Sunflower ghosts and bicycle skeletons on Fort McMurray's Prospect Drive

People say all kinds of things when trying to comfort loved ones in crisis: at least you have your health, it could have been so much worse, it's just stuff.

But on the day Joseph Anthony returned to Fort McMurray, Alta., he could find no words to make himself or his teenage daughter feel better. He just stood in the road, shivering.

In front of him was a pile of ash and rubble that used to be his house.

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"This is the front entrance," he said finally, after he screwed up the courage to cross the street.

He was pointing to a hole in the ground.

But there was pride in his voice.

Being proud is a feeling he's grown used to during his eight years in Canada.

Anthony immigrated to Fort McMurray from India with his wife and two daughters in 2008. The couple almost immediately secured jobs in labs at the hospital, and the whole family became Canadian citizens soon after. The girls are in high school and get straight A's.

"And this is the side door, to the basement," he explained, pointing to the ashy ground.

Anthony and his wife of more than 20 years, Shiny, often have guests here. Mostly, they gather in the kitchen — to eat, and talk and cook.

In a few weeks, they would have been able to pick tomatoes and little green chili peppers from the garden for a Thakalikka curry that burns the throat — eruv, as they call it in his hometown . The apple tree would be just about ready to drop fruit too. And the sunflowers, tall as the couple's 15-year-old, would have been nodding to passersby on the sidewalk.

We have to start from scratch.- Joseph Anthony, Fort McMurray, Alta., resident

It seems Anthony was seeking that kind of peace and security when he came back here. His whole family saw their house was destroyed by fire, when they checked satellite images online. But he drove north on Highway 63 with hope.

"We expected that we can find something to take out from here," he said. "But this is like after a war."

The snow white tackifier, sprayed over the toxic ash to keep it from blowing into the air, has drained all colour from this place. The fire had already taken everything else.

Heat singed leaves off trees, and melted bicycles and cars to frames like petrified bones.

On the phone from Edmonton earlier this week, Anthony explained he was praying that at least one of his 20 photo albums was spared.

The family had left them in India safely stowed in a storage locker since 2008. Then, on a vacation to India just two months before the fire, they decided it was time to bring photos back to Canada. Anthony's  wedding album, baby books, and a memorial from his father's funeral made him smile every time he opened them.

"When I am looking at those albums, we are going back to all good memories — my parents, my sisters, my friends," he said.

"It feels like they are near with me. None of the money can recover that."

The realization that the albums, along with everything else, are gone took time to sink in. When it did, Anthony stopped touring, stopped talking.

He just cried.

In a couple of years, when his eldest daughter graduates high school, the Anthonys had planned to sell the house so they could pay for post-secondary school. The opportunity for his children to go on to higher education was the main reason they moved to Canada.

"That was the plan.  But now, I don't know where anything is. We have to start from scratch."

May no one ever say to him, "It's just stuff."