The eerie yellow-orange haze that trapped children indoors for days has lifted, but Kait Allen will continue to keep a close watch on her eight-year-old daughter.
Allen knows all too well that the signs of an oncoming asthma attack can emerge days after hazardous air has cleared: coughing, wheezing or feeling a tightness in the chest.
"Once triggered, once you've been exposed, it can take a long time for that lung inflammation to go away," said Allen, who also has to manage her own asthma when air quality in Toronto plummets.
"We don't just worry when you can see and smell and feel the haze. For those of us with asthma, we need to be thinking about the risks for weeks afterward."
In Etobicoke, Melanie Cabral also remains wary, though the anxiety she feels for her three children with asthma has begun to ease as air quality warnings retreat from last week's extremes.
For days, wildfire smoke from northwestern Ontario left Toronto with some of the world's worst air quality, forcing Cabral to work from home so she could keep her kids indoors.
Still, her middle daughter, six-year-old Gianna, needed extra medication and Cabral slept beside her to ensure her breathing didn't get worse. Cabral said her oldest daughter, Hannah, a busy 11-year-old, struggles when she can't leave their apartment.
"She tells me she feels trapped."
Cabral said last week's orange skies were a stark reminder that some dangers are beyond her control.
"It gives me anxiety because you don't know how long this is going to last," Cabral said. "Are we going to have to do this all summer for the kiddos?"
Beyond navigating health warnings and air quality alerts, last week's smoke-filled skies are forcing parents to confront a more unsettling concern: how do you protect your children from an environment that feels increasingly unpredictable and unsafe?
For parents whose children have asthma and other respiratory conditions, that question has no easy answer.
"Kids can't always control the environment that they're in, so it's up to us as parents to protect them," said Dr. Samantha Green, a family physician at Unity Health Toronto. "And that can be so difficult."
She said families who come to her clinic ask about whether they need to pull kids from camp or skip baseball games, caught in the difficult position of either following public health advice or disappointing a young child who has been counting down to something special.
"These are tough, tough problems to grapple with for parents."
Green, president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, called Canada's prolonged wildfire seasons and accompanying hazardous air quality alerts a relatively new phenomenon, with many of us still figuring out how to adapt. But, she added, following public health guidelines and keeping kids indoors are crucial, especially for those most at risk.
On Sunday, Environment Canada lifted air quality warnings for the Toronto area, though Monday could see worsening air with a projected Air Quality Health Index of 4, indicating moderate risk.
Asthma Canada recommends people with asthma closely monitor air quality levels and notes those with the chronic condition can be impacted by poor quality air at lower levels than the general public. Young children, the elderly and people with respiratory and cardiovascular conditions face the greatest risk from air pollution.
According to a 2025 survey by the organization, poor air quality is a key asthma trigger, with three-quarters of respondents stating that bad air days caused a severe flare-up. Most respondents also reported that poor air quality impacted their mental health. Research has shown that parents whose children have asthma have anxiety about wildfire smoke, which includes having to make complex and emotional decisions about how to minimize their kids' risk.
A study published last year in the CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) found that asthma-related emergency department visits spiked in Ontario in June 2023 when smoke from wildfires blazing in Quebec drifted into the province. Among children, asthma-related ER visits were also elevated.
The research also showed that people continued to go to the ER for breathing issues up to six days after the wildfire event ended. The study authors called the 2023 wildfire season a "wake-up call."
Cabral, the Etobicoke mom, said her family does everything they can to avoid a trip to the ER during hazardous air days, including keeping up with medications and using air purifiers. All three of her children have had to be hospitalized multiple times for their asthma.
Though her kids love playing in the park and going for neighbourhood walks, Cabral said they stay indoors when the air becomes unsafe.
Allen, marketing and communications director at the Lung Health Foundation, also watches the air quality. A mom of three, Allen said her family hunkered down at home last week "like it was a snowstorm." She said they were especially mindful that eight-year-old Audrey stayed indoors and stayed on top of her asthma medication.
Though skies are clearing, Allen said she won't yet let down her guard.
"When you have a child with asthma, you're not just looking for a bump up in symptoms during the alerts, you're watching for weeks afterwards to ensure they are OK."
