This photo essay is part of The Narwhal’s BIPOC Photojournalism Fellowship, operated in partnership with Room Up Front and made possible by The Reader’s Digest Foundation and the generosity of The Narwhal’s readers.

Canada brandishes its agricultural sector as an economic “powerhouse” that’s responsible for producing some of the world’s highest quality foods.

In 2019, the federal government unveiled the first-ever Food Policy of Canada, which is meant, in part, to ensure everyone across the country has access to “a sufficient amount of safe, nutritious and culturally diverse food.”

Yet the food that is harvested in Canada often does not end up on the plates of racialized and marginalized communities. Individuals from the Black, Indigenous and people of colour (BIPOC) community represent the most food-insecure people in Canada.

According to research from PROOF Food Insecurity Policy Research, an initiative of the University of Toronto in partnership with other universities, national food insecurity — the inability to access food due to financial constraints — is predominantly experienced by Black and Indigenous communities.

A 2020 PROOF analysis of Stats Canada data from 2017 and 2018 found that 28.2 per cent of Indigenous households and 28.9 per cent of Black households identify as being food-insecure, representing the highest rates in the country.

Black-centred urban farms in Toronto — one of the world’s most diverse cities, and Canada’s largest metropolitan city — recognize this issue and see first-hand how it impacts their own community.

Toronto’s primarily Black neighbourhoods — such as Downsview-Roding CFB, Weston and Glenfield Jane Heights — are some of the poorest in the city. In 2014, the city identified these neighbourhoods — along with 28 others — as Neighbourhood Improvement Areas. Today, these neighbourhoods have been hit the hardest with COVID-19 cases.

But even as an urgent need to improve these areas is top-of-mind for Toronto decision-makers, Black urban farmers say they still face significant uphill battles when it comes to bringing healthy, local produce to Black urban communities.

“Your food is your medicine and your lifestyle is your therapy,” Jacqueline Dwyer, co-founder of the Toronto Black Farmers and Food Growers’ Collective, tells The Narwhal. “I don’t see our food doing that. [Black people] are eating the worst kind of food now.”

Dwyer says there’s been a concerted effort from Black farmers in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) to bring more produce to the communities that need it most.

“We’re not here to sell to sexy white markets. We’re here to serve our community, to feed those who don’t have the money to buy food and access food banks regularly.”

The city recognizes this issue too, and initiated the Toronto Strong Neighbourhoods Strategy 2020 to provide funding to the neighbourhood improvement areas and establish action plans to improve their wellbeing. Providing “free land, soil, mulch, etc. for community gardens and urban farming,” was listed as a prioritized action to promote food security for the improvement ares.

Yet, despite these ongoing initiatives, Black farmers in the city say not enough is being done to connect food-growers with useable land. Accessing and retaining arable land — that is both affordable and offers proper infrastructure — continues to be a struggle for these marginalized farmers.

The following photos document the experience of three Black-led farms, Sundance Harvest, the Toronto Black Farmers and Food Growers’ Collective and Lucky Bug Farm, which are committed to resolving food insecurity within their communities but are struggling to access and retain the necessary land. Two of the farms are based in the GTA and one is based in Wellington County. Each of them, while different, have unique experiences with land accessibility and retention.

Sundance Harvest is a for-profit farm, founded and run by 24-year-old Cheyenne Sundance. The farm is located at Downsview Park, an urban federally and provincially run greenspace about a twelve-minute drive from the intersection of Jane and Finch that once served as a Canadian Forces Base.

Sundance became interested in farming after she left the suburb where she grew up and began travelling. At 18-years-old, Sundance says her visit to a farm in Viñales, Cuba, piqued her interest. She admired the way the farm served its community.

After her travels, Sundance made her way back to the GTA, intent on finding a job within the agriculture industry. But she says she couldn’t find a farm that paid their workers fairly. Nor could she find a farm that would advocate for food justice.

“That’s organic farming [in Canada]: white men saying ‘you can live in a tent, work 40 hours a week and we’ll give you lentil soup and rye bread,’” she says.

“I didn’t want that life.” 

