On a warm spring night, with blue sky reflecting in the waters of Lac La Biche and the sun still shining bright, a conservative and a socialist sat together across a table at a Legion in northern Alberta and had a drink.

The self-described socialist, Lars Olson, was one of more than 80,000 people displaced by the Fort McMurrray wildfire. He had long wild hair and a bushy beard, and was wearing an open Hawaiian-style shirt he called "very Dude-like."

The self-described conservative, Cliff Chamberlin, is from Lac La Biche, where thousands of the evacuees had come after the blaze. He had short-cropped white hair and a mustache, and was wearing a khaki shirt with an ironed crease on the sleeves.

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Over drinks, the two sparred about politics, about Alberta's NDP government and Premier Rachel Notley, about the federal Liberals and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. "I wouldn't have let him sit at my table if I knew he was a socialist," Mr. Chamberlin said, and they both laughed.

The displacement of people from Fort McMurray is the largest mass evacuation in Alberta's history and one of the largest in Canada, and has sent a flood of residents into communities around the province in search of shelter, supplies, safety. It has illuminated countless acts of generosity and kindness, made strangers into friends and even united both sides of Alberta's vast political spectrum – long enough for a drink at least.

As the closest sizable community to Fort McMurray, Lac La Biche hosted an estimated 8,000-12,000 evacuees in the days after the fire, at the town's evacuation centre and in hotels, private homes and campgrounds in and around the community.

In a town of less than 3,000, Mayor Omer Moghrabi said the period since the evacuation was the busiest Lac La Biche has ever been – busier than it was with oil-patch operations running full-steam, busier even than during the annual Pow Wow Days and Fish Derby, which is usually the busiest time of year in the community.

"It's a lot of people," Mr. Moghrabi said. "I'm very proud and amazed of how quickly the community reacted. People were taking in strangers, lending out their campers. Not asking what they can do, they're doing it."

At Squirrely's Gas Bar, employees worked around the clock to serve evacuees in the early days after the fire. They kept the store open for 24 hours at first, and it was full nearly every moment. Employee Cora Schaub said the store ran out of beef jerky and jerry cans, and had to double its orders of snacks and pop. She said many people wanted to share their experiences, and so she let them, listening as they described harrowing escapes, mourned the things they had left or lost in the fire.

"I let them release their heartache and pain," Ms. Schaub said. "That's a very sad event in their life. I felt sad on that day, too."

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When an evacuee told her his wife had a baby in the Lac La Biche hospital, Ms. Schaub offered to let the family stay at her house, but another stranger had already taken them in.

In a community that had slowed since the economic downturn, suddenly there were traffic jams, lines of parked cars and trucks filling the street downtown on both sides. At one of the hotels, a clerk patiently tried again to explain why there were no rooms left in the town.

"You know what's happening here, right?" she asked the caller. "We have 9,000 extra people in town."

One of the liquor stores ran out of Bud Light, then sold out of two consecutive emergency orders. ("That must be the drink in Fort McMurray," the clerk surmised.) At Omar's Barber Shop, Omar Saleh put out a sandwich board advertising free hot shaves for evacuees and did 120 in five days, so many he ran out of straight razors and had to buy more.

"I did it just to help out," Mr. Saleh said, as he trimmed a small boy's hair. "They've fled their houses and the last thing they remember is their razors, so a hot shave makes you pretty happy, right?"

At the Ginger House Chinese Restaurant, server Angela Cardinal watched people from other tables pick up the bills for evacuees. Ms. Cardinal gave one evacuee her jacket, another a pair of pants. "The Fort McMurray people, you could tell them from the eyes," she said. "You could see it, even when they tried to smile."

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Ms. Cardinal's home community, the Kikino Métis Settlement, also opened to evacuees, offering places to stay, piles of donations and three meals a day.

"No one sees colour, no one sees anything, they just want to help," she said. "And people are so helpful."

Close to 400 people stayed in the community, many of them Maritimers. Last Saturday, Kikino hosted a dance for their guests with a live band and an impromptu birthday party for a nine-year-old evacuee. In return, the evacuees cooked a traditional Newfoundland Jiggs dinner for their hosts. That evening, the concert turned into a jamboree, everyone singing and dancing.

Ms. Cardinal said one couple she knows bought a camper and have decided to stay at Kikino.

"The way they said it was almost like they felt like family," she said. She added that Kikino is the Cree word for "home."

A week after the blaze, cook Shaun Petrie had already gone through about 500 pounds of potatoes cooking free meals for evacuees, emergency crews and volunteers at the Royal Canadian Legion in Lac La Biche. His two hot meals a day included full roast beef and turkey dinners, lasagna, perogies and cabbage rolls.

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"It's the right thing to do," he said.

From his table nearby, Cliff Chamberlin said he has been deeply moved by everything happening in his community. At the Lac La Biche Heritage Society, where he is vice-president, seniors had been working long days sorting and preparing supplies for evacuees.

"I'm just blown away by the way this town has acted," he said. "It's choking me up to even talk about it, I'm just so goddamned proud. Nobody is running from it, everyone is facing it head-on."

As Mr. Chamberlin and Mr. Olson sipped their drinks, they talked about how it has been to see the communities come together. They shared stories they'd heard about nice things people had done, about how much those from Fort McMurray want to get back to work, about the strange things evacuees had grabbed on their way out the door. The last thing Mr. Olson took was a handful of live heritage chicken eggs, which he delivered to a friend to hatch.

"You didn't sit on them all the way did you?" Mr. Chamberlin joked, and everyone at the table laughed.

When talk turned to politics and Donald Trump, Mr. Chamblerin said, "Let's not go down that road," and so they didn't. And then, soon, they were all laughing again.