Ken Johnston walks north on a gravel road through southern Ontario farmland on a July morning. It’s cool just after sunrise, but in a few hours everything will be enveloped in thick midsummer humidity.

“By 10 or 11 o’clock, the land was just on fire, like walking in an oven,” Johnston says. He wasn’t expecting this heat in Canada, he says, nor the bugs. He dabs his face with a bandana.

“Look how dense it is in there,” he points to a thick stand of trees in Wellington County, about an hour west of Toronto, as mosquitos buzz around him. “Freedom seekers would have had to fight their way through that.”

Gravel crunches under Johnston’s brisk footsteps. On his pack swings a placard that reads “Northern Underground Railroad — Niagara Falls, NY to Owen Sound, ON” and a leather strap of jangling bells.

“These are not bear bells,” he says. “They’re bells I wear to signal to the ancestors and spirits that I’m here, if they want to reach out and communicate.”

Since 2018, Johnston has been retracing freedom routes used by African Americans escaping slavery on the Underground Railroad, through his project Walk to Freedom.

He followed the footsteps of abolitionist and conductor Harriet Tubman from her home in Maryland to Niagara Falls, N.Y., and is, on this hot July day in 2025, closing out the final 265 kilometres from the U.S. border to Owen Sound, Ont., a major terminus for the Railroad. When he finishes, he will have walked more than 1,360 kilometres on this route.

Many of Ontario’s early Black settlers put down roots just over the border from Michigan. Others travelled farther north, including along a route from Niagara Falls to Owen Sound that Ken Johnston retraced over many years. Map: Shawn Parkinson / The Narwhal

Johnston has commemorated other freedom struggles on walks through the Deep South, Massachusetts, Puerto Rico, Texas and Northern Ireland — in total, he’s trekked some 3,540 kilometres. When he’s not walking, the 65-year-old works in visitor services at the Penn Museum, an archeology- and anthropology-focused museum in Philadelphia.

The ancestors “willed me to do this walk,” he says. Months earlier, he had been waffling on whether to commit to this particular trip when he saw a U-Haul truck parked in front of his home. On its side was an illustration of a freedom-seeking woman, carrying a lantern and peering warily into the unknown. Behind her was a map of eastern Canada and the U.S. marked with arrows pointing north. “Venture across Canada,” the slogan cheerily invited, with a write-up of the Underground Railroad.

“The woman is literally staring right at my front door,” he laughs. “I remember looking up to the sky and going, ‘I hear you! I hear you!’ ”

Johnston, who lives in Philadelphia, has retraced Black history and freedom struggle routes in the mainland United States, Puerto Rico and Northern Ireland. His walk through southern Ontario taught him some of Canada’s history of enslavement, racism, freedom and farming.

Not all freedom seekers ventured all the way to British North America, which had abolished slavery in 1834. Movement accelerated after 1850, when U.S. Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act. Escaped slaves and free folk in the northern free states could be kidnapped by slavecatchers and sent back to the South, which meant northern states were no longer a safe haven.

An estimated 30,000 to 40,000 freedom seekers pushed to Canada. They came overland on foot, but when possible also used trains, horses, wagons and carriages. Ships carried them across the Detroit, Niagara or St. Lawrence rivers and through the Great Lakes to port towns like Owen Sound.

“The American narrative is they made it to Canada and then they were free. Well, the story continues on the other side, and that’s what I discovered when I reached St. Catharines,” Johnston says. “They had extraordinary lives.”

Ontario towns such as St. Catharines, Windsor, Hamilton, Guelph and Chatham became cultural and economic hubs for these refugees, full of settlements, churches, businesses, newspapers, schools and abolitionist organizations. As one example, Chatham’s population was one-third Black and regarded as a “Black Paris” in the 1850s, according to Kristin Moriah, an associate professor of African-American literary studies at Queen’s University.

Photos of Josiah Henson and Harriet Tubman are seen behind Johnston as he speaks to people in Dresden, Ont. The municipality was one of Ontario’s earliest Black settlements.

“This idea of being able to start your own businesses, to support the Black community, to really celebrate the kind of freedom you specifically had in Canada, makes that area very special,” she says.

These are the Railroad stops on Johnston’s walk: Tubman’s church in St. Catharines, monuments, early settlements that fostered economic independence and the museums dedicated to preserving these local Black histories.

Connecting the stories and places of the Underground Railroad is an intentional part of his walks, Johnston says, amid efforts by U.S. President Donald Trump to round up undocumented immigrants, crack down on Black Lives Matter protests, scrub government websites of Black histories and end diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

“Democracy in the United States is backsliding, and here in 2025, in the second Trump administration, protecting and preserving civil rights is more important than ever,” he says. “That’s sort of the idea behind these walks: to encourage people, to meet them one-on-one in their communities, in the streets, to engage in conversations with them about some of the erosion of civil rights we’re seeing.”

In an era when so much political activism happens online and furiously, he finds intention in the slow act of walking — as people did during the Montgomery bus boycotts or on civil rights marches in the 1950s.

“It generated a lot of activity and forced people to engage. … The energy of that movement I feel is what’s been lost,” Johnston says. “We saw a little bit of it after George Floyd’s death, there was a spontaneous movement of Black Lives Matter, but then that dissipated and there was no leadership to really keep it moving forward. So this is my way of encouragement to get that movement back, to find that energy.”

On the road, he channels the same struggles, suffering and emotions as his freedom-seeking ancestors, but also meditates on his own life.

“I’ve enjoyed the ebb and flow of marriage, the delight in raising a child, the profound grief of losing a child and finally divorce,” Johnston writes on his website. His daughter, who passed in 2008, had severe disabilities. He wrestled with the way the world engaged with her, and in return what autonomy and access she had. 

“After all these experiences, I’ve learned one has to keep going in life because another horizon awaits you over the next mountain.”

Escaping enslavement required expert outdoor survival skills

Walking up the shoulder of Highway 6, Johnston follows the rough trajectory of Garafraxa Road, which first connected Guelph to Owen Sound. Garafraxa was one of many colonization roads criss-crossing southern Ontario, which cleared the first paths for British expansion and opened up new areas for settlement. 

It provided access to a region called Queen’s Bush, stretching from Waterloo, Ont., to Lake Huron. Though it’s now a paved two-lane highway, when Garafraxa was first surveyed in 1837 it would have been a boggy, densely wooded and miserable stretch.

“It required a huge amount of backcountry skills to be comfortable walking the trails, navigating as you made your way north,” Jacqueline L. Scott, a Toronto-based scholar on race and nature and contributor to The Narwhal, says. “You are working out your route as you go along, not knowing what’s around the bend or corner. You mostly hiked in the evenings because when you run into white people, you don’t know if they are friend or slavecatcher.”

It was a rough journey up this corduroy road, made of timber laid down in the mud. On one stretch dubbed “The Long Swamp,” wagons and oxen would sometimes slip off these bumpy, jolting roads and sink to their doom in the water and mud. In total, the 113-kilometre trip from Fergus to Owen Sound would have been a four- or five-day journey.

During the days of the Underground Railroad, making the journey from Fergus, Ont., to Owen Sound meant traversing bumpy roads surrounded by treacherous mud.

One person who escaped enslavement only to find themselves on this mucky route to freedom was John Little, who fled Tennessee in 1841. Little’s testimony is included in the 1856 collection The Refugee: or the Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada. He recounted how he and his wife Eliza were on the run for three months before finally arriving in Windsor, Ont.

Six months later, “​​We heard of the Queen’s Bush, where any people might go and settle, colored or poor, and might have a reasonable chance to pay for the land,” he recalled.

With $18, two axes, a few kitchen tools, flour, pork, a blanket and bedquilt, he and Eliza “marched right into the wilderness, where there were thousands of acres of woods which the chain had never run round since Adam. At night we made a fire and cut down a tree, and put up some slats like a wigwam. This was in February, when the snow was two feet deep.”

Wolves, bears and lynx roamed the bush, thick with old-growth maple, beech, elm, birch and ash trees. The land was so thick that often only three or four acres could be cleared and cultivated in a year.

Little was proud of their grit, producing thousands of bushels of produce and livestock out of nothing: “The man who was ‘a bad n—r’ in the South, is here a respected, independent farmer.”

Freedom Road in Dresden, Ont., was once home to Josiah Henson. After discovering his American enslaver had cheated him out of an agreement to buy his freedom, he escaped with his wife and four children.

Freedom seekers were indeed expert survivalists. Whatever food they could not carry, purchase, beg or steal they supplemented with foraged plants, fish and small game.

Tubman’s early life prepared her for the 13 missions she took back to Maryland to lead about 70 friends and family out of slavery. Her enslavers tasked her to harvest timber, trap muskrats and work the fields. Like a modern wilderness guide, Tubman navigated water and land, read stars, foraged for food and plant medicine — and did so all while keeping her fellow freedom seekers alive.

The idyll of a summer hike doesn’t capture the terror of fleeing for one’s life in midwinter, without the luxury of waterproof boots or Gore-Tex, Scott says. “When I look at what they had to do on that trek, it loses a lot of its romance. It’s not an outdoor adventure … to prove I can walk 500 kilometres in however many days, right? That’s an adventure quest.”

Many birds are named for enslavers, colonizers and white supremacists. That’s about to change

These traumas shape how Black folks relate to the outdoors today, Scott says. Off-leash dogs on a hiking trail can evoke the slavecatchers’ hounds. Police are still a common threat for Black people in nature, like birdwatcher Christian Cooper, who was falsely accused of threatening a white woman in New York’s Central Park, or Ottawa cyclist Ntwali Bashizi, who had 911 called on him by a white woman that accused him of blocking her path in a park.

Canada can’t achieve its land conservation goals without nurturing future generations of racialized outdoors enthusiasts, especially when a quarter of Canadians identify as what Statistics Canada calls visible minorities, Scott says. “Why should we care when we’ve never felt like we belonged there or were invited to be there?”

Canada’s complicated history of enslavement, Black Loyalists and Indigenous displacement

Canada was the Promised Land, in both the aspirations of freedom seekers and our present-day mythologies. While that narrative should rightly be celebrated, slavery is, as Scott puts it, “as Canadian as our snow or maple syrup.”

Olivier Le Jeune was the first documented person of African descent to be enslaved in what is now Canada. Sold as a child, Le Jeune was brought to Quebec City during English occupation around 1629 to 1632.

“By 10 or 11 o’clock, the land was just on fire, like walking in an oven,” Johnston said of southern Ontario last July. He wasn’t expecting the heat — or the bugs.

Over the next 200 years, some 7,000 people, including Indigenous individuals, were enslaved in British and French colonies. It’s just a fraction of the 12 million African lives stolen in the transatlantic slave trade, but chattel slavery is very much part of Canada’s foundation.

Ships built in Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland carried captured Africans from as early as 1725 until the early 1800s. The worst, cheapest grades of cod fished from the North Atlantic were shipped south to the Caribbean to feed the enslaved on British plantations. 

Even after Britain abolished slavery, racist sentiments remained. The Ontario-based newspaper Provincial Freeman, published by abolitionist, educator and lawyer Mary Ann Shadd Cary, put it plainly in 1853: “Prejudice against negroes, so prevalent in various parts of the Province, as maintained by many persons of all nations … is one of the strongest pro-slavery influences that disgraces and degrades our fair country.”

