Nothing about Fort McMurray is easy: looking back at the city I knew

[Graduating from Father Patrick Mercredi Community High School in Fort McMurray, Alta. From left, Nicole Riva, Sunita Swaminathan, Michael Connors and Agnes Connors. PHOTO: Nicole Riva]

I left Fort McMurray after high school and barely looked back, until this week.

This week it has been at the centre of my thoughts, my memories and my work.

It’s been hard to watch the city I called home for five years go up in flames. It’s been strange to report on what’s happening and to interview people who have had to flee. How do you ask questions when you’re still in shock?

I don’t know many people in the city anymore, but this week — of all weeks — my older brother returned to our old stomping grounds for work. Luckily, he was already north of the city at an oilsands site when the fire spread to Fort McMurray on Tuesday. He was out of harm’s way and managed to get on one of the first industry flights out. It just made everything more surreal.

It’s been a long time since my family lived there, but talking about the fire still brought my mom to tears. There wasn’t anything specific that made her cry. It was just the memory of the years we spent there and seeing such devastating damage.

[Celebrating New Year’s Eve in 1997 at a best friend’s home in Fort McMurray, Alta. PHOTO: Nicole Riva]

It was home. It was the place I learned to drive, had my first kiss, my first cup of coffee, my first drink and where I made lifelong friends.

We moved there in 1993 because of my dad’s work in the oilsands. At the time Fort McMurray was a small community of about 35,000 people. A few years later the population had almost doubled. We watched empty fields fill with houses.

When I lived there, the city had one McDonald’s, a single Tim Hortons, and few major chain restaurants — we ordered from Jomaa’s Pizza, went to The Fish Place for dinner, got coffee at Robin’s Donuts and hung out a grungy pool hall. As the city grew so did those amenities. I remember how exciting it was when Earls restaurant opened.

It has been so long since I’d been to Fort McMurray I’ve been told I wouldn’t recognize it. Now, people who lived there until the mass evacuation on Tuesday wouldn’t recognize it today.

Fort McMurray is a mystery, particularly to those outside of Alberta. It conjures up stereotypes; some are true, many are not.

Outsiders likely picture a rough town, full of trucks, booze and drugs and people who commute in and out of the city instead of moving there.

But that’s only part of the picture. Especially in the ‘90s, it was a small town, where most of my friends had lived their whole lives.

You rarely went anywhere without running into someone you knew, which made it really hard to sneak a cigarette at the mall.

Two things that are true: there are a lot of people from the Atlantic provinces and there are a lot of trucks.

I’ve spent a lot of time this week explaining Fort McMurray and here are a few things to know.

Yes, there’s only one highway in and out of the city. And until a couple of years ago it had only two lanes.

Before it was widened, it was known as the “death highway” because of the collisions caused by the massive amounts of vehicles on the road.

This once deadly highway was the safe haven for thousands of people fleeing to the south.

Yes, temperatures can reach 35 C, just not typically in early May.

It really is in the middle of nowhere. It’s a more than five-hour drive to Edmonton, and is actually closer to the border of the Northwest Territories. Fort McMurray covers a lot of distance. Without traffic, it takes almost an hour to drive the length of the city.

But there’s a lot about Fort McMurray you won’t find on a map or on Wikipedia.

This is a tough place, full of contradictions. For all of its harsh realities, there is a softer side that many don’t know.

The winters are long and very cold, but those cold days are filled with sunshine and the long nights are brightened by the stunning colours of the Northern Lights.

It’s a blue-collar town, but it’s very supportive of the local arts scene. Keyano College has a renowned drama program and stages incredible community theatre.

The summers are scorching hot and filled with mosquitoes.

It’s built in the middle of a boreal forest. My first reaction to the city was that there were so many trees. I can’t imagine what it will look like with so many of them burned.

As a city that exists because of oilsands, hard times aren’t foreign. It’s seen great booms and devastating busts. There have been struggles, but none like this.

Nothing about Fort McMurray is easy. Just look up the process of getting oil out of oilsands. It’s hard, but that’s the kind of thing Fort McMurray is used to.

If you think this fire is too tough for the community to overcome, you don’t know Fort McMurray.