Brian Hughes is a Canadian musician and a long-standing member of Loreena McKennitt’s Juno-winning band who moved from Toronto to Los Angeles in 2000 to be closer to the jazz scene. Over the years, Hughes and his partner, Pamela, have seen their fair share of extreme weather—like good Californians, they stored their important documents in a Ziploc in the freezer. But none of that prepared them for early last week, when they were forced to evacuate in less than 30 minutes. By the next day, their house, Brian’s collection of more than 40 guitars and their entire neighbourhood was gone.
I’m sorry we’re connecting under these circumstances. How are you? Where are you?
Brian Hughes: We’ve just relocated to a friend’s place in Pasadena. He’s a guitarist who’s on tour in the UK until March, so he offered us his condo, which was extremely kind. Hopefully by that time the insurance company will have sorted out what’s next. I know they’ve already got a relocation service looking for a place for us for 2026. It’s definitely not what we were planning for this new year, to be homeless with no possessions other than the clothes on our backs and our vehicle.
Going back to last week, when did you first realize you were in trouble?
Brian: Last Tuesday evening, we were watching the news, following the Pacific Palisades fire, which was the big story. My wife, Pamela, made a delicious minestrone soup, and we sat down for dinner. Then, around 6:15, the power went out. We got our candles together, but then we went back to dinner. Soon afterward, Pamela got a text from a friend asking what was happening with the fire. She was like, “The Palisades fire?" The friend told us there was also a fire in Eaton Canyon, where we live. We checked in with one of our neighbours, who said, “Yes, fire! Get out now.” So that’s what we did. Pamela got a few things together for us and for our dog, Una. I went back to the guest house, which is my office and studio, to grab some of our important documents: the deed to our home, our living trusts, which we keep in a Ziploc in the freezer because that’s what you do in California just in case. I grabbed my laptop and one guitar—my 1973 Gibson ES-175—and a pair of underwear and that was it. Within half an hour we were gone, fully expecting to return in a day or two.
Were you seeing signs of danger as you drove away?
Brian: We weren’t seeing fire or smelling fire, no. It was just very windy—gusts up to 85 miles an hour—and the farther east we drove into Pasadena, the worse it got. Our first stop was the Langham hotel, which is a favourite. It’s more expensive, so I thought they might have room, but as we drove up, there were 75 or 100 cars in line for valet parking. I started just calling other hotels. At that point, our friend Denny called to invite us to stay with him in Venice Beach, which was about 45 minutes away. We thought that was a long way to drive for just one overnight, but in the end it was our best option, particularly with a 70-pound Staffordshire terrier–Great Dane mix. We got to Venice and went to bed, and that was the end of “before.”
Were you able to keep tabs on your home?
Brian: No—we had no idea what was happening, and then the next day in the early afternoon our neighbour across the back alley texted to say that the homes were gone. Pamela called another neighbour to double-check, and she said yeah, it’s gone. There are no homes on our street—just chimneys.
I can’t imagine what that was like to process.
Brian: I still can’t. Every few minutes, it’s like you’re realizing it all over again. A week later and we still haven’t been able to see our property in person. We tried, and the whole perimeter of Altadena was yellow-caution-taped off with National Guard and police officers. We have a friend who did manage to get in and take some pictures, which came in very handy for filing our insurance claim but were pretty difficult to look at. We try to focus on the positive—we are safe, our dog is safe—but it’s hard not to think about how we could have stayed for another half an hour and grabbed more stuff. There were 40 guitars in my studio, and I only took one. There was my entire vinyl collection—more than 500 records collected over a lifetime. I just never thought we wouldn’t be back. I even locked the studio door. That’s one of those funny things—I went to take our dog for a walk yesterday, put my hand in my jacket pocket and pulled out the key to my studio, and that just about killed me. Just to think, Oh my god, there’s not a door to put that key into anymore.
That is an incredibly sad thought.
