By: Wayne Litke

Friends, relatives and anyone crazy enough to invite me to their wedding need to know one minor detail. Lately, I have noticed that when I am able to be at that special day when a man and woman are joined in matrimony, something unusual always happens. Actually, it is more like something terrible occurs.
Prior to 2010 I had not noticed that my appearance at a wedding was linked to a natural disaster. However, that changed this year when my daughter's marriage plans had to be quickly revamped when the Town of Maple Creek and the surrounding area was hit with the worst flood in its history. That was in June, and a week later my wife and I traveled to Quebec for her nephew's wedding.
As we approached Montreal by air, the pilot began addressing the crew and passengers. He welcomed us all to the province and city, and then explained that a freak earthquake had just occurred near Montreal. Residents were panic stricken and many buildings were evacuated as items fell from shelves, desks and displays. We joked about the quake as relatives quickly pointed out that we were the harbingers of bad luck when it comes to weddings and natural disasters.
Then we traveled to the interior of British Columbia last week for a niece's marriage. Forest fires were burning in the surrounding area filling the air with a blue haze, but it wasn't too bad. However, a couple of days after we arrived a mixture of wind, lightning and tinder-dry conditions resulted in small fires being fanned into very aggressive and dangerous blazes. Fires doubled in size overnight, joined together and then threatened residents' homes in rural areas. Evacuation orders were issued and people fled. Meanwhile, residents in nearby towns such as Fraser Lake were served with evacuation alerts as the Binta Lake fire jumped roads and could have easily reached the town if the wind changed direction slightly.
With Ashley and Cody Thon's wedding only 36 hours away, residents were on edge as the smoke thickened and breathing became noticeable if any effort was exerted. A camp of 150 firefighters was set up in Fraser Lake and the hockey rink was transformed into an emergency response centre. However, a massive, four-engine water bomber that was sitting on-call on Fraser Lake remained grounded for much of the time, perhaps due to the thick smoke.
The bomber can scoop up 7,200 gallons of water in about half a minute and requires a lake that is at least five miles long for a runway. I was able to watch the plane as it flew nearby over Francois Lake and appeared almost to stall as it turned into the wind and quickly descended to lake level. However, instead of skimming the surface and taking on water, it landed and almost came to a stop as it refilled. I am guessing the rough water may have destroyed it's fuselage if the refilling had occurred at a normal rate of speed.
As for the outdoor wedding, it went ahead and was a beautiful ceremony. The smoke continued to thicken as the day went on and soon visibility beyond half a kilometer was impossible. Overhead, helicopters were forced to fly at increasingly lower levels as the air quality worsened. The newly-wed couple took everything in stride and the reception went ahead as planned. Extreme caution had to be taken to ensure a cigarette butt or spark did not ignite grass around the hall. The day after the event, my lungs felt like I had smoked a pack of cigarettes as I coughed, blew my nose repeatedly, and dealt with a sore throat.
Fires continued to burn across the province and a smokey haze accompanied us on most of the first day as we headed home Aug. 22. The Binta fire, the largest in the province, had burned 40,000 hectares of timber and was only 10 per cent contained. Thanks to  extremely dry conditions and massive areas of dead trees killed by the mt. pine beetle, B.C. has had over 1,500 fires this year which have consumed 309,000 hectares. Text messages from our children confirmed the smoke was blowing across Alberta and into Saskatchewan.
On Aug. 23, we awoke to clear skies at Jasper. However, the air soon filled with smoke. We packed up and quickly left since the source was a nearby campfire, and we have simply had too much smoke.
In light of the calamities that have occurred during or immediately prior to weddings I have attended, please think twice before you consider inviting me to your blessed event.