And so, Sundance started her own farm with the eponymous name, using her life savings and a $5,000 grant from a non-profit group. 

“I wanted to start a farm because I wanted to see a farm like this,” she says. 

By “this,” Sundance means a farm that is Black-led and focuses on food justice by serving marginalized folks with their produce and mentorship programs, all while paying workers a liveable wage. 

As a young, Black woman who came from a lower-income family, Sundance knew creating a farm wouldn’t be easy, especially when it came to finding land. But she was willing to improvise.

In 2019, when she noticed an empty greenhouse at Downsview Park, Sundance approached the people on site but couldn’t find an answer on who to talk to about renting space to start her own farm. With a little internet sleuthing, Sundance found out that Canada Lands Company, a federal Crown corporation that manages land and develops former Government of Canada properties, was leasing the space and immediately emailed them to inquire about rent.

“I don’t like waiting, and I’m not patient. So I just did it,” she says. “Everyone says farming requires patience. It should but — at the same time — if you want to make fast decisions and grow fast, impatience is nice.” 

Sundance’s quick request met with a favourable response. She heard back that, to start, she could rent half a greenhouse from Canada Lands Company. Around a year later, in September 2020, she expanded to one full greenhouse. By December that year, she expanded to two greenhouses and a one-third acre parcel of land. Sundance says she was able to make profit within the first year of farming. She sells more than 100 pounds of tomatoes — one of her farm’s specialties — every week. And her success has gone beyond just what she’s grown in the dirt. Over the last year Sundance has garnered media attention across Canada for her work in food insecurity, food justice and food sovereignty. Her Instagram has also increased by tenfold, with nearly 32,000 followers to date.

Media coverage of Sundance Harvest’s success resulted in a new realm of possibilities for Sundance. She says as her farm’s popularity grew, real estate developers began reaching out to offer their undeveloped land for farm space — for free.

“[They’re] reaching out to me to start farms where a condo would be. I would have the land for five years before they would start building. I was offered an acre with no rent because they wanted to use the Sundance branding. If I was someone who had no following, they wouldn’t do that.” 

Sundance says she still faces barriers when working on site at Downsview Park, in spite of her success and being established for nearly two years. 

“The amount of sexism and racism I experience here from the public is crazy,” she says. 

Sundance and her staff — particularly the staff who are young women of colour — have experienced white men harassing them, following them to the greenhouses, or standing and staring at them for long periods of time.

“They’d keep asking: ‘Why aren’t you talking to me? Why aren’t you showing me this? What are you doing with the garlic?’” she recalls. “I pay a lease here. I’m not paid to teach you. I have to work to make money.”

Sundance eventually introduced walkie talkies for staff and instituted new rules about the company having at least two people on site to ensure employee safety.

“And if that doesn’t work, I always have a harvest knife on me in case,” she says.

Sometimes, Sundance says, the sexism takes a more obvious form.

“My friend Evan was doing the drip tape irrigation the other day. I was very clearly telling him what to do. This man comes up, steps in front of me and starts talking to Evan, offering his company’s packing and delivery services to the farm.”

Theft has also occurred at the site, with nearly 100 garlic pods being stolen in July. Sundance says she is currently trying to build more fences and tape, and move certain plants to the greenhouse as methods to prevent further theft.

Experiences like these are also why Sundance wants to mentor young marginalized folks through her 12-week program, Growing In The Margins. This includes people who identify as low-income, Black, Indigenous, a Person of Colour, LGBTQ2S or a person with a disability. The mentorship stream of this program aims to educate those who want to start their own full-time career in urban farming.

Lucky Bug Farm was established in 2020, thanks to the help from Sundance Harvest’s mentorship program. Founder and owner Aliyah Fraser originally had an urban planning career, working at a law firm and with various levels of government. She says the lack of focus on sustainability and marginalized communities that she witnessed during her career made her want to switch professions. 

“[I realized that] at the end of the day, the people who have the power to make changes in our communities are not interested in making those changes. They’re interested in profits,” she says. “It’s hard for me to feel engaged in it.”

Yet she still wanted to put the knowledge and skills she had gained to good use.

“I remember thinking: what do I love? One of them is food and the other is the environment. Farming kind of sits at that intersection,” Fraser says.

“At the same time, I wanted to do something that involved working outside, doing things that were kind of different every day. And something about working with the land called me.”

She says that when she happened upon Sundance’s work around May 2020, “it felt like serendipity.”

“I was trying to find someone who was kind of doing what I was thinking in my head, trying to find a precedent … [of] Black-owned urban farms in Canada,” Fraser says.

Sundance and Fraser had a one-hour consultation that summer. It was during that time when Sundance encouraged Fraser to apply for Growing In The Margins. Fraser says the mentorship program solidified her decision to switch to farming as a full-time career.

“It was like unlocking a different level of my brain,” she says about the program. “The space that Cheyenne created was so informative. It’s a space full of hope and imagining possibilities for how things could be different.”

As a first-time farmer, Fraser says it’s the “lack of access to land that is [her] own” that is impacting her right now. “I think that speaks historically to the ways that Black people have been shutout [from] ownership in this country.” 

Fraser, who’s been living in the Kitchener-Waterloo region since attending University of Waterloo, was ideally hoping to find arable land with the right infrastructure near her. Instead — with the help of Sundance — she was able to find land in Wellington County, near Erin, Ontario. She says the commute is about 45 minutes by car from her place. 

Fraser is renting a quarter of an acre of land at Zocalo Organics, a farm that runs an incubator that prioritizes land accessibility for BIPOC farmers. 

“It’s like, pretty small in farming terms. But it’s also over 11,000 square feet,” Fraser says. “Starting with a quarter of an acre seems manageable.”

Still, Fraser says it shouldn’t be this difficult for people of colour to find land like this. She wants all levels of government to step up and “make some decisions about the type of agriculture they’d like to see.” 

“In my opinion that should look diverse and inclusive, not only for Black people, but for Indigenous people and other people of colour,” she says. 

The Toronto Black Farmers and Food Growers’ Collective was established in 2013, also at Downsview Park. At the time, it was one of the first Black-led park farms in Canada. 

“We set up about a 2.5-acre farm,” Dwyer says. “[Eventually], people figured out what we were doing. People who would use the park on a regular basis would protect the farm when we weren’t there.”

The Collective had their last harvest at that 2.5-acre space in 2015.

“We were told by Downsview Park that we couldn’t go back over there in 2016. At the time, they started putting in the infrastructure to build that community of condominium townhouses over there,” Dwyer says. 

Dwyer says she and her partner, Noel Livingston, didn’t object at the time, as they were still new to the farming community in Toronto. Eventually they partnered with Fresh City Farms, which was established in 2011, and were relocated to the land that they are at today. 

Dwyer says Fresh City Farms recently signed a long-term lease with the Canada Lands Company, where they will receive an 11-acre plot at the south east area of Downsview Park for up to 20 years. According to their website, Fresh City Farms is currently looking for partnerships, as they say they will be using 1.5 acres of the land, while the rest will be shared by partners. 

They estimate that the monthly operating costs per half-acre to be between $750 to $1,100, which Dwyer says is unaffordable for the Black community and other marginalized groups.

“…We don’t have money,” Dwyer says. 

In May 2021 Fresh City Farms commented on the matter in an Instagram post after someone voiced a similar concern on not bringing the collective with them to their future location, as well as their steep operating costs. Fresh City’s reasoning for the $750 to $1,100 operating costs was not to profit off the land. They say that the costs — which include rent, property taxes, insurance, electricity, water, repairs, washroom cleaning and garbage removal — have continued to be a “great challenge” at their site, as the costs are not paid by their landlord, Canada Lands Company. As a result, the operating costs will be split by their prospective partners. 

“[However] we will do everything within our power to ensure that cost is not a barrier to accessing the land, including finding donors, supporting partner grant applications and helping to coordinate a fundraiser,” they wrote. 

“It’s very tragic to see,” Dwyer says. “The people who work [at Downsview] predominantly are not from these neighbourhoods. They live in a 905 region or they drive into Toronto. So all this money that has been given to empower a neighbourhood or a community of neighbourhoods is really not doing that.”

With a reduced amount of arable land that includes proper infrastructure and more people to feed, Dwyer and Livingston say it has been impossible to find ideal land for farming in Toronto.

“We are left out of getting adequate resources to have a good operating team of people to do this work,” Dwyer says. “We’re locked out of infrastructure money, so we can’t put down our greenhouse and create our own space for our food hub.”

As a result they have created a partnership at Country Heritage Park in Milton, where they have access to two acres of land. The private land is about an hour-long commute by car from Downsview Park. 

“They were kind enough to give us this land,” Dwyer says in regards to the members of Country Heritage Park. “I see the people here actually live like a community. Here, they support each other. They’re still some good people left. When we come together, we can solve our issues.” 

For Dwyer and Livingston, this partnership has been tension-free. Here, they are able to do most of their harvesting, as well as provide and lease plots to community members and organizations who want to harvest their own crops. 

Dwyer also wants more to be done in the agricultural system in Canada, especially considering the history.

“[Colonizers] didn’t bring slaves here to pay them a fair wage. This agricultural system was built off the back of slaves and I am here unequivocally to tell them that I want reparation,” she says. “I want reparations for my daughter, myself, my mother, my grandmother, my great grandmother and my great-great grandmother. Genocide has been happening ever since you met us. And now we’re saying enough is enough.” 

“We need to now sit in communities and develop our own plan where we can actually share resources,” she says. “We need more feeding programs. We need to see some of our parks — that have good land — be rezoned to put our urban farms and help feed our number of communities.” 

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

This photo essay is part of The Narwhal’s BIPOC Photojournalism Fellowship, operated in partnership with Room Up Front and made possible by The Reader’s Digest Foundation and the generosity of The Narwhal’s readers.

Growing up, Sandy Ward never saw other Indigenous people involved in the outdoors.

“It’s not that we weren’t there,” she said, “it was that we were underrepresented.”

The overwhelming whiteness and predominant maleness in our representations of the outdoors isn’t just a failure of recognition, or of the imagination — it’s actually something more corrosive. For Ward, not seeing other young Indigenous people out enjoying mountain paths led her to question her own belonging on them. 

“It made it hard because I wasn’t sure that I should be doing the things I did. Why were there no other people like me in these sports? Was I straying too far from my culture and my people?”

We all grew up seeing a point of view which intentionally omitted the Indigenous people’s perspective and innate belonging in nature. From the paintings of the Group of Seven, to outdoor equipment marketing campaigns, to the world of outdoor influencers, there’s long been an emphasis on able-bodied, heterosexual and cis-normative white guys. But all those glossy visual representations are giving you the wrong impression — and it’s disconnecting queer and racialized communities from the outdoors.

Connection to the land and doing outdoor activities are integral for mental, spiritual and physical health. Studies have shown that nature-based recreation can decrease symptoms of anxiety and depression, while increasing cognition, restoration and overall well-being. This connection with the outdoors through nature-based activities also informs and encourages us to take action to combat the climate crisis. But that assumption — that the Canadian outdoors is a white and male space — persists, creating barriers, whether emotional or physical, for racialized, female-identifying, disabled and recently immigrated individuals.

If you know where to look, there are BIPOC female-identifying and non-binary folks who complicate the predominant settler narrative of who explore and play in the outdoors, while inviting their community members along. Ultimately, the 10 figurative (and in some cases literal) trailblazers featured in the photo essay are here to disrupt the normative script of who belongs in the Canadian outdoors.

Indra Hayre is 25, an avid skier, runner, hiker and mountain biker. She is also the founder of incluskivity, an Instagram community that works to extend the outdoors to people who have traditionally been excluded, mostly by conducting interviews.

“I believe that storytelling is a really powerful tool for understanding and connection,” Hayre tells The Narwhal. “These interviews act as a tool to elevate voices that haven’t been sought out by popular media and in turn, folks can feel validated and less alone in their experiences. I hope that these interviews help traditionally marginalized folks feel seen and heard in spaces that they haven’t felt before, and I also hope they act as an education tool for people who have always felt represented in outdoor spaces.”

