Brittany Hobson, The Canadian Press

Buses carrying residents from the northern city of Flin Flon were being loaded up Wednesday morning, preparing to bring them back after a menacing wildfire forced thousands to flee weeks earlier.

"Welcome home to everyone," Deputy Mayor Alison Dallas-Funk said in a Facebook video Wednesday morning.

"Can't wait to have you back in community."

Buses began leaving Winnipeg and Brandon before 10 a.m., a schedule posted online showed. Residents staying elsewhere could expect to leave for Flin Flon later Wednesday, while some travelled back on their own. 

Some wildfire evacuees staying at a shelter in northern Manitoba may be moved elsewhere as more communities return home and the government closes temporary evacuation centres.

Transportation and Infrastructure Minister Lisa Naylor said roughly 114 people have been staying at the shelter in Thompson for the past three weeks due to a shortage of hotel spaces.

"Folks have been there a really long time, and that was never the intention," Naylor told a wildfire briefing Thursday.

Race-based data collected in Manitoba's health-care systems suggests Indigenous, African and Black patients are waiting longer in Winnipeg emergency rooms and often leave without seeing a doctor.

A report examining visits to emergency rooms and broken down by race says African and Black patients are triaged at the same rate as other racial groups, but are waiting the longest, upwards of five hours in some cases.

Parker Ledoux never imagined spending the last month of her Grade 12 school year cooped up in a Winnipeg hotel room far from her home.

But when an out-of-control wildfire encroached on Creighton, Sask., at the end of last month and forced its some 1,200 people to flee, that's exactly what happened.

With graduation celebrations supposed to take place next week and community members still displaced, Ledoux is not sure what the quintessential teenage experience will look like for her and her classmates.

Winnipeg hotels were opening up Monday to evacuees who fled their homes due to raging wildfires, while to the west in Saskatchewan, thousands more were ordered to flee.

The Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency issued an alert late Monday afternoon, saying the northern town of La Ronge had ordered an evacuation as fire had breached its airport.

The agency said flames were fast-moving and that people in the community of 2,500, as well as anyone within 20 kilometres, including nearby Air Ronge and the Lac La Ronge Indian Band, had to leave immediately.

Cottage owners and disaster prevention experts in Manitoba are urging governments to develop comprehensive wildfire management plans after a pair of devastating wildfires.

Close to 1,000 people were forced from their homes last week as a wildfire near the Rural Municipality of Lac du Bonnet, spurred by dry, hot and windy conditions, burned nearby.

The quick-moving fire, which is currently being held, destroyed 28 homes and cottages and left two people dead.

Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew declared a state of emergency Thursday to aid the evacuation of a provincial park due to wildfires, one day after the bodies of two people were found in the ashes.

Kinew did not provide details about the man and woman who died in the fire in the Rural Municipality of Lac du Bonnet, a popular lakefront cottage area northeast of Winnipeg.

But he said the deaths mean officials are taking the danger seriously and want additional powers to enforce evacuation orders.

Dyana Lavallee stares at a copy of a photograph on display to the public at the Hudson's Bay Company Archives in Winnipeg. 

The Metis woman quickly recognizes it as the same one her grandmother had years ago. 

"This is my family," she said referring to the figures in the picture. "I'm actually shaking a bit."

It's not the first time Lavallee has visited the archives, but it is the first time she's seen that photo among the thousands of historical documents that are housed at the Archives of Manitoba. 

Wally Daudrich, who was recently defeated in the race to lead Manitoba's Opposition Progressive Conservatives, says he remains a "loyal" member of the party and still plans on seeking the Tory nomination to run in a byelection.

The hotel owner and longtime party board member says he hopes to run uncontested in the Spruce Woods constituency.

"I've been vetted (by) the party. I have gone through all those hoops … and I believe I'm ready to run as a candidate," Daudrich said in an interview Wednesday. 

Tréchelle Bunn has had a whirlwind month. 

She wrapped up her two-year tenure as one of the Southern Chiefs' Organization youth chiefs, finished her second year of law school at the University of Manitoba and received an Indspire award for her work in Indigenous communities at a ceremony in Vancouver.

Then an election held the day Bunn returned to Manitoba from B.C. put the young woman in the history books.