"I asked God to make it so the fire wouldn't burn our house," says Lane. The freckle-faced resident of Louis Creek, B.C., stands in his Velcro sandals, yellow shorts and stretchy T-shirt amid the ashes of what was his home. The back-yard hill on which his mom put a plastic waterslide has been licked into black char by flames. Oddly, a swing set has been left standing, its seats partially melted. Lane says he can still use it, and he also believes that the bike can be repaired.

God, it seems, has picked a good victim. When I ask Lane what he thinks now of his request to be protected by a divine Saviour, he looks me straight in the eye: "Sometimes," he says, "God doesn't answer because he's teaching you to get stronger and learn to do things by yourself."

Lane, I wish I could bottle your spirit and take it across our land. But reality nags: Unless there is a great welling-up of compassion for the victims of Canada's worst fire season ever, Lane and others like him are going to encounter the biggest test of character they could ever have imagined.

If these fires had ravaged Toronto, the hectares they've destroyed would mean an area twice the size of the city would be gone. But this is the hinterland, and few seem to care that a small band of citizens -- 3,200 firefighters at last count -- are battling Mother Nature at her most destructive. 

Since April, the B.C. interior has been stricken with 2,110 fires, 850 of which are still burning. Almost half of those fires are along the roads that Lane's dad, a mobile gravel crusher, travels -- from Kamloops, through the North Thompson Valley, and on to the north.

In Lane's community alone, 70 families have lost their homes. The region's largest employer, the Tolko Industries Ltd. mill, is in ashes, and 170 jobs are in limbo. Louis Creek looks like Armageddon. Every house around Lane's place has been destroyed. 

During my visit, I see a two-year-old bear walking gingerly across the creek behind us, its feet strangely curled up. I'm told the bear has burned paws and has been making its way about town for days looking for food.

Not everyone is facing the disaster with Lane's optimism. Two local clergy tell me of a suicide last week, someone whose property in neighbouring Barriere escaped the flames, but who couldn't bear the stress. Neither the RCMP nor the local coroner has confirmed the suicide -- but Barriere is the town that was evacuated; its 3,000 residents lived for two days thinking that every one of their homes had been engulfed in flames and destroyed. 

Reporters have not been allowed into the region, and as a result, misinformation has sent the evacuees on an emotional roller-coaster. "Urban media said Barriere was wiped out," said Ann Piper, editor of the North Thompson Star Journal. "The emotional impact of that was far worse. We woke up, turned on the TV, and heard we were all toast." 

As 20 residents gathered at the Barriere Pentecostal church for a potluck supper last week, they told me that they'd have preferred to see accurate reporting, rather than live through two days of shock, wondering if their homes were all gone. "All you really can hang onto is God," said a smiling lady as she offered me molasses cake. 

Two members of the congregation were missing from the potluck supper -- Ron and Christine Opper, both in their 80s, who since losing their house had gone to stay with their children in Quesnel. A generous couple, they gave away vegetables from their garden, and money from their pensions to the church and its work -- but they had no insurance. The church's Rev. Bob Basher described them as very low in spirit, and appealed to the other congregants to help them out.

The day after the potluck supper, I visited the Barriere Fire Staging Centre at the edge of town. Jennifer Fraser, a 28-year-old forester for the Tolko mill, told me that she had seen her workplace go up in flames. "We were standing in the mill yard . . . You couldn't see anything. All you could see was smoke and ashes and pieces of trees burning in the air and it got louder and louder. It was unbelievable, the speed, the sound, the flame," said Ms. Fraser as she praised the volunteer firefighters from Barriere who had battled the blaze and saved the community. 

Barriere's industrial park looked as if it would make a spectacular apocalyptic movie set. But just across the highway, Ms. Fraser has set up firefighting headquarters. "I called my dad and said, 'Dad, I need an office,' and he brought his trailer over," laughed Ms. Fraser. From there, she managed the men who drove the excavators, water trucks, graters, cats, and skidders to keep battling the fires.

In nearby Kamloops, Sears had loaned the Salvation Army the use of its empty mall store, which had been converted into a gathering place for clothes, food and toys for fire victims. Meanwhile, George Evans, a Nissan dealer from Kamloops, brought in donations from the North Thompson Relief Fund he'd started -- enough donations, he said, to have filled a car showroom six times. "Twenty per cent of my customers are burned out of their homes, as is the case for all the dealers up here," he told me as his cell phone rang with another donation.

So far, since Mr. Evans and his colleagues began soliciting aid for the people they feel have been largely forgotten by Canadians, the major auto makers have donated between $50,000 and $125,000 each. Scotiabank handles the North Thompson Relief Fund. Mr. Evans keeps his cellphone available for more donations (1-800-444-4910).

This fire-charred part of British Columbia has been without power for 10 days. In any case, most residents have lost their fridge and freezer. 

But sympathetic appliance store owners from Kamloops have been offering replacements at reduced prices, or are donating reconditioned units through a local Maytag dealer.

The example of one small part of Canada reaching deep into its pockets to care for its neighbours is an inspiration. But its example will have to spread. 

After my return to Southern Ontario, I phone my acquaintances back in Barriere and Louis Creek. They tell me the air is still smoky, and that the fires are still blazing. As I write, they say that they are still awaiting evacuation orders.