal government for military firefighters, ignition specialists, firefighting equipment including hoses and foam, as well as trucks and helicopters.
The Barrington Lake fire burned for one month before fire crews declared it extinguished.
Elsewhere in the province, crews scrambled to save homes as separate blazes moved perilously close to Halifax, the region’s largest city.
Investigators also studied the Tantallon fire, which destroyed nearly 150 homes and forced 18,000 people from their homes, to see if they could find any criminal liability. The RCMP says it closed its investigation in December, according to CBC News, concluding there was “no information to suggest the cause was due to negligence or criminal matter”.
But on Thursday, the province’s natural resources department said it was continuing to investigate the fire. “While the department has gathered considerable information, there is a high bar for what can be used as evidence in court,” it said in a statement.
In its last report of 2023, the Canadian interagency fire centre said 6,551 fires burned 18,496,057 hectares of land, compared with 1,467,976 hectares burned the year prior. In Nova Scotia, that meant 24,818 hectares burned from 217 fires.
