Tomlinson Park is an unlikely oasis of lush greenery. 

The park is in Markham, Ont., a suburb at the northeastern edge of Toronto, and hugs the Rouge River. On a cloudy day in June, hundreds of volunteers planted trees and shrubs here as part of an effort to restore a barren part of the park.

“In 10 to 15 years, [the trees] should grow up to 20, 30, even 50 feet [15 metres]. And it should look like a nice, thriving forest,” said Nishad Islam (photo above), environmental project co-ordinator at the Friends of the Rouge Watershed, which orchestrated the event.

The Friends have a decades-long history in this part of the Greater Toronto Area, advocating for nearby Rouge National Urban Park, the largest urban park in Canada, almost 20 times the size of Vancouver’s Stanley Park.

Many conservationists consider it one of the best examples of nature restoration in the country. It’s home to 1,700 plant and animal species, including 42 species at risk, a place where people come to camp, hike and picnic — while also being surrounded by millions of people in Canada’s largest metropolitan area, with Highway 401, North America’s busiest, running right through it.

The work here is part of efforts across Canada to restore nature and bring back biodiversity — as governments and communities realize the importance of green spaces in fighting climate change and preparing for extreme weather.

The work is backed by new research from the World Wildlife Fund that shows that areas of top importance for ecological restoration are also near where people live, especially in southern Ontario, Manitoba and Quebec.

Unlike environmental protection, which involves establishing parks and conservation areas to protect natural areas, restoration involves going into degraded areas and planting trees and shrubs to restore the land, approaching what it was before human activity changed it.

At the COP15 UN biodiversity conference in Montreal last December, countries around the world reached a landmark deal to save nature and establish targets for protecting and restoring ecosystems.

“We saw really ambitious goals and targets committed to by the government of Canada,” said James Snider, vice-president of science, knowledge and innovation at WWF Canada and a co-author on the study. “But now that we have these ambitious goals and targets, we actually have to begin to implement them.”

Using field and satellite data, researchers calculated carbon storage potential and benefits to biodiversity for the areas of Canada that have been transformed by humans. 

The study considered three potential restoration targets — from five million hectares to 15 million hectares. In all scenarios, the most important areas were in southern Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba — also the places that have been modified the most by human activity.

Snider says restoring those areas will have direct benefits for people, such as protecting water supplies, providing clean air and preventing floods.

But the location of the tree planting event along the Rouge River also showed the challenge of doing restoration so close to where people live. The WWF’s analysis didn’t include urban areas with residential development because it does not suggest displacing people for nature.

Michael Petryk from Tree Canada, a national organization that helped organize the Markham event, said groups like his have to get creative to find spaces to restore, since there’s intense pressure to build more homes.

Jill Crosthwaite works at another restoration project, at a small but ecologically crucial island in Lake Erie, about 400 kilometres west of Toronto. Pelee Island is an important staging ground for migratory birds, welcoming more than 300 species during their travels. 

The Nature Conservancy of Canada, a conservation group that acquires land to protect and restore it, has restored shorelines, forests and wetlands on the island. 

“If we’re working somewhere like Pelee Island, it’s got amazing diversity as it is. It’s got a lot of species that are quite rare and not found in many other places in Canada,” Crosthwaite said. 

“A lot of those species are really anxious for more habitat. So they’ll get in there and start using it quite quickly.”

Crosthwaite said the NCC looks for lands close to important habitats — like forests and wetlands — and works to restore them based on what those nearby habitats look like. A lot of the land they work on has been converted by humans for more than a century — but once restored, it can take just a year or two for animal and bird species to start moving back in.

There are many benefits to humans as well — known as “ecosystem services.” Most importantly, restored wetlands hold rainfall and control the amount of flooding, and the plants in those wetlands help filter the water and clean out pollutants like fertilizers before they all flows out into the lake, Crosthwaite said.

The new habitats can also be places for people to visit.

“That really gives people a place they can go and walk, they can get exercise, they can connect with nature,” Crosthwaite said. 

“They can see things that maybe they wouldn’t have been able to see.”

Longer seasons and more complex fires have been making the job tougher in recent years

Fighting wildfires has always been a physically demanding job, but attention is increasingly being paid in Canada to its psychological toll.

Wildland firefighters and professionals who work with them say the job has become mentally tougher as fires have become larger and more complex, increasingly getting close to or reaching areas where people live.

“I hear it over and over again that these are unprecedented conditions, and yet every every other week there’s new unprecedented conditions,” said Steve Lemon, an incident commander with BC Wildfire Service.

Lemon, who said he has lost five colleagues to suicide, is also a safety and well-being officer trying to accelerate a cultural shift toward more discussions about mental health within firefighting.

Colleen Kamps, a psychotherapist who works with the non-profit Tema Foundation, has been counselling wildland firefighters working in Nova Scotia this year.

The organization received 150 phone calls after advertising a campaign that included free crisis counselling.

Kamps said one firefighter with more than 20 years of experience told her he can handle his job, but at times this season, he has not been able to stop crying.

She said she gives firefighters permission to sit with those emotions instead of ignoring them.

“My thing is, it’s OK not to be OK; you’re allowed to have feelings,” she said.

As Canada reckons with its worst wildfire season ever, crew leaders and firefighting company managers are on alert for warning signs of mental-health struggles.

“We’ve experienced what we usually experience in a year in two months already,” said Andrew Cardinal, business manager for the Saddle Lake Smoke Eaters — an Indigenous-owned wildland firefighting company about two hours northeast of Edmonton.

Cardinal said the Smoke Eaters typically start working after the May long weekend, but this year, they began in April.

Experts say climate change is bringing warmer and drier conditions, leading to longer wildfire seasons. For firefighters, that means more time spent in remote areas, far away from family. 

Cardinal said help is available for his employees — from elders in the community and programs farther afield. 

His company is also planning to hold an all-day training session on mental wellness for office staff, since they, too, can work stressful, 14-hour days.

Harold Cardinal, who works for the Smoke Eaters and has fought fires since he was 17, said he saw a counsellor after being in an all-terrain machine accident two years ago.

“The more you talk about it to somebody, it helps,” he said.

Danny Clarke, a wildland firefighter who works for Fire Wise Forest Solutions in southern Alberta, said crew members try to support each other when fatigue sets in around day eight of a 14-day tour. 

“When we’re out here, we all create bonds and we basically become a family,” he said.

Provincial wildfire agencies in British Columbia and Alberta have ramped up mental health supports, offering peer support programs, 24/7 phone counselling and specialized resilience training.

Research from Nicola Cherry, the chair of occupational health at the University of Alberta’s department of medicine, suggests peer support and debriefing can be effective.

She tracked a cohort of firefighters sent to Fort McMurray in 2016 and found that those working for fire services that provided those supports had less anxiety and less depression than those who did not. 

“We now know they work, they’re useful and there should be systems in place so that they can be called on,” she said.

Steve Lemon said the BC Wildfire Service is increasing the number of days off between successive tours to help combat long-term fatigue. The service is also partnering with the University of Northern British Columbia to study how wildfire affects workers’ mental health.

Lemon said recent efforts are making a difference. The counselling hotline received an average of 91 calls per month last year, down from a larger volume of more disturbing calls in 2019.

Jarret Whitbread, a wildfire management specialist with Alberta Wildfire, said he’s seeing progress in Alberta as well. 

Whitbread said more people are now talking about mental health within fire crew, breaking down stigma that has surrounded it in the past. 

“The No. 1 thing we can do is bring awareness to it,” he said.