Dive deeper on this topic<\/p>\n
When I found out I\u2019d be giving birth in the spring, I was excited. I imagined parks, walks with friends; a summer spent outdoors. And yet over the past many weeks, it has often been too hot or too smoky to leave home \u2014 and I am aware, even as I say that, of how much safety our heat pump and well-insulated walls buy us. Not everyone gets to wait this out indoors. Right now, tenants across this city are stuck in apartments with no cooling at all<\/a>, no way to open a window and feel relief, because our governments keep letting rent climb while doing nothing to guarantee a liveable indoor temperature. Toronto already legislates a minimum indoor temperature for winter. There is still no equivalent maximum for summer, even as doctors warn heat is causing excess deaths among seniors<\/a> and that any delay in a bylaw will cost lives. \u00a0<\/p>\n A friend told me that her kids didn\u2019t even question the N95 mask she wore to water the garden this week. They\u2019ve grown up with summers like this, and to them it barely registers as strange. Yet when I called my dad to warn him about the air quality, he said, \u201cOh, that\u2019s why it looks weird outside\u201d \u2014 he had noticed the sky but hadn\u2019t connected it to smoke. \u201cBut there aren\u2019t fires here,\u201d he said, as if that settled it. He described seeing ash on his car but wasn\u2019t concerned because he doesn\u2019t feel it\u2019s affecting him. But the particles in this smoke are small enough to slip past the body\u2019s defences, working their way deep into the lungs and bloodstream, where they can inflame and damage organs whether or not you ever feel short of breath. The distance between my friend\u2019s kids\u2019 understanding of this and how little urgency my dad feels is a reminder of how quickly the baseline is shifting, and how differently each generation is being asked to carry our reality.<\/p>\n Dive deeper on this topic<\/p>\n Last night, when my baby was struggling for a few hours, I kept my nervous system calm, telling myself: let\u2019s just sway a little, rock a little, walk a bit around the house. Sure, we can\u2019t go outside, but there\u2019s so much we can do in here. We can bounce. We can listen to music \u2014 his favourite song at the moment, Pump Up the Jam, discovered by my partner during a particularly stressful diaper change. It was manageable because a friend was over. It was also manageable because I knew it would end. My calm could regulate his nervous system, which he still borrows from mine, because I knew it would end. He eventually calmed down and went to sleep.<\/p>\n This morning, I changed him, fed him, played with him on the floor for a while \u2014 that orange cast still hanging over everything, a low hum in another room, there, but not yet something I could afford to feel. It was only once I\u2019d gotten him down for his first nap, once I was standing in the kitchen swaying with him against my chest, that it actually landed: what that smoke actually is, and where it\u2019s coming from. Here in Toronto, many of us can close the windows, turn on the air purifier, wait it out.\u00a0<\/p>\n In Namaygoosisagagun First Nation, there was no waiting it out \u2014 residents had only minutes to reach boats<\/a> as fire jumped the rail line behind their homes, evacuating without the support of emergency services<\/a>. And this is the summer our government chose to scrap emissions targets<\/a>, support a new oilsands pipeline with public money<\/a> and accelerate LNG projects<\/a> \u2014 decisions that will likely make summers like this one more frequent, more severe and harder to survive for the people who have the least power to protect themselves. I am standing here trying to calm my own anxiety so my baby can keep sleeping, aware that my heartbeat alone can unsettle him, while people who hold so much more power than I do are making choices that will shape the rest of his life.<\/p>\n Baby Z, I don\u2019t know yet how I am supposed to show you the beauty of the world, and everything there is left to save, everything there is to fight for, without burdening you with the grief of everything we have already lost, and all the things I experienced that you never will. Someday you\u2019ll need to know all of it \u2014 who made these choices, and why, and what it cost \u2014 and I hope you\u2019ll be someone who fights back. But for now, my job is to keep swaying, to keep the room calm, to let you sleep a little longer before any of this is yours to carry.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I am standing in my kitchen in a grey cotton robe, holding my baby \u2014 12 weeks old…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":810915,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":["post-810914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=810914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/810915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=810914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=810914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=810914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/CP176626565-1.jpg\"\/)
Toronto, like many cities with rising seasonal temperatures, does not currently have legislation mandating maximum indoor temperatures. In addition to the effects of smoke, many residents also face sweltering summer living conditions. Photo: Laura Proctor \/ The Canadian Press<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/CP176626566.jpg\"\/)
Wildfire smoke particles can enter the lungs and bloodstreams of children, including newborns. \u201dFor now, my job is to keep swaying, to keep the room calm,\u201d writes Amara Possian. Photo: Laura Proctor \/ The Canadian Press<\/p>\n