On Emotional Bus Tours, Residents Return to West Kelowna, BC, to View the Ashes

West Kelowna resident Annick deGooyer and her husband Rob Baker went on a bus tour on Sept. 1 to take a first-hand look at their burned-down home in Traders Cove, seen in an undated handout photo, a place in which they have lived for over twenty years. The Canadian Press/HO-Annick deGooyer

Annick deGooyer knew that her family’s home of more than 20 years had been destroyed by the McDougall Creek wildfire that consumed scores of properties in West Kelowna, B.C., about three weeks ago.

But she expected more to remain than the pile of “ashy dust” atop the foundations that she and her firefighter husband Rob Baker viewed last Friday while on a bus tour of the devastated neighbourhood of Trader’s Cove, on the west side of Okanagan Lake.