It used to be a rare summer night warm enough in Vancouver when I did not have to wear a sweater outside. Now, my sweaters languish in the closet until October. Photo by Derek Baldwin

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A son-in-law installs fire-suppression systems. These systems aren’t meant to suppress fires inside the homes — they are meant to suppress fires outside the homes.

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His part of the world is thickly forested, and in a warming world his customers have begun looking over their shoulders at the enveloping trees. The forest can no longer be trusted. The mind’s eye — the one attuned to possible catastrophe — sees a candling curtain of flame. The son-in-law sees a growth industry.

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A summer trip to France ends in Paris. The City of Light bakes under a heat dome. The girders of the Eiffel Tower grow warm to the touch. The Louvre closes when frazzled employees facing heat exhaustion walk off the job.

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Residential air-conditioning is a rarity, and Parisians and we tourists suffering alongside them flee the city’s 19th-century apartment buildings. Their zinc roofs have become frying pans. Their apartments are ovens. The sidewalk bistros overflow with climate refugees seeking relief. There aren’t enough Aperol spritzes in the entire world to cool them.

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Years ago — how long has it been? 45 years since moving here? — it was that rare summer night warm enough in Vancouver when I did not have to wear a sweater outside.

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Moving from Windsor, where the semi-tropical summers were so hot and humid that families slept in their basements, I was shocked at how cool it kept here, and how dependently it rained even in July and August. Now, my sweaters languish in the closet until October. We go to bed with the windows open and covers thrown to the floor. The white noise of a fan lulls us to sleep, and in the morning my pillow is soaked with sweat.

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When once we watched news-hour weather reports simply to see what the local forecast promised, we now watch it with an obsessive scrutiny that takes in the whole province — noting the number of lightning strikes in the north and the shrinking depth of snow packs in the Coast Mountains, and watching the progression of colours shifting across the provincial map as temperatures rise — yellow for livable, red for alarm, the bruised splotches of purple marking the truly frightening spikes of heat that signal potential danger. The summer’s real thermometer isn’t read in Celsius or Fahrenheit anymore. It’s measured in the tally of fires burning out of control.

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A friend’s relatives arrive from Oklahoma. They have come north to go boating. They marvel at the canopy of big cedars and firs that shade our neighbourhood. Their mahogany tans, on the other hand, speak to lives lived in the sun, and they themselves speak of weeks of unbearable heat.

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“Ninety to 100 degrees (Fahrenheit) during the day,” one of the women says, “and never falling below 80 degrees at night.” She grimaces, shaking her head at the thought.