On June 17, Environment and Climate Change Canada issued a heat warning for eastern Ontario, including Toronto. The alert warned Torontonians of “dangerously hot and humid conditions expected through most of the week” due to the human-induced climate crisis. 

With temperatures as high as 35 degrees Celsius, Torontonians were not prepared for the sudden and extreme temperature increase. By the 2050s, Canadians are predicted to experience four times as many days with temperatures of 30 degrees Celsius or higher.

Understanding heat waves

A heat wave is a period when excessive heat accumulates over a series of unusually hot days and nights. Once a rare event, heat waves have increasingly affected numerous parts of the world in recent years. 

The World Health Organization identifies heat waves as “among the most dangerous of natural hazards.” Meanwhile, a report from Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, World Weather Attribution, and Climate Central reveals that 6.8 billion people — the equivalent of 78 per cent of the world’s population — experienced at least a month of extreme heat. 

The impact of heat waves on the human body can vary by age, gender, urbanization, and socioeconomic factors. Exposure to excessive heat can also lead to heat exhaustion and heatstroke.

Heat waves can be more dangerous when combined with high humidity, as they impair the body’s cooling ability through the evaporation of sweat.Young children, the elderly, people with chronic illnesses, athletes, outdoor workers, city dwellers, and those living without air conditioning are particularly vulnerable to heat-related illness and death. 

In response to the extreme weather Canada experienced this summer, Environment Canada urged people to visit loved ones, particularly if they are living alone, disabled, or mentally ill. The City of Toronto reminded people to seek relief from the heat at various drop-in centres, shelters, and 24-hour respite sites across the city.

U of T community members’ reaction

Joy Xu, a third-year student studying history, cinema studies, and English, described her experiences taking classes amid the extreme weather conditions.

“I definitely felt an extreme loss of appetite,” Xu wrote in an email to The Varsity. “Though classrooms have been air conditioned luckily, because of the extreme differences in temperature going in and out of buildings I have also had more frequent headaches and felt more easily nauseous.”

In an interview with The Varsity, Jeffrey Brook — an associate professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health with 25 years of experience as an environmental scientist — commented on the stuffy classrooms that students and teachers have been experiencing due to the lack of air-conditioning.

“We want all our schools [to have] air conditioning? Where does this end? Eventually, we [might] just have to build a dome over everywhere and live in an artificial world,” said Brook. Later, he stated that our reliance on air-conditioning is a band-aid solution that would only aggravate our current climate problems. 

Rather than installing more air-conditioning in schools, Brook believes Toronto should create more green spaces and transition to green energy and heat pumps, which are economical and more energy-efficient cooling units. He also sees the current climate crisis as a great opportunity for teachers to educate students more about climate crisis solutions and inspire their interest them in natural spaces. 

Brook also mentioned the growing movement where teachers take their students outside the classroom to help them develop a deeper connection with nature. 

“You can turn it into a bit of an opportunity for [including] things into the curriculum and for inspiring youth to work on solutions and think about how they can be a force for change. As you know, they’re the inheritors of… this damaged planet.”

U of T’s responsibility 

Dr. Samantha Green, an assistant professor at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine and the chair of Health Providers Against Poverty, believes that the university has a moral obligation to open air conditioned spaces to the wider public during extreme heat events.

“Why only allow students and other university community members, when during an extreme heat event, it’s members of the public, especially the elderly, and the very young, who are most at risk?” she said. 

Dr. Green also acknowledged that the university had made the right step by promising to divest from fossil fuels. However, she believes that U of T could “do more” to increase students’ access to nature by planting more trees around the downtown campus, emphasizing green spaces’ benefits on physical and mental health.