Brian: You know, I got a message from a Canadian friend, Rubin Fogel, who is a concert promoter. He told me about losing his belongings in a fire several years ago, and he said it helped him to become less covetous, more able to let go of things, so maybe that will be us. We bought a place in Mexico, where Pamela’s mom lives. We had talked a lot about spending more time there, but the question was always, What are we going to do with all of our stuff? That’s not a problem now.
So everything is gone?
Brian: As far as we know. Oh, here’s Pamela...
Pamela: Some of the pictures we have seen are really close up, and it looks like I still have my potato masher and one muffin tin. We have lost so much that it’s hard to think about any one thing you would have saved. We bought a piece by a Toronto painter in New York, and I wish I had taken it with us. I’m absolutely devastated to have lost it.
Brian: You can also see the body of one of my guitars because that part was steel. The neck and everything else that was wood is gone. I think it’s maybe that, because the fires were so fast and so hot, they mostly attacked the wood. There’s a picture of our neighbour’s RV across the street, and it looks untouched. The home is gone, but the RV looks like it just came out of a car wash.
Pamela: I’ve ordered hazmat suits, so when we do get to go back we can see if we can find anything else in the rubble. Maybe some of my jewellery. We’ll see, but that’s just stuff. What is really hard to think about is that our entire community is gone.
Brian: There is a street near us called Christmas Tree Lane that has blocks and blocks of these 100-plus-year-old deodar cedars. Every year they decorate the trees, and people come from all over. I don’t know yet if that street made it through or not.
Have you always lived in the same spot?
Pamela: Yes. We came here in 2000, and we chose Altadena because it was a place that we could afford: beautiful but in need of some work. In the past 25 years it has evolved so much, getting hipper, becoming a community full of painters, writers, musicians. It has just been such a wonderful place to live, and now it’s gone. Our local hardware store was 130 years old—gone. Farnsworth Park, where we took our dog every day—gone. It’s going to take decades to rebuild it all.
Your daughter Thea launched a GoFundMe that has already raised over $45,000. I’m sure that kind of support is gratifying.
Pamela: Oh, definitely, and we are so grateful. The GoFundMe was something Loreena McKennitt encouraged us to do. I was hesitant because we have insurance and a safe place to stay and there are people so much worse off, but Loreena called and said that people want to help and that we could use the money to support ourselves as well as other artists from our community. At times like this, it’s about pulling together, and I am so grateful to feel the support from friends and fans.
Does it feel a bit perverse to have a climate-change-denying president take office just as this is all happening?
Pamela: Oh, is there a new president? I hadn’t heard.
Brian: I know there are a lot of people in Trump’s circle and even in the party who don’t believe in climate change, and then of course there’s everything going on with Trump calling Canada the 51st state. Loreena made a dark joke the other day that she was practising the American national anthem. What I can’t stand is seeing Trump on TV disrespecting the firefighters and police in California who have been working around the clock.
Pamela: They have prison inmates fighting the fire. Trump should be one of them!
You mentioned your guitar collection. If you could save just one more, which would it have been?
Brian: That would be my 1971 Fender Stratocaster, as I use it primarily when I play with Loreena. It has appeared on all of her albums from Parallel Dreams on. I really regret not taking it as it was highly modified and will be hard to replace. But all of them were special.
Pamela: Maybe you don’t need to replace all of them
Brian: I’m not making any promises, but so much of it is the memories. Although one nice thing with my records is that, a couple of years ago, we started giving our daughter a few every Christmas—a lot of my favourites: Grant Green, Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix—probably about 20 in total. So it’s nice to think that those have survived.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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Courtney Shea is a freelance journalist in Toronto. She started her career as an intern at Toronto Life and continues to contribute frequently to the publication, including her 2022 National Magazine Award–winning feature, “The Death Cheaters,” her regular Q&As and her recent investigation into whether Taylor Swift hung out at a Toronto dive bar (she did not). Courtney was a producer and writer on the 2022 documentary The Talented Mr. Rosenberg, based on her 2014 Toronto Life magazine feature “The Yorkville Swindler.”