Still, leaders like Shadd Cary were committed to the idea of Black settlement in Canada. “She really supported the British colonial project, and I think that she thought of it as a project that was directly in opposition to the evils of U.S. chattel slavery,” Moriah, of Queen’s University, says.

On his trips to Ontario, Johnston met a lot of people, including attendees of a medieval festival in Fergus, Josiah Henson’s great-great-granddaughter Barbara G. Carter and fellow walker Zacheé Nzeyimana.

Viewed today, with an understanding of how colonization harmed Indigenous nations, this is an uncomfortable position. But Scott lays out the scant choices for a Black Loyalist, the name given to Black people who supported the Crown in the war against the United States. “You’ve fought for Canada because the fear was that if the U.S. won, the U.S. would reimpose slavery in Canada. … You know that freedom is hanging by a thin thread. Your reward is to be given land grants. … But it’s Indigenous land grants that you’re given.”

“And so the intertwining of that complex history — freedom for one group, the promise of freedom, of economic prosperity — it’s based on taking away the land from a different group,” Scott says. 

Canada’s promises to Black Loyalists were hollow. Most weren’t awarded the land they were owed, while others received “the worst land grants, smaller size, in the middle of nowhere, so far from the roads and later far from the railways, so it was economically unfeasible,” to earn a living there, Scott says.

Many lost their homes after white labourers, resentful of perceived wage undercutting, instigated the first recorded race riot in North America in Shelburne, N.S., in 1784. Disillusioned, more than 1,000 people, representing a third of Nova Scotia’s Black Loyalists, left for Sierra Leone just eight years later.

Some who lived along Johnston’s route were left disappointed, too. On Highway 6, near Williamsford, Ont., Johnston stops at an intersecting dirt road. Here, where a stream meets old Garafraxa Road, some 50 families of Loyalists and freedom seekers settled in what became the Negro Creek Settlement.

Just after Boxing Day, Johnston walked with Black descendants of freedom seekers and local residents at the site of the Dawn settlement in Dresden, Ont.

Black settlers were among the first non-Indigenous residents of the Queen’s Bush, as early as the 1820s. Their presence predated county surveys in 1851 that carved up plots of land. Though they had done the hard work to clear their land, many of these families could not afford to buy it. Without titles, land agents regarded them as squatters. Other families could not afford the land payments.

What followed were threats, evictions, harassment and coercion to sell or simply walk away. By the early 1850s, families migrated out of the area. Only a handful were established enough to hold onto their plots. By the 1960s, the community cemetery had been desecrated. All that remained were the signs for Negro Creek Road.

In 1995, perceiving the name to be politically incorrect, Holland Township announced the street would be renamed Moggie Road after an early white settler. Descendants of early Black settlers marched in protest, calling it an erasure of their families’ presence, and filed a complaint with the Ontario Human Rights Commission. Nearly two years later, the town backed down.

This spring, community members intend to break ground on a memorial park on two acres of land donated by Jim Douglas, a descendant who still owns his family’s 300-acre parcel. Descendants continue to gather their histories in an online archive.

Dresden, Ont., was the site of Canada’s first racial discrimination trial. In the 1950s, local civil rights activists began organizing against businesses that refused to serve Black customers.

Johnston’s route doesn’t quite reach the town of Priceville, Ont., just 34 kilometres away, where Black residents were also pushed out violently. Eventually all that was left was a cemetery, which was razed in the 1960s for a potato field. Some tombstones were hidden in a stone pile near the local school, while others lined the floor of a barn and the basement of a farmhouse, as revealed in the 2000 documentary Speakers for the Dead.

Local white kids played baseball using a piece of a broken headstone for home plate. “I think it said Margaret,” one resident tells the camera with a laugh. “Pitch it to Maggie!”

In Dresden, Ont., an emotional meeting with descendants of early Black settlers

As 2025 drew to a close, Johnston was called again by the ancestors to walk. He set off from Detroit on Boxing Day, bound for the Black settlements of southwestern Ontario.

His trip landed during a cold snap. Some freedom seekers chose — or seized the opportunity — to leave in winter, when the long dark nights provided more cover. In freezing temperatures, they would have been able to walk over the frozen Detroit and St. Clair rivers.

“One of the things I did not fully understand was the psychological journey for these people coming across,” Johnston says. “They were happy to be free, but the psychological weight of the cold as I experienced in the last week dampened my spirit a little.”

On his route were sites with rich Black history: Chatham, Amherstburg, North Buxton and Dresden.

Turning 200 uncleared acres into a home meant “settling upon wild lands which we could call our own; and where every tree which we felled, and every bushel of corn we raised, would be for ourselves,” Henson wrote in his 1849 autobiography.

The Dawn settlement in Dresden was founded in 1841 by the abolitionist, preacher and Underground Railroad conductor Josiah Henson. Enslaved in Maryland and Kentucky, he had been permanently disabled by beatings that left him unable to lift his arms above his head. After discovering his enslaver had cheated him out of an agreement to buy his freedom, he escaped at the age of 41 with his wife and four children.

Henson, who advocated for economic independence and self-reliance, built a co-operative farm, church and vocational school to teach residents the skills to work at nearby sawmills and gristmills. His life was the inspiration for Harriet Beecher Stowe’s often-misunderstood anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and his home sits on what is now Freedom Road.

On those 200 acres, Dawn’s early residents began the task “of settling upon wild lands which we could call our own; and where every tree which we felled, and every bushel of corn we raised, would be for ourselves; in other words, where we could secure all the profits of our own labor,” Henson wrote in his 1849 autobiography.

A century later, the area became a part of Black history as the site of Canada’s first racial discrimination trial. Many businesses in Dresden refused to serve Black customers, most notoriously Kay’s Café and Emerson’s Soda Bar Restaurant.

Hugh Burnett, a Dawn descendant, and his neighbours formed the National Unity Association in 1948 and lobbied town council and then the provincial government to pass anti-discrimination legislation. They succeeded in 1954, but some local businesses refused to comply. Two years later, after sit-ins and two drawn-out provincial trials, the owner of Kay’s Café finally served his first Black customers in 1956.

“It has been stated you can’t make a law to make one man love another — I think they knew very well the law would not do that — but it would eliminate the act of discrimination,” Burnett said in a 1954 National Film Board documentary.

On the final day of his walk, Johnston was greeted at the foot of Freedom Road by several dozen Black residents, many of them descendants of Dawn settlers. They walked arm-in-arm toward the museum, singing a gospel hymn.

Retracing Ontario’s Black history ‘touched me to my core’: Johnston

For those who made it to the end of the Underground Railroad, life was bittersweet. Though many freedom seekers found a piece of their Promised Land, the pains of dispossession, prejudice and slavery were ever-present.

“I reached Canada about a year ago. Liberty I find to be sweet indeed,” Henry Atkinson recalled in 1856, after escaping enslavement in Virginia. “I found an opportunity to escape, after studying upon it a long time.”

“But it went hard to leave my wife; it was like taking my heart’s blood: but I could not help it — I expected to be taken away where I should never see her again, and so I concluded that it would be right to leave her. I never expect to see her again in this world — nor our child.”

After the American Civil War and emancipation in 1865, this yearning drew many freedom seekers back to the U.S. in the hopes of being reunited with their families, Moriah says. Having achieved economic success in Ontario settlements like Elgin (in what is now North Buxton) which grew to 1,000 Black residents at its peak, families chased opportunities in bigger cities like Detroit or Toronto. Today these clans are transnational, slipping between countries with family, friends, school and work on both sides.

The moon rises over farm fields on Freedom Road in Dresden, Ont.

The magnitude of these many journeys hit Johnston when he first arrived at the border divide in Niagara Falls.

“I’ve been tracing the footsteps of Harriet Tubman, from the banks of the Choptank River in Maryland on the eastern shore all the way to St. Catharines,” he says. “Harriet Tubman rescued her brothers in Christmas of 1854. They made that journey to St. Catharines in one month. It has taken me five years.”

“Just looking back and seeing how extraordinary that journey was that they made, and the sacrifice that many people made — many people left their families and they weren’t going back,” he says, pausing as he tears up.

“I had the privilege of knowing I was going back home to my family and friends. It touched me to the core of my bones just what that walk meant to them.”

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.

Last week, countries across the Caribbean were hit by Hurricane Melissa, one of the strongest hurricanes to make landfall in Atlantic history. The storm brought flooding to a number of islands in the region and devastated Jamaica, with at least 32 people dead and parts of the country still “underwater” as of October 28, according to officials.

As climate change makes storms more frequent and intense, the brunt of the devastation is borne by countries in the Global South, or lower-income countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America and the Middle East. These regions experience a disproportionate share of the impacts of climate change — including rising temperatures, droughts, floods and storms — despite having much smaller carbon footprints than wealthier nations, like Canada. Researchers predict climate change will impact 143 million people in the Global South by 2050. 

For those in Canada’s immigrant diasporas watching the destruction of their homelands from afar, Melissa is just the latest natural disaster bringing together two disparate concerns: money and climate change. In 2017, $5.2 billion was sent outside of Canada by residents originally from countries designated as eligible for “official development assistance,” according to Statistics Canada. These funds were mostly used for living and medical expenses, with the largest share going to Southeast Asia and Oceania. Transfers to Jamaica that year totalled $96 million. 

The international remittance company JN Money sees about 8,000 to 10,000 transactions from Canada to Jamaica every month, according to Claude Thompson, a Toronto-based regional manager. In the wake of Melissa, Thompson says he expects to see transactions temporarily jump by 10 per cent. But as of Oct. 30, many affected areas in Jamaica were still without electricity, leaving them with no way to receive money. 

Despite Canada’s persistent wage gap between immigrants and residents born here, many still send aid in spite of the cost-of-living squeeze. “I don’t think that anyone is thinking so much about the cost [of sending aid],” Didan Wedderburn, lead of the Newfoundland and Labrador chapter of the Jamaican Canadian Association, says. “We haven’t gotten to the stage of thinking, is this worth the cost? Even if we might typically compare figures when we’re not in crisis.”

After disasters, communities step in when governments fail

For immigrants living in Canada, sending money to their home countries isn’t just about financial support. Remittances are “also signs of love and kinship and affection and obligation,” York University professor Ethel Tungohan explains. 

A Canada Research Chair in Canadian Migration Policy, Impacts and Activism, Tungohan says one reason immigrants send funds during climate disasters is because they “acknowledge failed state responses to the immediate needs that climate-ravaged communities are facing.”  

Much of that help is sent directly to family members as remittances, rather than in donations to disaster response organizations on the ground. “There’s a lot of distrust when it comes to horrible institutional channels,” Tungohan says. “People worry about the professionalization of aid organizations and are most likely to trust people they know and have vetted.” 

After Typhoon Haiyan, which claimed over 6,000 lives in the Philippines in 2013, Tungohan says scammers targeting that diaspora were rampant. And after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, millions of people around the world donated half a billion dollars to the American Red Cross  — money that NPR and ProPublica later reported went largely to poorly managed projects with unverified claims of success.   