Upon reflecting on what barriers she faced with the outdoor activities she does, Hayre listed many. “There were countless barriers: money, leisurely time, lack of intergenerational knowledge and the list goes on. There are different barriers for different people, but the one that still impacts me the most is representation. I never saw myself represented in any sports media, so not only did it impact my own sense of belonging, but other folks were also not convinced I belonged in outdoor spaces because they also had never seen people who looked like me in the spaces before. This led to people projecting their beliefs of my ability onto me, and it limited me to being able to show up authentically. Even to this day sometimes, I feel as though I am representing not only women when I’m in the outdoors, but also South Asian folks and South Asian women. I feel as though I need to be good at whatever I do because I am representing an entire community. It has been a journey, but I’ve released this burden by spending time in the outdoors with people who allow me to show up as I am, and this often means recreating with other folks of colour or friends who I have built a very safe relationship with over years of recreating together.”

“I began hiking avidly and skiing again in my early 20s, but it wasn’t for me at first. Initially, it was an act of defiance toward the media that never made me feel as though I could take up space in the outdoors. I recreated for the purpose of proving people wrong, and showing the few folks who did look like me on the slopes or up on the summit that they did belong in these spaces. But over time, I started to develop a relationship with the outdoors that was a lot more reciprocal, and it was for me.”

Judith Kasiama is 32 and hikes, backpacks, mountain bikes, skis — often in the backcountry. She is also the founder of Colour the Trails which advocates for inclusive representation in outdoor spaces through subsidized outdoor adventure, diverse content creation and working with allied businesses and organizations to break barriers and create accessibility. Upon reflecting on how her love for outdoor activities began, Kasiama shared: “I love learning new sports even if I’m terrible at it. Hiking was something I always did … I think I was always receiving invitations and I always said yes. Skiing, I learned at 30 with Whistler Never Ever Day. And mountain biking, I learned through an invitation from Jaclyn Delacroix last summer when she invited Colour the Trails community to an intro course. Much of my involvement has been due to my own curiosity and my love for the outdoors.”

Kasiama created Colour the Trails “as a means of creating opportunities for others to enjoy the outdoors.”

“I created hiking meetups, colour the slopes [ski day] and our mountain biking mentorship that aims [to create] opportunity and mentorship for those who are interested in participating in the outdoors. The joy of community coming out and enjoying and trying things that they may never have thought they could is how I am building that access. … My motivation has been, and continues to be, creating opportunities for folks to enjoy the outdoors and find peace in nature.”

“Nature is already diverse — what has been lacking in the past years has been the diverse voices and lived experiences and the space to share those in relation to the outdoors. Diversity was already present and it was inclusion that was missing. As I share my lived experience as a Black woman, I find that the intersection of my Blackness, my displacement in terms of being a refugee, all plays into how I see nature and the outdoors.”

Asalah Youssef is 18 and is passionate about hiking, mountain biking, kayaking and meditating in the forest. She is my youngest sister, and is a constant inspiration for me to experience nature more. Often that inspiration has come from seeing the photographs she shares or her inviting me to go on a beautiful hike. She told The Narwhal, “I fell in love with the feeling of hiking due to the constant exploration I’d go on with my mum around areas close to home. … She instilled in me a deep appreciation for all the beauty that exists outdoors, and I’ve been constantly fond of it ever since. Time outside for me changes depending on what I’m feeling my wellbeing needs. Some days a fast-paced trail run fuels me, and other days it’s a forest bathing meditation.”

“Nature refuels me, inspires, grounds and returns me back to my values and mission as a human being,” Youssef said. “Now I aim to invite folks outside to experience this themselves through the images, videos and content I share online. I’ve received comments from people saying that my Instagram stories [makes them] ‘feel calm.’ Someone said ‘I took a walk in the forest today and it made me think of you.’ These words fill me with joy. Everyone belongs outside, there is no need to be ‘outdoorsy’ or ‘sportsy’ to connect deeply with Earth. I also understand how important it is to acknowledge the barriers people face to even going on a walk in a forest; so when I speak about nature, it can be as simple as a tree in their backyard or a pond in a local park and through my social media I aim to bring the beauty of the forest scenes to people as much as possible. Moving forward, I intend to facilitate mindful hikes for folks who are new to outdoor exploration to build community.”

