> Canada's inability to do basic forest fire prevention.

Australian here. What makes you think the "forest fire prevention" methods you outlined upthread are "basic"?

Have they ever been performed at the scale required in the history of European occupation of North America?

Normally dry lightening doesn't cause so many strikes to spark, nor do sparked fires normally spread so far and fast. Regardless of cause there are vast areas of remote forest covered land with extremely low moisture indexes - ie. dry as a tinderbox.

Clearing that land area of dry under brush and criss crossing it with wide firebreaks is no casual undertaking.