THE LONG AFTER — Monday May 25
The Night Wadin Bay Stayed
The evacuation order came Monday morning.
Denis Renaud did not leave.
Neither did Seth Bergsveinson, or Shaun Bergsveinson, or nineteen other people who had decided, sometime over that weekend, that they were going to stay and fight.
Wadin Bay is a small community on a lake in northern Saskatchewan, 25 kilometres north of La Ronge. About 80 cottages. Roughly 220 people in the summer. Year-round, far fewer.
In June 2025, the Pisew Fire came for them with 70-kilometre-an-hour winds.
The twenty-two who stayed had been preparing since Friday. By Monday morning, when the order came, they had sprinklers running on the cabins, lake water pumped up through hoses, mobile tanks positioned, and six to eight boats in the water at various points around the bay in case anyone needed to get out fast.
They went out into the lake twice when the fire got close. Two hundred, three hundred yards from shore. Waited. Came back in.
Then they fought from Monday evening until four in the morning. Twelve hours without stopping. Hauling water. Refilling pumps. Running the lines.
By the time the wind shifted and the fire moved past, Wadin Bay had lost one shed.
The Pisew Fire went on to burn 220,066 hectares of northern Saskatchewan. It destroyed 56 homes, cottages and businesses before it was contained in August.
From the air, the photos tell the story plainly. Scorched earth in every direction. And in the middle of it, on the water, a small community that did not burn.
Wadin Bay had been Saskatchewan’s first FireSmart community since 2013. Renaud and Bergsveinson had spent years clearing brush, running drills, preparing for exactly this.
When it came, they were ready.
The province has not yet reimbursed them the $39,000 they spent fighting the fire.
“That’s a bit of a kick in the gut,” Renaud said, “after we fought the fire on their behalf.”
He said it without bitterness. He said it the way people say things when they’ve already moved on to what comes next.
They live in the forest. They want the beauty of the forest. And every year, they clean it.
That’s how they kept it.
Verified sources:
CBC News, April 7, 2026 — https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/community/sask-wadin-bay-firefighting-costs-9.7154987
paNOW / larongeNOW / CJME / CKOM, April 18, 2026
Globe and Mail, September 3, 2025
paNOW / northeastNOW, September 8, 2025