“The more I explored the lands, the more I realized the importance of my environmental footprint. The land so deeply tends to my wellbeing, so this relationship must be reciprocal. The realization that I am not separate from the Earth meant acknowledging that caring for myself means being a steward for the places I so gratefully explore. Just as much as I go outside, I intend to be advocating for climate action and environmental protection in all different areas of my life.”

Melissa Hafting is 35 and a birder. She began birding at age five when her father took her to the Reifel Bird Sanctuary, bought her her first field guide and had her feeding birds like Chickadees. Hafting founded and created the BC Young Birders Program to ensure other young people have a mentor to make them feel included, especially if they identify as a woman or a person of colour.

“There are very few birders that look like me,” Hafting said. “In fact I only know of one other Black birder … the field is still dominated by older white men. I overcame that by following my passion and wanting to make a difference to make this hobby more inclusive. … I also did not let other birders intimidate me and persevered watching birds and proving I could hold my own despite people who felt it was strange that someone like me was into birds.

“I know how it feels not to feel welcome, to feel excluded and to receive racist comments in this hobby. I don’t want anyone else, especially youth, to ever experience that. Nature is for everyone. One group should not claim the outdoors or the birds.”

“Birds have helped me so much to get through some of the most difficult times in my life. They help my mood and bring me peace, relaxation and serenity. I feel even more strongly to fight for conservation issues and to make the outdoors more accessible to all, so that everyone can experience these gifts.”

Anaheed Saatchi is 30, a rock climber and co-founder of BelayALL, a climbing collective that originally began with organizing carpools and pooling gear but has now expanded to include events, meetups, grassroots organizing and advocating for equitable pricing at the climbing gym. Saatchi also writes for Melanin Base Camp, whose founder is Danielle Williams, the force behind Diversify Outdoors. “She was the first person to believe in my voice as a writer and critic of the toxic cultures that permeate the outdoors industry,” Saatchi said.

“The more I learn about decolonizing practices, anti-racist and anti-oppressive practices, grassroots organizing and the more amazing people I meet in community the more I feel rooted in the outdoors. Before, even though I grew up on a mountain and had a forest for a backyard, I didn’t feel I belonged outside. … I like creating spaces that are trauma-informed and disruptive to normative cultures. My immediate communities often feel the effects of the exclusion perpetuated by the outdoors industry. I love climbing beyond words and want to share it in a way that helps others use it, however they need to heal, thrive, be silly, play, grow and so on.”

When reflecting on what they hope to see from the outdoor industry, Saatchi said: “More spaces that centre community [over] profit. More trauma informed leadership. More white folks taking on supporting roles and not leadership roles. More deference for Black and Indigenous sovereignty and leadership. More place-based engagement with the outdoors and less narratives of international conquest or conquest in general. Endless iterations of what strength and resilience look like and less trauma porn for white audiences to pay the bills.”

“The dominant cultures of the outdoors industry reflect the dominant cultures I navigate on a daily basis. The barriers to entry for me continue to be a lack of representation from an early age, a lack of commitment to building equity and not prioritizing community over profit.” 

Kendra Coupland is 36, meditates outdoors on a daily basis, swims in freshwater lakes and hikes up to the many waterfalls in her area. In addition, she loves to canoe, forest bathe and camp. Her process of loving the outdoors wasn’t linear.

“As someone who descends from both people who were immigrants on this land, but also people who were originally brought to Turtle Island as slaves, there is a disconnect from the land … [I’ve] had to overcome a general dislike for being dirty/stinky/covered in bug bites. Again, as a Black woman, I think my ancestors fought so much to get away from that because they wanted to be treated with basic dignity and survive during times of slavery. In times of slavery, the enslaved were forced to sleep outdoors, live with livestock — things like that. So there is something in my bones that resists being forced into unfamiliar nature, and I have to work to tend to my nervous system and remind myself that I have autonomy and can choose to be there or leave.”

