In October 1825, a fire tore through the British colony of New Brunswick, now the province of the same name in eastern Canada. Its ravages spread across about 15,500ha, an area about three-quarters the size of the Kruger National Park. It mostly consumed woodland. Almost two centuries later, Canadian historian Alan MacEachern happened upon a reference to the disaster. Intrigued, he set out to find out more about it, only to be stumped: like a puff of smoke, the fire had virtually vanished from regional histories written in the 20th and 21st centuries.
So a seed was planted and it grew into