Canadian Smoke

I was running this morning and the air was kind of heavy. It was harder for me to breathe. For the past few days the air quality here in Iowa was reported to be unhealthy. In fact, many of our patients who have underlying pulmonary condition, have called our clinic as they were experiencing more trouble breathing.

As I drove to our clinic this morning, I noticed that our sky has an orange-color haze, as if we were in a post-apocalyptic period. If you saw the movie Total Recall, the original one starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, where the sky was orange, then that’s what we are experiencing now.

We have Canada to “thank” for the quality of our air right now. According to the news, the reason for our hazy sky is due to the Canadian wildfires. As of last night, there were 483 active fires burning in Canada. The wildfires are concentrated in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and the Northwestern Territories in western Canada, as well as in Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia in eastern Canada. That’s a lot of wildfires!

These wildfires are affecting the air quality of much of the American Midwest and Northeast. That is bad news for us. But the forecast said that it can even get worse. I guess that is still better than having those wildfires burning here in our state. So we’ll just pray for Canada.

There are items that Canada is known for, like the Maple syrup and Canadian bacon. Do you know that Canada produce 85% of the world’s maple syrup. It is not surprising to me, as their flag even has the Maple leaf on it. Another thing I like from Canada are the Canada Goose jackets. They may be a little pricey, but they are warm and of very good quality. I guess nobody knows cold winter better than Canada.

I suppose we can add Canadian smoke to the things we get from Canada. But this one, I don’t really care about.

(*photo taken with an iPhone)