In the summer of 2020, following the murder of George Floyd, Coupland held an outdoor healing retreat for 50 members of the Black community. “It was an opportunity to connect with traditional medicines such as African dance and drumming barefoot in the soil. We got to learn about community agriculture, got to camp on the land and eat a plant-based diet. People took part in workshops, but there was also space to just be in the trees and grieve, or be held by community, or go cool off in the river. To make it more accessible I ran a shuttle bus out from the city to the retreat space which was nearly two hours out of the city. … I have a dream to create a permanent retreat space where people can access nature, come and stay on the land, and rebuild connection and access traditional and Indigenous medicines and teachings. That’s where I would teach yoga and meditation. I dream of it being a space for Black and Indigenous people to heal with times and spaces when it is open to all to come and build and heal together.”

Kendra’s experience in the natural world is a sacred space: “outdoors is my church. It’s a place of spiritual renewal.”

“For me, reclaiming my participation in the outdoors is about putting down a stake and saying I have a right to be here, to live and thrive. As I connect more and more with nature I receive ancient wisdom that guides my life. The trees remind me that I am both growing and dying at the same time. That the separation between life and death is illusionary, and when I can settle with that truth there is very little that can shake me from that feeling of rootedness.”

Karen Lai is 46 and she kayaks, bikes and does light walks and hikes. She got involved in these activities through her friends and general love for the outdoors. She shared, “I just love the freshness of being in the outdoors, the quietness and just being away from … technology.”

Karen was born with Cerebral Palsy, Spastic Diplegia which affects her balance, coordination, motor dexterity, speech and mobility. “As a result, I wear a brace on my left side and use a walker for assistance,” Lai told The Narwhal. “I do have an outdoor walker with all-terrain wheels that makes going over uneven terrain easier, but I can’t go on tough climbs. … There has been many barriers for me to participate in the outdoors — everything from outdoor outfitters not having the necessary equipment, not having the knowledge; uneven terrain in the outdoors; or the expense of adaptive equipment. I always have to plan ahead, talk to the outdoor outfitters and find the appropriate adaptive equipment. There’s a lot of advocacy on my part too. … There’s a lack of awareness and knowledge about people with disabilities and the outdoors.”

Lai said that overtime her relationship to the outdoors has changed because she’s found “more acceptance for myself — my own abilities, vulnerabilities and limitations, and being curious with what I can or cannot do. I may not be able to join my friends in a massive hike, or going surfing, or something because I can’t do it. And being okay with that … and living through them. But I can participate in other things with them. But I need to be curious of my own abilities and think creatively of how to adapt to suit my needs.”

Accessibility and inclusion always takes two to tango. I have to realize that I can’t do everything in the outdoors or that I need friends or outdoor outfitters there to support [me]. I don’t believe in creating outdoor accessible pathways (those wooden platforms) as it wrecks the pristine and the messiness of the outdoors. But I do recognize that we, as people with disabilities, have to be okay that we can’t do everything, be open to have a dialogue with people to think creatively, outside the box and to make mistakes. It is about working together, working collaboratively and learning from each other.”

In the winter months, Sandy Ward, 35, is a competitive snowboarder and backcountry enthusiast. During the summer she spends her time mountain biking, rock climbing and going on the occasional hike. She is part of two organizations that “strive to break down the barriers involved in getting Indigenous people involved in these often high cost sports.” 

Sandy began her snowboarding career after being invited to join the First Nations Snowboard Team in her second season of snowboarding. Since then, she has gone from “a recreational shredder to a competitive halfpipe rider to instructor and mentor.” At Indigenous Women Outdoors, Ward co-leads a backcountry mentorship program in the winter and runs a mountain bike program in the summer. With Indigenous Life Sport Academy, Ward said she volunteers as a snowboard coach in the winter and is currently organizing a bike program for this summer. “These kinds of programs are how I got into snowboarding and I think they are very important in getting more Indigenous people out on the land and exploring our territories. … I now see that as a backcountry snowboarder I have been able to connect with the land in a different way and it has pushed me to learn about our history and the stories that go along with it. So, in a way, snowboarding has brought me back to my culture.”

“I think it’s so important that we get out and connect to the land as Indigenous people and share our stories and knowledge with each other in order to keep our way of life alive,” Ward told the Narwhal. “During the backcountry program with IWO [Indigineous Women Outdoors] I saw the way that Indigenous women connect and how when we create a safe space for them to share, that is exactly what we do. We shared stories of hurt and stories of achievements and they helped lift us up and overcome any challenges we faced.”

“Reclaiming participation in the outdoors to me means that we not only get out and learn about sports, but as Indigenous people we also get to learn about our history, connect with our lands and to our ancestors in a different way. … When I started out all I thought of was sending it on the biggest lines and I always thought of the outdoors as my playground. I now know that we belong to the land and we need to show it respect. … The outdoors is now my sanctuary and where I go to find peace and get away. It is also my classroom, where I can go to learn about the plants, medicines and foods that it gives us.”

At 33, Filsan Abdiaman is an ultrarunner, trail runner and founder of a running collective called Project Love Run. The collective is open to all women, but recently Abdiaman decided to create a trail running clinic specifically for BIPOC women called ‘take it to the trails.’

“There are not too many running spaces that celebrate running and self-love or welcome diverse bodies and folks from different backgrounds and abilities,” Abdiaman told The Narwhal. “There are also not enough running spaces that allow women to be vulnerable and share stories; learning to collectively grow and heal. My love for running has allowed me to accept myself and my body, it has helped me heal from a disordered relationship with movement and I am motivated to share that with other folks in the community through Project Love Run.”

Abdiaman said she personally experienced barriers to entering the running world, “from a lack of diversity in the running spaces I was in making me feel unwelcome, to inaccessible trails and races because I didn’t have a car.” But she said she didn’t let those get in the way of her getting into the sport. “I found a way around those … including running to all the trails I liked to run.” Abdiaman said reclaiming participation in the outdoors has meant creating space for herself and other marginalized folks to “thrive in the running community.”

“It means being seen and acknowledged in those spaces for the experiences and expertise we carry.”

“I see myself as part … of a movement that draws attention to the intersectional identities some folks (Black, immigrant women in particular) carry and how that impacts and influences the outdoor space we move in. Through Project Love Run, I hope to encourage intersectional conversations about feminism, running and movement-advocacy and self-love/self-worth. We cannot do the work to dismantle larger systems of oppression if we are not tackling our internal oppressions and limiting beliefs.”

JennaMae Togado-Webb is 35, a freediver and a snowboarder. She has snowboarded, at times competitively, since graduating from high school and only began freediving one year ago but the sport has quickly become her main passion. “I have always loved swimming and slowly got into freediving with the exposure from my partner’s best friends” Togado-Webb said. “Once we moved to Skwxwú7mesh [Squamish], we were closer to the ocean. Ben (my partner) and I would go swimming, fishing and hang out by the sea almost every day. The progression happened from there.”

When asked about the barriers she faced getting into both sports, Togado-Webb said the high cost of outdoor activities stands out to her — but that was only part of it. “I did feel like there were barriers, mostly financial-wise and I worked many jobs to start snowboarding. Freediving was a bit easier in the sense that the ocean is close to where we live now. Summer swimming and a $20 snorkel set from Costco got me exploring and becoming more curious about what was beneath the surface. When my curiosity grew, I wanted to take a course to dive deeper safely, buy better equipment and the right wetsuit. I had to save up for my gear and buy my wetsuit online because the shops in the area did not carry curvy women’s sizes. This made me feel like there was a size barrier for getting into freediving like I had to fit into a small to medium to engage in this activity. Or because there aren’t many sizes available, it made me ask the question, ‘[why] not many womxn were freediving in this area?’ So I invited anyone interested in going for swims in the ocean to come with me. Since then, I have a more extensive community of womxn that join me in the water.”

“I feel my connection with the ocean has gifted me a sense of empowerment. I have learned the skills to provide food for myself and my family if need be. That makes me feel purpose and power. I would love to share and possibly ignite that connection for someone else. Having an intense bond with nature, I have found, translates to being more mindful and respectful of your environment, to protect what you feel is a part of your peace.”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.