BARRIERE, BC—The man whose dropped cigarette ignited one of the most destructive wildfires in Canadian history had no way of knowing it at the time, but that fateful mistake was to become his first step on a journey to faith in Jesus Christ.

Mike Barre accidentally started the blaze on July 30, 2003, on parched land behind his home in Barriere, a small community in B.C’s southern Interior. It eventually ravaged more than 260 square-kilometres of forest—an area twice the size of Toronto—destroyed 75 homes and a sawmill and forced the evacuation of 3,000 people. One person committed suicide.

It also cost the provincial government more than $31 million to extinguish.

Filled with guilt and remorse for what he had done, Barre welcomed the offer of a visit from Bob Bashor, pastor of the Pentecostal Christian Life Assembly in Barriere.

“I asked him if I could come and give him a little gift,” recalls Bashor. “‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And could we have prayer, too?’

“I said, ‘By all means, Mike.’ So I went and I spent two hours with him and gave him the little gift and met his wife and had a time of prayer.”

That “little gift” was a $1,000 cheque from an anonymous donor in Burnaby, who had seen reports of the wildfire on television, and had contacted Bashor to ask him to pass the money on to Barre. He agreed. But having never met Barre, it took Bashor three weeks to track him down.

At first, he says, Barre and his wife did not want to take the cheque.

“‘I’ll tell you a secret,’” Bashor says he told them. “‘You two do not have the ability to carry the burden and the guilt of this fire. You need to know that people love you and are praying for you. You’re not big enough to carry this guilt. You have to give it to the Lord.’”

Barre began attending Bashor’s church—and after three visits, gave his life to Christ. He was baptized in August 2004.

But Bashor was not the only person to help Barre make that decision.

Following the blaze, Pentiction resident Menno Unger was enlisted by Mennonite Disaster Services to take teams of volunteers to assist in cleaning up the devastation. They stayed at Christian Life Assembly.

On Wednesday nights, Unger led a fellowship time at the church, to which he invited people who had been affected by the fire. One evening, Barre admitted his responsibility for starting the blaze. Also present were Rick Appel and his wife, Pat, who had lost their home and most of their portable welding business as a result.

Suddenly, says Unger, Appel got up and shook Barre’s hand. “He said, ‘Mike, I’m not mad at you.’ That moved all of us there. We were quite shocked, because nobody had planned this.”

“I wanted to show people that there was definitely no hard feelings between our family and his,” says Appel. “Accidents happen.”

Appel later launched a petition drive urging the Crown not to prosecute Barre on a charge of dropping a burning substance within one kilometre of a forest. He collected about 1,400 signatures.

But the petition failed. Last December, a judge in Kamloops accepted the Crown’s recommendation to fine Barre $3,000 as a warning and deterrent to others.

Bashor believes Barre was treated unfairly. “Mike was the first one to spot the fire. He reported it. My goodness, he did everything he could—and still they went after his hide,” he says.

The verdict also leaves Barre vulnerable to being sued by others who are not so forgiving.

“Some of my neighbours are disappointed that he didn’t lose everything. They figured he should lose everything,” says Appel.

“Well, I’m glad I don’t feel that way. I think that would be a terrible way to feel. They won’t get back what they lost.”