The reported number and amount of remittances from Canada is likely an underestimate, Tungohan says, because many migrants use informal money-sending channels, such as the Philippines-based app GCash. “Because of state failure, there are people who are skeptical that the remittances they send actually go to the intended recipients,” she says. 

Hurricane Melissa highlights inequities facing Caribbean workers in Canada

Every year, tens of thousands of agricultural workers come here on seasonal permits and in 2020, about 12 per cent were from the Caribbean. Many head home for the winter around now — but this year, Jamaicans and other Caribbean nationals are unsure if they have homes to return to. 

Thousands of seasonal farm workers come to Canada from the Caribbean and Latin America every year. In a letter to the federal government, an advocacy group said Hurricane Melissa shows Canada should make their Employment Insurance contributions easier to count on in times of need. Photo: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Narwhal

On Nov. 3, the advocacy group Justice for Migrant Workers sent an open letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney about flaws in the federal Employment Insurance program, drawing attention to the fact that migrant workers pay into the program, but are rarely able to access it in times of financial uncertainty like now. 

“This is not an act of charity. It’s a call to ensure migrant agricultural workers are able to access their entitlements to Employment Insurance in their time of need,” the letter reads. The group argues that powerful countries like Canada have long benefited from an extractive relationship with countries like Jamaica — echoing the United Nations, which has said wealthier countries should pay for climate adaptation in places that they’ve long exploited for labour and resources.

The diaspora is also stepping up to support their motherlands. Sylvanus Thompson, the disaster relief coordinator at the Jamaican Canadian Association, says his organization is working with Mississauga-based Atlas Cargo, which is offering to ship donated supplies to the island for free. 

As climate change makes natural disasters like hurricanes, typhoons and tropical storms more destructive, Thompson says organizations like his have been looking for ways to send aid right away when there’s a crisis, rather than having to fundraise first. The association has long discussed a general disaster relief fund, but no concrete action has taken place yet. 

‘They care about their plants and not us’: for migrant farmworkers in Ontario, COVID-19 made a bad situation worse

“We find that persons are more likely to respond in times of disaster,” he says. “But we won’t give up on [starting the fund]: it’s important to do that so we always have something to draw on.” The association is hosting a relief concert in Toronto this Thursday. 

Marcus Pereira, the founder of Reclaim Rebuild Eg West, agrees. “We can’t wait for disaster to strike, we should be redistributing these resources year-round when we know that these problems are occurring,” Pereira says. 

Pereira, whose family is from Grenada, says sending barrels full of supplies is a longstanding part of Caribbean immigrant culture. When Hurricane Beryl swept through the region last year and impacted Grenada, “the Jamaicans came through for us,” he says. “It’s a diaspora-wide effort to help those in need.” 

His youth-led advocacy group is dedicated to fighting gentrification and preserving the cultural heritage of Toronto’s Little Jamaica neighbourhood. Now, it’s running a campaign to collect monetary and in-kind donations in collaboration with the Jamaican Canadian Association.

“It feels like almost every year, there’s going to be a hurricane ripping through so we need to be ahead of the curve,” Pereira says. “It’s our doing in North America that is currently impacting the Global South. They’re paying for our emissions and our poor environmental practices, so it’s only right for us to get ahead of the game.”

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.

There’s something in the air in Aamjiwnaang First Nation. The community is located next to an industrial area of Sarnia, Ont., known to many as Chemical Valley. There are dozens of factories and refineries here, accounting for 40 per cent of Canada’s chemical industry — and an enormous amount of air pollution.

That pollution comes in many forms, but the levels of one chemical in particular caused Aamjiwnaang to declare a state of emergency last spring. Benzene is a byproduct of petroleum refining, used to make Styrofoam and other plastic materials. It’s also a volatile organic compound — a category of chemicals that evaporate easily into the air. Inhaling very high amounts can make you very sick, very quickly. And constantly breathing benzene-laden air, even in very small amounts, can do a lot of damage, too — notably by increasing your risk of leukemia and other cancers. 

Ontario’s Environment Ministry set emissions benchmarks much higher than those that triggered the state of emergency, which remains active to this day. A recent investigation by The Narwhal showed the province knew about the health risks this posed to the Aamjiwnaang community, and failed for years to take action that would meaningfully control benzene exposure. 

An air monitor is set up outside the Aamjiwnaang First Nation band office, and in front of INEOS Styrolution’s now-shuttered plant. Through the process of closing the plant, there have been several spikes in benzene emissions levels, which the company has notified the community about. Photo: Carlos Osorio / The Narwhal

It wasn’t until after the state of emergency was declared that the ministry introduced stricter regulations aimed at controlling emissions from INEOS Styrolution, the chemical plant located across the street from Aamjiwnaang’s band office, and the primary source of benzene emissions in the area. 

Ontario’s Environment Ministry didn’t answer detailed questions related to these findings. INEOS Styrolution said it “consistently operated within the strict limits” set by the ministry. The company halted operations last spring and went on to decommission the facility, but said the closure was not related to the benzene spikes.

How much benzene in the air is too much? And what does that actually look like? Here’s a graphic, numerical look at the story of benzene pollution in Aamjiwnaang. Each represents concentrations of the chemical, averaged over different periods of time, and are expressed in micrograms per cubic metre of air. 

This series of graphics demonstrates the large discrepancy between the levels known to cause measurable health impacts, the levels that residents say caused serious symptoms of illness and the levels the Ontario government used to assess whether the company was doing enough to control its emissions.

Benzene levels, averaged over a single hour

Graphic: Andrew Munroe / The Narwhal

191 micrograms per cubic metre, left: This was the maximum hourly reading recorded at an air monitor in Aamjiwnaang on April 25, 2024, the day the First Nation triggered a state of emergency. The community has recorded even higher hourly concentrations; in 2023, the maximum hourly level recorded was 372 micrograms per cubic metre. The First Nation now uses a benchmark of 27 micrograms per cubic metre to trigger the closure of some facilities.

580 micrograms per cubic metre, right: Ontario also gave this number to INEOS in 2019 as a benchmark to assess the risk of short-term health impacts. It’s based on standards from Texas that have been criticized as too lenient and allowing unacceptable increases in the risk of cancer. It is also several times higher than the levels in Aamjiwnaang when several people went to the hospital with headaches and nausea.

Benzene levels, averaged over a 24-hour period

Graphic: Andrew Munroe / The Narwhal

2.3 micrograms per cubic metre, left: This is the level the Ontario government says could indicate a higher cancer risk with long-term exposure.

50 micrograms per cubic metre, centre: This was the average concentration level recorded by an air monitor in Aamjiwnaang on April 16, 2024. Around the same time, people in the community reported headaches and nausea, strong enough to send some to the hospital.

320 micrograms per cubic metre, right: This is the level the Ontario government said, in 2019, it would use to evaluate the risk of acute exposure from emissions from INEOS Styrolution, located across the street from Aamjiwnaang’s band office, playground and sports fields.

Benzene levels, averaged over a full year

Graphic: Andrew Munroe / The Narwhal

0.45 micrograms per cubic metre, left: This is Ontario’s legal air quality limit for benzene. It is based on health studies that say this concentration, over a lifetime, presents a non-negligible increase in the risk of cancer. This isn’t enforced across the board; facilities that can’t meet it, including INEOS in Sarnia, are required to report emissions to the government and bring exposure down to a level that is “as low as reasonably achievable.”

4.5 micrograms per cubic metre, right: In 2019, the Ontario government told INEOS it should aim to gradually reduce its benzene emissions to this level to reduce the cancer risk to people nearby. It’s also the level established as a regulatory limit in June 2024. Annual recorded concentrations of benzene in Aamjiwnaang, measured at the band office monitoring station, were about 6.5 micrograms per cubic metre in 2019 and in 2023. That’s about ten times as much as industrial areas in Michigan and California, included for comparison in a 2024 health report.

— With files from Emma McIntosh

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.

“A non-negligible risk of cancer.” “Significant elevated benzene concentrations.” “Risks to the public.” 

That’s how the Ontario government referred to emissions of the carcinogen benzene from the INEOS Styrolution petrochemical plant in Sarnia in 2023 — a year before those emissions sparked a state of emergency for neighbouring Aamjiwnaang First Nation. 

Internal documents show Ontario’s Environment Ministry had noted similar concerns since at least 2019. Still, it declined to impose a strict limit on the plant’s benzene levels until the 2024 state of emergency, instead ordering the company to install new emissions-control technology, among other measures.

Benzene is a byproduct of petroleum refining that’s also found in crude oil and fuel. It’s one of the foundational ingredients in plastic that, along with other chemicals, can be used to make anything from food containers to, in INEOS’ case, rubber.

Beyond Aamjiwnaang First Nation is Chemical Valley, the industrial area of Sarnia, Ont. In February, Aamjiwnaang Chief Janelle Nahmabin signed terms of reference with the federal government to address the environmental racism her community has faced.

INEOS, which has since shut down its plant in Sarnia, said its benzene emissions were within the limits set by the Ontario government. The plant is one of several dozen petroleum refineries and petrochemical plants in an area of Sarnia known as Chemical Valley. The Ontario government has struggled to control emissions from the facilities for decades, even as Aamjiwnaang First Nation has sounded alarms about how pollution has harmed its members’ health. 

Ontario’s Environment Ministry did not answer detailed questions from The Narwhal about the documents and how it regulates air pollution in Chemical Valley. The Narwhal also sent detailed questions to INEOS Styrolution. The company did not answer most of them, but sent a statement saying it prioritizes safety and has “consistently operated within the strict limits” set by the Environment Ministry. “INEOS Styrolution remains steadfast in its commitment to protecting the health and safety of our employees and the community, and we have consistently adhered to [the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks’] emissions requirements,” spokesperson April Ludwikowski wrote.

The ministry’s response to the benzene emissions from the INEOS plant is one example of a pattern pieced together by The Narwhal through 250 pages of internal ministry documents, obtained through two freedom of information requests. 

The records outline several steps the Ontario government could have taken to address air pollution in Chemical Valley — but didn’t.

Inside the shape-shifting rules for pollution in Sarnia’s Chemical Valley

As the ministry sent compliance orders, benzene spikes continued

The records obtained by The Narwhal show Ontario’s Environment Ministry made three attempts to cut benzene emissions from INEOS through directives called compliance orders. The ministry uses compliance orders to compel companies to fix issues, or take certain steps to prevent potential harm to people and the environment. 

In the years leading up to the 2024 emergency in Aamjiwnaang, the ministry sent three orders to INEOS — one in 2019, another in 2020 and a third in 2023. The orders urged INEOS to gradually lower its benzene emissions closer to Ontario’s health-based air quality guidelines. 

But earlier in 2019, the ministry had also sent INEOS another set of guidelines. These ones were based on benzene standards in Texas, which experts have criticized for being too loose and putting residents at higher risk of cancer. They recommend benzene levels remain below an hourly average of up to 580 micrograms per cubic metre, which is three times more than the levels recorded in Aamjiwnaang as people went to the emergency room in 2024.

An INEOS Styrolution spokesperson told The Narwhal the 580 micrograms per cubic metre was an “established” emissions limit set by the ministry, and that the company never breached it. The Environment Ministry did not answer questions about how it applied those numbers to INEOS.

Hourly averages of benzene exposure: Left: 191 micrograms per cubic metre was the hourly reading recorded at an air monitor in Aamjiwnaang First Nation on April 25, 2024, the day the First Nation triggered a state of emergency. Right: 580 micrograms per cubic metre is the hourly average Ontario instructed INEOS to use in 2019 to assess acute health risks, based on Texas standards that have been criticized for putting the public’s health at risk. Graphic: Andrew Munroe / The Narwhal

“Ontario wasn’t looking at all the cumulative impacts, which we’ve been saying for decades now,” Aamjiwnaang Chief Janelle Nahmabin said. “[It was] just allowing exceedances and not looking out for the health and safety of our community or the environment.”

Despite the orders, elevated levels of benzene continued to waft across the road from INEOS to Aamjiwnaang for years. 

Though some of the steps outlined in the first two orders helped, one air monitor near the plant showed emissions of benzene that “increased each year,” according to the 2023 order. The same document noted six incidents in 2022 and 2023 where air monitors detected “significantly elevated” concentrations of benzene from INEOS, including some where air monitors recorded levels even higher than the ones that prompted the 2024 state of emergency.

Aamjiwnaang has been fighting environmental racism for decades. Now, the First Nation has an agreement to address it

Sometimes the emissions came from spills, according to the 2023 order. Other times, they came from planned maintenance or the “prolonged storage” of waste with benzene in it. None technically violated the laws governing the plant. 

“INEOS [is] concerned that orders require them to do too much, too soon,” said one late 2023 briefing document prepared by the Environment Ministry. “They believed that since they were complying with the [standard], they shouldn’t have to do more.” 

INEOS and the ministry didn’t answer questions about the orders. 

The province sent INEOS a fourth order in spring 2024, as benzene levels spiked again, sickening people in Aamjiwnaang. That order required INEOS to notify the public if readings of benzene spiked, develop another plan to “address benzene from wastewater” and investigate where the carcinogen might be coming from. 

High levels of benzene were reported again a week later, prompting Aamjiwnaang to issue its state of emergency.

INEOS temporarily shut down the plant following the ministry’s 2024 order, five years after the ministry first raised red flags about its benzene emissions. The company soon announced it would close the plant entirely due to the “economics of the facility within a wider industry context.” It said the situation was not related to the benzene spikes. 

Chief Nahmabin said the Ontario government sent the orders without checking with Aamjiwnaang to make sure they were effective — a “big miss,” as the community has asked time and again to be involved in decisions about its territory.

More and more, Aamjiwnaang is taking the regulation of industry into its own hands, writing air standards for the reserve and working with the federal government on a pilot project to address environmental racism. “We cannot wait for governments to be the one that acts for us,” Nahmabin said.

Pipelines run through the Imperial Oil refinery in Chemical Valley. Ontario passed legislation aimed at tackling sulphur dioxide emissions in 2022, but a 2023 briefing said the Environment Ministry was “directed” to give industry in the Sarnia area more time to comply, despite concerns from Aamjiwnaang that it would allow Imperial Oil and Shell in particular to emit high levels of sulphur dioxide for years longer. 

Ontario skipped a planned review of its benzene standards for petroleum and petrochemical plants

Though Ontario has strict air quality standards for benzene, it said it’s not “technically and economically feasible” for all industrial facilities to meet them. So some plants follow different sets of rules called technical standards, which require them to use the best available equipment to lower emissions as much as possible. Seven facilities in the Sarnia area, including INEOS Styrolution’s now-shuttered plant, are regulated by technical standards for the petroleum refining and petrochemical industries.

The standards were penned under the former Liberal government in 2016. At the time, the documents obtained by The Narwhal show, the Environment Ministry didn’t realize how much facilities were actually emitting. Industry-provided figures were “underestimated,” according to an internal memo from late 2023. They pointed to INEOS Styrolution as an example, saying the company was emitting maximum concentrations of benzene 15 times higher than what the province was aware of. 

Company spokesperson Ludwikowski said INEOS maintains “full transparency” in its emissions reporting. Ludwikowski did not directly address questions about the estimates, but denied that the company “underreported our emissions or misled the regulator.”

“Property line emissions monitoring at our Sarnia site is conducted by independent third parties, in accordance with [Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks] requirements, ensuring there is no internal influence over the results,” Ludwikowski said in a statement. 

The Aamjiwnaang First Nation band office is across the street from INEOS Styrolution. When benzene levels from the plant spike, the office has been temporarily closed and staff sent home feeling ill.

The Narwhal sent questions about the problem, and direct quotes from the documents, to every company in the Sarnia area that operates under a petrochemical or petroleum industry technical standard. That list also includes Imperial Oil, NOVA Chemicals, Shell Canada, Suncor Energy and Diamond Petrochemicals. Imperial said it “complies with air emissions reporting requirements under the applicable regulations” but “wouldn’t be able to speak to documents that we haven’t seen.” The rest did not respond. 

When the government first wrote the technical standards in 2016, the ministry committed to reviewing them by 2023. The Ford government did not follow through on that plan after it was elected in 2018, despite a warning in the 2023 briefing that said updates are “needed.” The same document also noted companies would likely push back. 

“Industry is looking for further simplifications and relaxations,” the memo said. “Will be opposed to more stringent requirements.” 

The Ford government also skipped a planned update to a policy that, among other things, was aimed at addressing the cumulative effects of benzene emissions from multiple facilities in both the Sarnia area and Hamilton. The previous Liberal government introduced the policy in spring 2018 and committed to reviewing it by 2020. The Progressive Conservatives formed government in 2020 and did not follow up on the plan.

Someone ‘directed’ Ontario’s Environment Ministry to soften sulphur dioxide rules

The province did pass legislation aimed at tackling sulphur dioxide emissions in general in 2022, but the 2023 briefing said the Environment Ministry was “directed” to give industry in the Sarnia area more time to comply, and to make some requirements in the rules “less stringent.” That’s despite concerns from Aamjiwnaang that the extensions granted to two companies in particular, Imperial Oil and Shell, would allow high levels of sulphur dioxide emissions to continue for years longer. 

The document did not say who gave the ministry that direction. The regulation’s listing on the environmental registry noted, “The ministry has carefully considered the comments received during the consultation period, and we are extending the implementation of some of the requirements by two years from the end of 2026 to 2028 as facilities stated they need more time to make these significant changes to their operations.”

The Environment Ministry didn’t answer questions about its reasoning for the decisions detailed in the briefing, and how it weighed Aamjiwnaang’s health concerns against pushback from industry.

Sulphur dioxide emissions from the Shell plant in Sarnia remain a concern for Aamjiwnaang First Nation after the Ontario government was “directed” to give the companies more time and “less stringent” rules for lowering their sulphur dioxide emissions.

Ontario backed off a plan to tighten rules around sulphur dioxide: docs 

The records don’t just show problems with benzene: the Progressive Conservative government also abandoned one proposed plan it said would dramatically cut emissions of another harmful pollutant. 

Sulphur dioxide, which smells like burnt matches, is best known as one of the chemicals that causes acid rain. But when people breathe in a lot of it at once, it can also irritate the human respiratory system.

Ontario has regulations limiting how much of the pollutant companies can emit, and has tightened them in recent years. But some facilities can’t meet those standards — and that includes two companies that make carbon black, a powder used in paint and rubber, with sulphur dioxide as a byproduct. One of those companies, Cabot Corporation, is located in Sarnia.

From 2018 to 2020 Cabot asked the Ontario government for an alternative to the regulations, the late 2023 memo said. Vanessa Craigie, a spokesperson for Cabot, said in a written statement that the company wanted more “flexibility” in the province’s timelines so it could develop and test technology to reduce its sulphur dioxide emissions. 

In June 2023, Ontario unveiled its answer to that request: a proposed technical standard for the carbon black industry. If finalized, by 2028 it would mandate both carbon black facilities in Ontario, including Cabot in Sarnia, to install technology that slashes sulphur dioxide pollution, the province said. By 2030, the companies would have to reduce their emissions by 95 per cent, meeting a new set of weekly and annual limits. 

The carbon black industry pushed back on provincial standards set to lower its sulphur dioxide emissions, and the standards were dropped. But one company in Sarnia, Cabot Carbon, has developed its own plan for lowering those emissions, and received a green light from the province and Aamjiwnaang First Nation.

At the time, Aamjiwnaang told the province those deadlines gave companies too much time to continue emitting the chemical, and companies should already have installed known technology to emit less.

Industry also had concerns about the technical standard, albeit different ones, according to the 2023 briefing note. Cabot told the ministry it would be “easier” for them to just follow the existing air standard instead. Craigie said the company is committed to environmental responsibility and developing new technology, but that the technical standard was “more complex” than the existing standards, “making compliance more challenging within the given timeframe.”

The ministry never finalized the plan, and did not answer questions from The Narwhal about why. Craigie said, “it was deemed not the optimal approach,” and that the ministry opted to work with facilities on specific plans to cut their emissions.

Craigie said Cabot’s final plan to “significantly” reduce sulphur dioxide emissions has received a green light from the ministry and from Aamjiwnaang, and will use “state of the art” technology piloted over the last few years. “In addition, Cabot is committed to voluntarily reducing its operations in order to reduce our contribution to the regional [sulphur dioxide] levels,” Craigie said. “Cabot will reduce operations when regional [sulphur dioxide] concentrations exceed certain levels at nearby monitoring stations.” 

Nahmabin said Cabot has worked to form a better relationship with Aamjinwaang in recent years, sharing more information and responding to concerns quickly. 

“That’s what we’re looking for with our neighbours,” Nahmabin said. 

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.

Last spring, Aamjiwnaang First Nation hit a breaking point.

For weeks, enormous amounts of benzene had been leaking from a plastics plant across the road from the southwestern Ontario community’s band office. Long-term exposure to low levels of benzene causes cancers like leukemia. If you breathe in a lot of it at once, the carcinogen can also make you feel very sick, very quickly — and people in Aamjiwnaang were breathing in levels of benzene hundreds of times higher than what health-based guidelines recommend. 

Sore throats, nausea, dizziness and headaches struck members of the Anishinaabe community, located alongside a cluster of petroleum and petrochemical plants in an area of Sarnia, Ont., known as Chemical Valley. A few wound up in the emergency room due to “noxious exposure,” the local hospital said at the time. The nation sent staff home from the band office and warned families to stay away from a playground. On April 25, 2024, the nation triggered a state of emergency, a watershed moment that made headlines across the country.

Daily averages of benzene exposure: Left: 2.3 micrograms per cubic metre is Ontario’s recommended limit for daily benzene exposure. The recommendation was designed to minimize cancer risk, but is not legally binding. Centre: 50 micrograms per cubic metre was the daily reading in Aamjiwnaang First Nation on April 16, 2024, when people in the community reported headaches and nausea. Right: 320 micrograms per cubic metre was the level Ontario told INEOS, in 2019, it would use to assess the risk of acute health problems from the company’s benzene emissions. It’s based on standards from Texas that have been criticized for leaving residents at high risk of cancer. Graphic: Andrew Munroe / The Narwhal

The Ontario government imposed new limits on the plastics plant owner, INEOS Styrolution, days later — but years after provincial officials identified the problem. Ontario’s Environment Ministry had known since at least 2019 that INEOS was emitting similar amounts of benzene regularly and failed to stop it, documents obtained by The Narwhal through freedom of information show. The company said it has always remained within its legal limits for emissions. The documents show the province knew the threshold for benzene posed a significant health risk to Aamjiwnaang First Nation long before imposing the new limits.

The Ontario government’s delayed action is one example of a pattern laid out in more than 250 pages of records obtained by The Narwhal, all dated from fall 2023 but detailing events that happened years earlier. In 2022 and 2023 alone, the Environment Ministry documented at least six incidents where the company leaked enough benzene to risk acute health problems for people nearby, according to the documents. That included two incidents where levels of the chemical were higher than what triggered the 2024 state of emergency — when the province took stricter steps to curb emissions.

Beyond that, the documents show government officials realized INEOS and other facilities were emitting more benzene than the Environment Ministry was originally aware of, in large part due to leaks from storage tanks. Despite this, officials still declined to take steps to limit them. Altogether, it paints a hazy picture of how industry is regulated in Chemical Valley, and just how bad the air really is.

A state of emergency in Ontario’s Chemical Valley

It’s an issue Aamjiwnaang First Nation has been raising red flags about for years — and increasingly taking into its own hands, establishing air pollution standards, increasing its oversight of the maze of pipelines that cross the reserve and working with the federal government on a pilot project addressing environmental racism. 

“We cannot wait for governments to be the one that acts for us,” Aamjiwnaang Chief Janelle Nahmabin said in an interview. “We need to be there as well.”

On June 13, Aamjiwnaang’s band council again recommended certain areas of the community be evacuated due to high benzene levels from the INEOS plant — though the levels were still legal under provincial guidelines. In a letter to several federal and provincial ministers and mayors, the band council wrote the community’s annual powwow was scheduled for the June 21 weekend, coinciding with National Indigenous Peoples Day. The event already saw lower than usual attendance last year “due to fear in the community over benzene exposure and potential health impacts.”

Aamjiwnaang First Nation Chief Janelle Nahmabin signed the terms of reference for addressing environmental racism in her community alongside the federal government this year. Aamjiwnaang was the first community to do so under Bill C-226, the National Strategy Respecting Environmental Racism and Environmental Justice Act.

Ontario’s Environment Ministry did not answer detailed questions from The Narwhal about the documents and how it regulates air pollution in Chemical Valley. The Narwhal also sent detailed questions to INEOS Styrolution. The company did not answer most of them, but sent a statement saying it prioritizes safety and has “consistently operated within the strict limits” set by the Environment Ministry.

“INEOS Styrolution remains steadfast in its commitment to protecting the health and safety of our employees and the community, and we have consistently adhered to [the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks’] emissions requirements,” spokesperson April Ludwikowski wrote.

Benzene emissions in Chemical Valley higher than reported estimates 

Aamjiwnaang is located on the St. Clair River, just south of Lake Huron. The nation’s name means “at the spawning stream” in Anishinaabemowin. Today, about 900 people live on its reserve, where cul-de-sacs are lined with brick houses and a creek trickles past the nation’s community centre. 

Every year, as spring turns to summer, more than 10,000 sturgeon — a species that’s endangered on the Great Lakes — return to the river to spawn, many of them meeting below the Bluewater Bridge, which connects Sarnia to Michigan. When The Narwhal visited in February, a kingfisher dove to scoop fish from the icy waters while an eagle soared overhead. 

Still, Chemical Valley is nearly always visible over the tops of trees and fences, its stacks and tanks a reminder of the heavy industry a stone’s throw away. The Sarnia area’s history with petroleum and petrochemicals stretches back to the mid-1800s, when the first oil well in North America was drilled nearby, in a village now named Oil Springs. Refineries soon followed. During the Second World War, Sarnia produced synthetic rubber for the Allied forces. Even more companies followed after the war ended, and Chemical Valley now hosts about 60 refineries and chemical plants. 

Aamjiwnaang First Nation’s band office is directly across the road from INEOS Styrolution, which has long been allowed by the province to emit high levels of benzene, resulting in the office being temporarily closed and staff sent home feeling ill.

As workers flooded the area in the 1940s, a village called Blue Water sprang up outside the gate of the first plant in Chemical Valley. Governments ended up relocating residents away from it two decades later, concerned about how living there could impact their health. Aamjiwnaang’s baseball diamond is located about 800 metres from the plaque that now commemorates the old village site. The nation is still surrounded by industry.

INEOS is among the closest plants to the reserve, directly across the road from Aamjiwnaang’s band office and that same baseball diamond. The plant has been shut down since regulators stepped in last spring, and INEOS has announced plans to decommission it by the end of 2025. But for years it was a “heavy benzene emitter,” according to internal Environment Ministry documents — releasing “significantly more” than other facilities in Chemical Valley.

Benzene is a byproduct of petroleum refining that’s also found in crude oil and fuel. It’s one of the foundational ingredients in plastic that, along with other chemicals, can be used to make anything from food containers to car parts. At its Sarnia facility, INEOS Styrolution used benzene to make plastic and rubber. It stored the benzene — which regularly came from refineries in the area — in massive tanks that were known to leak, according to the documents. 

Aamjiwnaang residents are exposed to way more of the chemical than people living in big cities and other industrial areas: 30 times more benzene than people living in Toronto and Ottawa, according to the First Nation, and 10 times more than a city in California that has a similar mix of plants. 

The flags of Aamjiwnaang First Nation and the Anishinabek fly over the community at the shore of the St. Clair River.

“Ontario’s air pollution requirements to limit industrial pollution are lagging requirements in the U.S.,” said a briefing prepared for then-environment minister Andrea Khanjin in late 2023, noting the elevated levels of benzene and other pollutants near Aamjiwnaang.

“In many cases, Ontario’s facilities emit far more than comparable U.S. facilities.” 

Aside from the long-term cancer risk that comes from breathing in small amounts of benzene, exposure to a lot of it at once can cause headaches, tremors and dizziness. 

One set of provincial guidelines that consider cumulative sources of air pollutants, but aren’t legally binding, recommends benzene levels stay below a daily average of 2.3 micrograms per cubic metre. On April 16, 2024, during the event that sickened people in Aamjiwnaang, the daily average was 50 micrograms per cubic metre. On April 25, the hourly reading at a community air monitor reached 191 micrograms per cubic metre.

Ontario’s air quality regulation, which considered the long-term cancer risks posed by benzene, mandates average concentrations of the chemical be no higher than 0.45 micrograms per cubic metre annually. But the air quality regulation does not apply to some of the companies operating in Chemical Valley.

INEOS Styrolution’s Sarnia plant, along with six other facilities in the area, are exempt from provincial benzene emissions guidelines because it wouldn’t be “technically and economically feasible” to meet them, according to the Ontario government. Instead, the seven facilities follow a set of rules called “technical standards,” which are also common in other types of industrial sites, like pulp and paper mills and asphalt plants. The provincial Liberal government of the day created the standards covering petrochemical plants and petroleum refineries in Sarnia in 2016 after industry there pushed back on the province’s air quality standard for benzene, then a brand-new policy.

Just beyond Aamjiwnaang First Nation is the Suncor Sarnia Refinery, top left, which produces gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, among others. Throughout the community, areas are blocked off, right of ways cleared and markers stand up to note the location of pipelines underground.

Technical standards don’t put a hard limit on benzene emissions. The ministry instead requires companies to use the best available equipment to lower emissions as much as possible. To get there, the standards have requirements around emissions-reduction technology and air monitoring, among other things, and the Ministry of Environment can order more measures if it believes they’re needed. 

The technical standards affecting Chemical Valley were written based on an assessment of benzene sources in Sarnia. They used air monitoring and a review of how much several facilities were emitting at the time, the ministry said in 2016. 

Some of the estimates the ministry relied on were provided by industry — and in at least one case, they were wrong, according to a briefing note prepared for Khanjin in late 2023. The memo points to one company as an example: INEOS Styrolution, which it said was emitting maximum concentrations of benzene 15 times higher than what the province was aware of. 

The documents do not detail how the error happened, which other companies may have also submitted incorrect estimates or when the Ontario government realized its gauge of benzene emissions was wrong.

The Narwhal sent questions about the problem, including direct quotes from the documents, to every company in the Sarnia area that operates under a petrochemical or petroleum industry technical standard, a list that also includes Imperial Oil, NOVA Chemicals, Shell Canada, Suncor Energy and Diamond Petrochemicals. Two responded. INEOS denied giving incorrect information to the ministry: “At no point have we underreported our emissions or misled the regulator,” Ludwikowski said. Imperial said it “complies with air emissions reporting requirements under the applicable regulations” but “wouldn’t be able to speak to documents” that it hasn’t seen.

Factories and oil refineries have given Sarnia’s Chemical Valley its name, but long before they arrived here, Aamjiwnaang First Nation has used the area along the St. Clair River, just south of Lake Huron. The nation’s name means “at the spawning stream” in Anishinaabemowin.

Ontario’s Environment Ministry did not answer questions about the flawed figures.

The documents obtained by The Narwhal show the current Progressive Conservative government has been aware of how much benzene INEOS was actually emitting since at least 2019, when a new air monitor started picking up high levels at times when the wind was blowing from the direction of the plant.

Ludwikowski, the INEOS spokesperson, said the company maintains “full transparency” in its emissions reporting.

“Property line emissions monitoring at our Sarnia site is conducted by independent third parties, in accordance with [Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks] requirements, ensuring there is no internal influence over the results,” Ludwikowski said in a statement. Ludwikowski and INEOS Styrolution did not directly answer follow-up questions.

Aamjiwnaang has been fighting environmental racism for decades. Now, the First Nation has an agreement to address it

The Ford government was scheduled to review the policy in 2023 but skipped it — despite a warning in the 2023 briefing for Khanjin that said updates are “needed.” The same document also noted companies would likely push back. 

“Industry is looking for further simplifications and relaxations,” the memo said. “Will be opposed to more stringent requirements.”

The update to the technical standard was one of several air pollution-related moves the government hadn’t followed through on, the memo indicated.

Another was a planned update to a policy that, among other things, was aimed at addressing the cumulative effects of benzene emissions from multiple facilities both in the Sarnia area and Hamilton. The previous Liberal government introduced the policy in its last few months of power in spring 2018 and committed to reviewing it by 2020, but the Progressive Conservatives did not follow through. 

In April, Aamjiwnaang’s band council temporarily closed access to the community’s cemetery after a benzene spill from the adjacent Suncor refinery. A few days earlier, the company spilled hundreds of litres of crude oil into the river.

Ontario allowed INEOS to emit benzene levels higher than what led to Aamjiwnaang’s state of emergency 

In spring 2019, after the new air monitor near INEOS Styrolution’s Sarnia facility started to show how high its benzene emissions were, the Environment Ministry issued the first in a series of compliance orders, mandating the company take steps to gradually cut its benzene emissions. 

Compliance orders are usually legally binding, and the ministry can use them to compel companies to fix issues and prevent harm to people and the environment. In practice, however, Aamjiwnaang has said the ministry failed to engage with the nation about the orders, which were not enough to protect people from contaminants.

“Aamjiwnaang has not been involved in the decision-making” Nahmabin told The Narwhal. “And that’s what we’re looking for, because this is our territory, this is our home.”

The goal of the spring 2019 order to INEOS was to eventually get average benzene emissions below 4.5 micrograms per cubic metre annually, and 30 micrograms per cubic metre over a two-week period. The figures were higher than Ontario’s health-based standards, but would reduce the cancer risks to people nearby, according to the government records obtained by The Narwhal. 

Annual averages of benzene exposure: Left: 0.45 micrograms per cubic metre is Ontario’s legal annual average for benzene emissions, based on the risk of cancer. Many industrial facilities in Sarnia, Ont., are exempt from this limit and instead follow technical standards that require certain emissions-reduction technologies be used. Right: 4.5 micrograms per cubic metre is the annual average the Ontario government told INEOS in 2019 it should aim to gradually reduce its benzene emissions to. Graphic: Andrew Munroe / The Narwhal

But the order didn’t come with a strict limit and a timeline for getting there. It also appeared to clash with a letter the province sent in January of the same year, which included a looser target. They recommended benzene levels remain below an hourly average of up to 580 micrograms per cubic metre — three times more than the levels recorded in Aamjiwnaang as people went to the emergency room in 2024. Those benchmarks were based on standards from Texas, whose benzene limits are the loosest in the United States and have been criticized for putting residents at higher risk of cancer.

Aamjiwnaang Chief Nahmabin said the benchmarks were a “slap in the face.” 

“Why is that allowed when we’re right across the street?” she said. “That just seems very disheartening for the health of our community and our staff that are right there.”

Those January 2019 guidelines also included a limit of 30 micrograms per cubic metre over two weeks, in line with the province’s goal for INEOS. If the company breached it, the Environment Ministry warned it would be in touch to figure out the root cause and, “if necessary, identify corrective actions,” the letter said. The limits in the January 2019 letter were “not regulatory benchmarks,” the ministry wrote, but would instead be used to “assess acute exposures” of benzene.

Ludwikowski, the INEOS Styrolution spokesperson, said in her statement that the 580 micrograms per cubic metre was an “established” emissions limit set by the ministry, but did not answer follow up questions about it.

Despite the heavy presence and impacts of industry in Sarnia, nature is abundant around Aamjiwnaang First Nation.

“To further reduce emissions, INEOS Styrolution has proactively invested $50 million in modernizing the Sarnia plant,” Ludwikowski wrote. “As a result, our emissions have remained well below the [ministry’s] established limits of 580 [micrograms per cubic metre] over an hour. … These plans and timelines were developed collaboratively with the [ministry] and received full regulatory approval.”

The Environment Ministry did not answer questions about the benchmarks outlined in the January 2019 letter and how it applied them to INEOS. 

Air monitors near INEOS continued to detect spikes of benzene for five years after the ministry sent the company contrasting targets.

INEOS complied with the asks in the ministry’s 2019 order, but “elevated benzene emissions from the site” persisted in 2020, according to one internal ministry document. The ministry issued a second order that year asking the company to install more emissions control equipment. Those measures reduced benzene emissions in some areas around the plant, but not all, the ministry found — prompting it to send INEOS a third order in May 2023.

Benzene concentrations at one air monitor in particular “have increased every year following the issuance of the orders, indicating that benzene emissions at this location have not been addressed and may instead be worsening,” the 2023 order said.

The order also outlined six periods in 2022 and 2023 where air monitors detected “significantly elevated” concentrations of benzene from INEOS. In February 2022, for example, the ministry noted a two-week average of 122 micrograms per cubic metre, four times higher than the ministry’s goal for the facility. That August, the ministry detected an hourly average of 290 micrograms per cubic metre, a concentration of 100 cubic metres more than the peak levels of benzene that sickened people in Aamjiwnaang in spring 2024. An air monitor recorded even higher readings for three consecutive hours in January 2023, with levels in the 300s, the order said.

Hourly averages of benzene exposure: Left: 191 micrograms per cubic metre was the hourly reading recorded at an air monitor in Aamjiwnaang First Nation on April 25, 2024, the day the First Nation triggered a state of emergency. Right: 580 micrograms per cubic metre is the hourly average Ontario instructed INEOS to use in 2019 to assess acute health risks. It’s also based on the Texas standards, and is several times higher than the levels that sent people in Aamjiwnaang to the hospital in 2024. Graphic: Andrew Munroe / The Narwhal

INEOS told the ministry the benzene emissions were caused by spills, planned maintenance and the “prolonged storage” of waste containing the chemical in one particular area, the document said. 

None technically violated the laws governing the company, even though benzene concentrations in Aamjiwnaang had been so high they would bring a “non-negligible risk of cancer for those who may be exposed to such concentrations over the long term,” the order, signed by a ministry officer, said. 

“I believe that the [INEOS] site continues to be the primary source of the elevated benzene concentrations measured within the [Aamjiwnaang] community and that additional measures are required.”

Those measures included more technological upgrades and requirements to notify the ministry about various aspects of the operation of INEOS Styrolution’s plant. Like the previous orders, they did not include firm emissions targets for the company. 

INEOS pushed back, according to a document prepared by ministry officials that outlined the context for air quality measures in Sarnia: “INEOS [is] concerned that orders require them to do too much, too soon. They believed that since they were complying with the [standard], they shouldn’t have to do more.”

Ludwikowski didn’t directly answer questions about the company’s conversations with the Ontario government. 

A storage tank at Shell’s refinery in Sarnia features ‘Ojibwe Spirit,’ a mural by Aamjiwnaang First Nation artist John Williams, unveiled in 2022 to honour the land and people of Aamjiwnaang.

By the end of 2023, Aamjiwnaang had maintained the orders were “inadequate and slow,” according to the late 2023 briefing. And in the meantime, a long-anticipated health study funded by the Ontario government reiterated what people from the First Nation have been saying for a long time: air pollution from Chemical Valley was putting people’s health at risk in Aamjiwnaang. First Nations were “frustrated,” the briefing noted, because “proven technologies exist that can better manage and control” emissions of benzene and other pollutants.

“They also believe that [the ministry] provides priority access to industry and that [the ministry] continues to ignore the First Nations’ input,” the briefing said.

In one meeting between ministry staff and the nation, Aamjiwnaang representatives warned the Ontario government it would “take actions into its own hands” if the ministry didn’t act quickly to limit air pollution. 

The Environment Ministry did not answer questions about the meeting, and it’s not clear what steps it might have taken afterwards. In a notice sent to INEOS in 2024, which the province publicly posted online, the ministry said it had developed new interim guidelines in December 2023 — the month after the health study was released — about how staff should interpret the risks posed by benzene exposure.

Those internal guidelines indicated exposures of 90 micrograms per cubic metre over an hour, or 30 micrograms per cubic metre over 24 hours, would increase acute health risks. Those thresholds are dramatically lower than the 580 micrograms per hour the ministry recommended in its 2019 letter to INEOS, but still far higher than benzene standards that take long-term cancer risk into consideration.

A few months later, in April 2024, as benzene levels spiked in Aamjiwnaang and sent people to the emergency room, the ministry issued INEOS a fourth order. It required INEOS to notify the public if readings of benzene spiked, develop another plan to “address benzene from wastewater” and investigate where the carcinogen might be coming from. High levels of benzene were reported again a week later, prompting Aamjiwnaang to issue its state of emergency.

The following month, Ontario barred INEOS from storing benzene at its Sarnia site and suspended its approval to operate until the company made major repairs. The federal government stepped in at this point, issuing a temporary order to petrochemical companies in the area to cut benzene emissions. (The federal government has some jurisdiction to set nationwide air quality rules, like laws limiting emissions from new cars, but usually leaves local air quality rules to provinces and territories.)

Ontario followed suit, imposing benzene limits of its own on INEOS that came into effect that June. The limits, which remain in place, include a cap of 90 micrograms per cubic metre over an hour. It limited annual average emissions to 4.5 micrograms per cubic metre — 10 times higher than the province’s usual air quality standards. 

Ludwikowski said those limits were “stringent” and “imposed without prior notice, consultation or a sufficient time for implementation.” INEOS temporarily shut down the plant following the ministry’s 2024 order, and soon announced it would close the plant entirely due to the “economics of the facility within a wider industry context.” It said the situation was unrelated to the benzene spikes. 

“We cannot wait for governments to be the one that acts for us,” Chief Nahmabin said. She continues the fight against industrial pollution in her community, and for an end to environmental racism here.

The process of shuttering the facility is scheduled to be finished by the end of 2025. Aamjiwnaang’s state of emergency is still in place, and won’t be lifted as long as benzene continues to be stored at the site, Nahmabin said.

Benzene levels on Aamjiwnaang have mostly stayed lower since spring 2024, but the risk isn’t gone. As well as the most recent partial evacuation in mid-June, days before Nahmabin spoke to The Narwhal in late May, high benzene readings forced the community to close buildings and warn people away from the baseball diamond. In April, Aamjiwnaang temporarily closed access to the community’s cemetery after a benzene spill from the adjacent Suncor refinery — days after the company also spilled hundreds of litres of crude oil into the river. Suncor did not answer questions from The Narwhal about either incident.

In January, the Chemistry Industry Association of Canada told the Sarnia Observer that without INEOS accepting benzene produced as a by-product at other sites in Chemical Valley, companies had resorted to moving it out of the region by ship, rail and truck. 

Aamjiwnaang has asked the province for copies of any approvals it has granted to companies to store benzene in the area, Nahmabin said. “The problem is not going away, we just want to make sure that it’s being handled safely.”

Nahmabin is hopeful governments now understand they have to work with Aamjiwnaang to fix their oversight of Chemical Valley.

“It’s a big can of worms, and it’s peeling back decades of environmental racism,” she said. 

“We see the gaps, and this is where we feel like we can step in to effectively regulate Chemical Valley, because we’re here. This is our homeland. This is our Traditional Territory.”

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.

For Inuk actor Anna Lambe, star of the hit Netflix comedy North of North, the north-est north is home. For real — she was born in Iqaluit but her family is from Grise Fiord, the most northern community in Canada.

In North of North, Lambe’s character, Siaja, is starting a new path with dreams of reinventing herself after exiting her marriage. It’s another badass character on a resume that’s full of them: the 24-year-old Lambe is known for True Detective: Night Country, The Grizzlies and Trickster, playing an assortment of advocates, rebels and people who fiercely protect their loved ones.

When she took The Narwhal’s Moose Questionnaire, which digs into our connection to the natural world, it became clear she’s pretty badass herself. Unlike some, Lambe didn’t shy away from our kiss, marry, kill question about animals — and she actually picked an animal to hunt for food, rather than assume we meant killing for kicks, like the rest of you freaks. 

Lambe is also not afraid to call things how she sees them — like that oil companies are responsible for mitigating climate change and people who call hunting and wearing furs “savage” are wrong. 

“I feel like a lot of people would benefit from understanding where their food comes from a little bit better, and understanding where our food comes from and how things have been done for time immemorial,” she said. “But that also requires a lot of empathy and open-heartedness and open minds.” 

North of North premiered on CBC and APTN earlier this year and debuts on Netflix on April 10. The show may be set in the ice but it’s heartwarming — much like our conversation with Lambe.

“You will laugh, you will cry,” she said. “I don’t, like, hope people cry, but it would be really nice and validating if they did.”

This interview is edited and condensed for clarity — all opinions are the subject’s own.

What’s the most awe inspiring natural site that you’ve witnessed between the Pacific and the Atlantic, 49th parallel and Hudson Bay, basically what we call today Canada?

Maybe I’m a little bit biased, but I’m always in awe of Iqaluit. I love the hills and the mountains on the other side of the bay. My family loves going boating in the summer, being so far away from town, seeing the seals and the birds, sometimes seeing whales or walruses, seeing caribou in the mountains. 

It’s something that always reminds me of how small I am and how insignificant I am. Some people might find that a little bit scary, but I find it really relieving and it is a good perspective shifter.

Actor Anna Lambe grew up in Iqaluit. Photo: Sean Kilpatrick / The Canadian Press

What’s the most awe inspiring natural site that you’ve witnessed outside of Canada?

I love Greenland. I think I’ve only been to Nuuk, but Nuuk is absolutely beautiful. Or maybe Iceland, their waterfalls are incredible. I have a reverence and a fear of water. It’s so powerful and incredible. It’s beautiful to look at, but it can take you out pretty quickly. 

Think of three iconic animals, or animals that are considered iconic within Canada. Choose one each to kiss, marry and kill.

I will say kill a seal, a ring seal. Very tasty, very delicious. Sealskin is very beautiful. Maybe marry a polar bear. I feel like they keep me safe. It’s a nice person to have on your side. And kiss a beluga whale. Just so cute, the cute little heads.

Name a person or group doing something meaningful for the environment that you think everyone should know about.

Sheila Watts-Cloutier, who wrote The Right to be Cold. I think she’s an incredible environmentalist and somebody who in particular focuses on climate change in the North and how that impacts us. She is a voice for the North that is really powerful. I’m grateful to be represented by someone like Sheila.

Maika Harper as Neevee, Anna Lambe as Siaja and Keira Cooper in North of North. The show debuted on CBC in January, and on Netflix April 10. Photo: Jasper Savage / Netflix

Can you name one person that could significantly help mitigate the climate crisis, if they really wanted to?

I would love for the head of an oil company to realize that what they’re doing is causing a lot of damage and be a little bit more conscious of how their work impacts everybody else. There’s obviously demand for it and so much of our life is powered by it. But I wish that there was a bit more insight into the future and thinking about the generations that are going to come after you and are going to have to deal with the impacts of the decisions that you made. 

Outdoor cats, yes or no?

Outdoor cats in cities and in urban centres, I’m going to say no, because of the harm that they cause to the local wildlife and stuff. Farmlands and things like that, sure.

Can you tell us about a time that you changed your mind about something, environmental or otherwise? 

In terms of advocacy and understanding community, I think when I was younger, maybe I was a bit feistier — and there’s an importance in that and it’s valuable and necessary to have that. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized we need to have grace for one another within advocacy and within activist communities. 

We need to make space for changing minds and we can’t define people by how they felt five years ago or 10 years ago. If we really want to have communities and solidarity, then we need to be open to people growing and changing. 

So not necessarily a change of mind, but through time, a growth in my understanding of certain things and a change to who I am now. The more you get to know, the more you realize how much you don’t know. Being able to hold space for growing and recognizing that it really takes a community, it takes a team, to incite change, that is an important way to move through life.

An Inuk man dragging a hunted seal in 1961. Seal hunting is an ancestral practice that brings sustenance and warmth to Inuit. Photo: Vilhjalmur Stefansson / National Film Board of Canada / Library and Archives Canada

A photo taken between 1956 and 1960 of an Inuk woman named Taktu cleaning fat from a seal. Photo: Rosemary Gilliat Eaton / Library and Archives Canada

Can you think of a time that you tried to change someone’s mind?

As an Inuk, there’s a constant battle with people who think that we shouldn’t use furs, that we shouldn’t hunt animals, that what we’re doing is barbaric and that we should ‘come up with the times.’ If we can’t afford the groceries that are priced so horribly within our communities, then we should just leave. Because hunting is savage.

Through time, I have held less space for these kinds of people. I will educate people, but when people are so set on not recognizing my humanity or my people’s humanity or our right to a dignified life, our right to our culture, our right to keep ourselves alive — if you’re not willing to hear us out on that, then I’m not willing to hear you out on on why I shouldn’t have fur on my parka when it’s minus 50 C. 

A 1960 photo of a 10-year-old named Teevee holding a seal he sculpted. Photo: Rosemary Gilliat Eaton / Library and Archives Canada

Inuit children in Kinngait, Nvt., eating seal meat in 1980. Photo: Judith Eglington / Library and Archives Canada

A 1946 photo shows two young Inuit women chewing sealskin mukluks to soften them. This photo caption has not been updated by Project Naming, a Library and Archives Canada project engaging communities in identifying Inuit, First Nations and Métis people in its records. Photo: Bud Glunz / Library and Archives Canada

So many people in urban centres are so far removed from how the actual process of getting meat happens. They’re so far removed from animals that they don’t understand that our hunting is quite fair, the animals have a good chance to get away. They have a quality of life living on the land. They’re not corralled on farms or anything like that.

I spent a lot of time trying to change minds about that, talking about the importance of subsistence hunting and why it’s necessary within our communities and why it is sustainable and an important part of our economy. But if you’re not going to see me as a human deserving of a good life, that we are also people, we just live a little bit differently — if you’re not willing to understand that, then you know what? Whatever.

Left: A 1929 photo of an Inuit seal hunter near Pangnirtung, NWT. Right: A 1960 photo of Inuit hunters examining a ring seal shot and harpooned from their trap boat. These photo captions have not been updated by Project Naming, a Library and Archives Canada project engaging communities in identifying Inuit, First Nations and Métis people in its records. Photo: left, Leslie David Livingston; right, M. McConnell and J. Connor / Library and Archives Canada

Yes, you have to choose: Rocky Mountains or Great Lakes? 

Rocky Mountains. I love mountains. Beautiful.

Researchers at Yale University, the France-based Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society and other institutions have found women tend to be more concerned about climate change than men. Why do you think that is? 

That is really interesting. Maybe part of it is women do tend to have a bit more empathy and are a bit more conscious of their peers. 

In my community, they’re the first people to tend to community. The ways that climate change is impacting us, whether it be sourcing food or being out on the land or having access to things — in Nunavut, we’re really struggling with the permafrost melting, which is damaging a lot of our infrastructure. A lot of the stress of dealing with those things really falls on to women. 

Maybe that’s why they’re the first to advocate for climate action.

What’s the farthest north you’ve ever been, and what did you do there?

My family is actually from Grise Fiord, Nvt., which is the most northern community in Canada.  

Vehicles leave Yellowknife during a 2023 state of emergency due to wildfire. “You can’t not be conscious of the natural world around you when you are constantly feeling the impacts of climate change,” actor Anna Lambe says. Photo: Pat Kane / The Narwhal

What is one way that you interact with the natural world on a daily basis? 

Generally, I’m quite conscious of being a small thing in a big world. Even when you’re in a bit of a concrete jungle like Toronto, it once was land, it wasn’t always sidewalks and buildings. I love urban centres with green spaces. I think it’s so important. It’s just kind of being mindful of the air that you breathe, the wind that goes through your hair, the wind that chills you to the bone. All important things that you need to be recognizing and for me, grateful for. 

You can’t not be conscious of the natural world around you when you are constantly feeling the impacts of climate change. There’s always been freak weather incidents, but why are they occurring at such an increased level? Whether it be extreme cold or extreme heat or floods, I’m generally very conscious of like, ‘huh, this doesn’t feel right,’ and it’s probably because it isn’t.

If you could ask one person, alive or dead, for their thoughts on climate change, who would it be?

I would love to ask my great grandma, who I’m named after, what things were like when she was growing up, and how things have changed. 

Smoked salmon or maple syrup?

Can we get candied smoked salmon? I love the sweet ends of both worlds.

Who in your life has had the greatest impact on your relationship to nature?

My parents, my mom and my dad. They’re the ones who get us out boating, who get us out hunting. Growing up in Iqaluit, there was no degree of separation from ‘wilderness,’ because wilderness is 100 metres behind my house. It wasn’t something that was taught, it was just something that was. I feel very grateful to have been raised that way, always conscious of my surroundings and that nature is not a ‘thing.’ You’re constantly part of it, and you have to recognize your role in it.

Would you rather be invited to visit David and Victoria Beckham at their Muskoka, Ont., cottage, or Harry and Meghan Sussex at their B.C. oceanic escape?

I’m gonna go to the Beckhams’ cottage. I think Muskoka is always a fun time. A lot of lake swimming. 

Camping, yes or no?

Absolutely yes, absolutely yes. 

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.

Get the inside scoop on The Narwhal’s environment and climate reporting by signing up for our free newsletter.

Maurice Ruddick waited for nearly nine days near the bottom of a 4,300-metre-deep coal mine before he was rescued. An underground earthquake brought down ceilings and pillars and shifted debris into tunnels, trapping Ruddick and several other miners. Stuck in the darkness, with limited food and water Ruddick lifted his fellow miners’ spirits by leading them in prayers and song. 

In 1958, Nova Scotia’s Springhill mine disaster killed 75 men and trapped dozens in the tunnels. The world kept vigil for survivors as they were slowly rescued. Ruddick, a descendant of enslaved Black people, was among the last miners to be brought back to the surface. A media circus followed and the survivors’ stories were broadcast around the world.

“Maurice’s story is often celebrated for his heroism during the Springhill disaster but less attention is paid to the broader context of racial discrimination he faced,” Aderinola Olamiju told The Narwhal. Olamiju, a graduate student at Memorial University in Newfoundland, is researching the history of Black miners in Nova Scotia.  

“As an example, after the rescue, when he and other survivors were meant to travel to Georgia for vacation, there was still segregation in the United States at that time and he had to be housed separately from the white miners.”  

Ruddick’s story is one of the most well known of a Black miner in Canada. It was made into a Heritage Minute, covered in books and is now a musical play. Olamiju, originally from Nigeria, is looking to explore lesser-known stories. 

Maurice Ruddick recovered in a hospital after his rescue from a 4,300-metre-deep coal mine. He suffered a broken leg in the 1958 Springhill mine disaster. Photo: Robert Norwood / Nova Scotia Archives

As he digs through archives, libraries, union pamphlets and historical newspapers, he hopes to uncover “the hidden stories of Black miners in Nova Scotia’s industrial past, particularly how racial dynamics influenced their experiences with workplace safety and health risks.” 

The Narwhal spoke with Olamiju about his research into what life was like for some of the first Black miners in Canada and the challenges of trying to piece together this history. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What questions do you hope to answer through your research?

As part of the Mining Danger project, which investigates the history of accidents, occupational disease and pollution in Canada’s mines and mining communities, the main focus of my research is looking at the racial dynamics of mining labour, particularly how it connects to health and risk. 

My research will examine several key questions, but the main ones are: how did coal mining companies, labour recruiters and government institutions together create and reinforce racial hierarchies within the industry? And how did Black workers engage with unions and workplace advocacy to improve their working conditions and address workplace accidents and issues relating to occupational health?

What role did Black miners play in Canada’s first mining booms?

Historically, the coal industry in Nova Scotia was intricately linked to the steel industry, as coal was used to burn the furnaces in the steel-making process. So you had two industries heavily dependent on each other. During the industrial expansion of the 1880s and 1890s, there increasingly became labour shortages in the coal industry. Companies like Dominion Coal (Domco, later Disco) and Nova Scotia Steel and Coal Company (Scotia) emerged as major players in the 1890s, and they turned Cape Breton into this industrial hub where you had rival companies running both steel and coal-mining operations. 

Dominion Coal was a key player in Nova Scotia’s coal-mining industry that surged from the turn of the century into the 1950s. Photo: E.A. Bollinger / Nova Scotia Archives

To address these labour shortages, some of these companies began to recruit labour from outside the country. Disco was actually a major facilitator of Black migration to Nova Scotia through agreements with the provincial government. The recruitment process sometimes used established networks within the North American steel industry, with company managers recruiting workers from industrial centres in Alabama, Buffalo, Maryland and Pittsburgh. 

Other times, you had labour recruiters going directly to Caribbean countries, and workers who returned home would also recruit their friends or families. As many Caribbean countries were colonized by the British at the time, it was easier to recruit labour from the Caribbean, particularly from Barbados and Jamaica. Nova Scotia’s location and shipping networks made this connection and recruitment easier and labour migration wasn’t only limited to the coal and steel industries. Domestic workers, particularly women, were also recruited from the Caribbean to work in Nova Scotia.

What do we know, so far, about what life was like as a Black miner in the early days of Canada?

We know these new labour recruits faced multiple layers of racial discrimination. Just like in our contemporary society, back then Black labour was devalued as Black workers were often paid much less compared to their white counterparts. Despite having skills, Black workers faced this constant discrimination that kept them in subordinate positions, doing the most physically demanding and lowest-paid jobs. During boom and bust cycles, these workers were often the last to be rehired and the first to be fired. 

Their housing situation was also subpar. For example, for some Disco workers, many lived in company shacks in the Cokeville section of Whitney Pier that lacked basic things like proper heating and running water. There’s this letter from 1908 where a blast furnace superintendent, J. McInnis, wrote to the general manager about how bad the houses were in the “Negro quarter” — they were unboarded and exposed to the harsh realities of winter weather. 

An archival photo of Whitney Pier taken in 1900 from the Chronicle Herald. Many immigrants settled in the community around Whitney Pier. The area was shaped by a history of coal mining and steel work. Photo: Nova Scotia Archives Photographic Collection

The work itself was extremely dangerous, especially at Disco’s blast furnaces and coke ovens. Black workers were concentrated at these positions because of racial stereotypes about their ability to withstand heat better than white workers. But despite all these negatives associated with labour and immigration, Black workers managed to build strong communities. They set up churches, schools and businesses to help each other cope with the challenges of industrial work and discrimination. 

What has surprised you most in your research so far?

Seeing how racial dynamics developed in Nova Scotia and what forces and factors shaped them. You had these companies actively recruiting Black workers from the Caribbean and the United States to address labor shortages, while at the same time Canada’s immigration policies were trying to restrict Black migration.

What’s particularly striking is how similar these dynamics are to what we see today — there’s still this tension between the economic need for immigrant labour and anti-immigrant rhetoric. 

Where are you looking for information and what do you hope to find?

Over the summer months, I will be conducting research at various archives and libraries in Nova Scotia, including the Nova Scotia Archives and the university archives at Dalhousie and Cape Breton. Some of the most important sources will be company records, print newspapers and magazines and union documents. Canada’s immigration records are also useful in understanding the policy of immigration discrimination based on race and looking at the scale of migration and countries of origin.

How challenging has it been to find information on the history of Black miners in Nova Scotia? 

Generally, the historical record of such stories is often fragmented. Racial discrimination affected what stories were told and kept in archives. Sometimes the most valuable information can be found in places like immigration paperwork or company letters, rather than the usual mining narratives. Archives also may only keep what society at that time deemed important.

Another factor is scale. Compared to white workers, there weren’t that many Black workers in Nova Scotia’s mining industry. The Afro-Canadian population in Nova Scotia is significant and has a rich history, yes, but when it comes to mining specifically, their numbers were smaller. This was partly because of Canada’s immigration policies — immigration agents were actually given secret instructions to keep Caribbean Black people out, even when they met all the official requirements. They would even work with U.S. officials to restrict African-American migration by getting American railway companies to increase ticket prices for Black passengers from $20 to $200, for example.

Updated on Feb. 28, 2024, at 10:45 a.m. ET: The subtitle on this story was updated to clarify the researcher interviewed for this story is based in the Altantic region, not the Maritimes. He is based in Newfoundland and Labrador.

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.

Uzma Jalaluddin writes bestselling, award-winning, movie-ready romantic comedies in which Muslim women live out their Jane Austen dreams in the suburbs of Toronto. But her first job — her day job —  is teaching high school students English and science. 

Fifteen years ago, the Ayesha at Last author taught her first lesson on climate change. Back then, students demanded proof, but over the years, as evidence of the impacts of global warming piled up, the 14-year-olds became less skeptical. 

“I remember doing a presentation on the Paris climate accord, and the class got so quiet,” she said. “They were gasps of ‘oh my God.’ It was like they could see the precipice for the first time.” 

“I felt awful, but I also felt like I had done my job that day, you know?” she said. “I’m terrified for them. Sometimes it feels like I’m teaching them how to scramble their way back from the brink.” 

Jalaluddin’s bestselling books — including Hana Khan Carries On, which is being adapted for the big screen — subvert Muslim stereotypes, presenting her characters as complicated figures who search for love, joy and adventure like everyone else. In the same way, her teaching aims to complicate people’s understanding of the world around them. She understands climate science and can rattle off detailed explanations for carbon sinks and forest fires without hesitation, and wants others to as well.

She’s especially concerned with those in racialized communities who are increasingly impacted by the impacts of climate change in Canada and across the world. Recently, her husband’s family home in Kerala, a coastal state in India, saw extensive damage due to record-breaking floods. “We had to help them fix it,” Jalaluddin said. “Our connection to climate change is getting more pronounced because of what our families are facing back home.” 

Like all of us, Jalaluddin sometimes feels hope, sometimes despair. It depends on whether it’s a day she’s taught about climate change or one during which she’s written about love or something funny. Her latest novel, Detective Aunty, is coming out in May. It’s her first cozy mystery, and follows a South Asian widow in her late 50s living in North Bay, Ont. One day, her daughter in Toronto calls her: she’s been arrested for murder. The rest, you can guess. 

For Valentine’s Day, we asked Jalaluddin to take our Moose Questionnaire, which highlights a person’s connection to the natural world. This interview has been condensed for length and clarity — opinions are the subject’s own. 

What’s the most awe-inspiring natural sight you’ve witnessed between the Pacific, Atlantic, 49th parallel and Hudson Bay, i.e. Canada?

Over 10 years ago, I was lucky enough to visit the Bay of Fundy, and it was honestly jaw-dropping. We went down the shore and we walked around and got our feet all muddy. My eldest son was two years old at the time, so we had to pick him up so he wouldn’t sink into the sand.

A couple of years ago, I visited Jasper National Park for the very first time, and I feel so fortunate that my family and I got to go before the horrible forest fires, which, of course are increasing as a direct result of climate change. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything that beautiful in my life. It was almost like a spiritual experience. 

What’s the most awe-inspiring natural sight you’ve witnessed outside of Canada? 

The Grand Canyon and the Blue Mountains in Australia, which is like the Grand Canyon but greener. Oh, Mount Batur, an active volcano in Bali. My husband thought it would be a good idea to do a three-hour hike in the dark and see the sunrise from the top. It was really a beautiful, unforgettable sight. 

Think of three iconic Canadian animals. Choose one each to kiss, marry and kill. 

Okay this is really weird, you know that right? I’m a romance writer, trust me, I know all about chemistry, but I don’t feel chemistry for animals. I’m sorry, I just don’t. 

But for the sake of The Narwhal, let’s kill wasps. They’re so annoying. Longer nesting seasons mean we have more annoying wasps in the fall, so I’d definitely kill them — although I’m actually afraid of them so I’d probably just run away.

I think polar bears are cool and I like the idea of a big bear protecting me. So I would marry a polar bear. 

And I really like seafood, so I’m going to kiss a lobster. I feel like they don’t get enough love because everyone just wants to rip off their carapaces and dive into the squishy, delicious middle. Someone needs to kiss the lobster and I’m willing to make that sacrifice as long as I can eat it afterwards. 

Ayesha at Last author Uzma Jalaluddin would kiss a lobster — and then eat it. Photo: Darren Calabrese / The Narwhal

Researchers at Yale University, the France-based Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society and other institutions have found women tend to be more concerned about climate change than men. Why do you think that is? 

The obvious answer is that women are just more nurturing; we give birth so we care about climate change. But I actually don’t think that’s it. A lot of climate conversations are bound up in ideas of capitalism and industry, and I wonder if this statistic has something to do more with women’s participation, or lack thereof, in capitalism to the same extent as men because of long-standing misogyny and sexism.

So I don’t really subscribe to the idea that women are naturally more nurturing or worry about their children more than men do. It all just comes down to patriarchy and economics. As someone who has been made to feel an outsider for a lot of my life — I’m a woman of colour, a visible Muslim woman — I think what it comes down to is women having a different perspective on what’s actually happening, and connecting the dots in a way that men who have traditionally benefitted from the systems of capitalism that have caused climate change don’t. 

Name one person who could significantly help mitigate the climate crisis if they really wanted to

Billionaires. 

I know that’s an easy answer, but I think about, for instance, how much I love taking baths. And I always feel bad because it’s such a waste of water. But then I think about the fast fashion industry and these big industrial corporations that use up millions of gallons of fresh water every day. And I think, ‘why am I feeling bad about taking a bath and these companies don’t even think about it?’ It all comes down to capitalism and the way the world works. 

Would you rather be invited to visit David and Victoria Beckham at their Muskoka, Ont., cottage, or Harry and Meghan Sussex at their B.C. oceanic escape?

So my answer is Harry and Meghan’s escape, because I’m not a football fan, but I do like television. I just don’t want to be stuck with someone who might talk about football because I will just feel dumb. I’d rather talk about television, making TV, being part of it … I’m curious, as a writer, what that world is like. 

Camping: yes or no?

I don’t like bugs, so no. A lot of [immigrant] parents reject the idea: “We escaped or we left India/Pakistan for this? Why would we pay to go camping and live outside?” 

But then again, a lot of meet cutes happen in nature … 

Enjoying the Moose Questionnaire? