Video taking off 33x its usual first day

Seven parachutes over Wainwright's high school football field

The Globe and Mail's clip of the midnight landing beside the town hospital has drawn far more attention than its Shorts usually get, and viewers are discussing who the jumpers were.

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The Globe and Mail Story of October 19, 2026Trari Newsroom

Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 157,412 views a day, 33 times a normal first day on this channel (4,736).

Paratroopers descend after fire at CFB Wainwright

The football field sits across the street from Wainwright's hospital, and around midnight it became a landing zone. Hours after a fire at Canadian Forces Base Wainwright in eastern Alberta, seven Canadian Forces members parachuted onto it.

The Globe and Mail's half-minute clip, filmed by an onlooker who can be heard saying "Yeah, I'm filming," shows several canopies dropping through the dark. One jumper lands on the grass under a glowing red parachute. Another comes down behind a low building. The footage then cuts to paramedics wheeling stretchers toward ambulances with their lights flashing.

The Globe's description adds what the camera does not show. A helicopter touched down soon after to unload medical equipment, including what appeared to be a ventilator, which the troops wheeled into the hospital. Several emergency rooms in the province declared a code orange, and air ambulances came from Edmonton and Saskatoon.

The clip reached about 108,000 views in its first twelve hours, and its comments arrived roughly ten times faster than on a usual first day for the channel's Shorts. Much of that discussion is about the title: many viewers say the jumpers were more likely search and rescue technicians than paratroopers, and they trade theories about which base they flew from.

The Globe has kept reporting. In a later video, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, whose riding includes Wainwright, praises soldiers who ran toward the fire. Its description cites Alberta Premier Danielle Smith: four Canadian Armed Forces members died and 39 were injured. A separate video traces how the fire spread across the base.

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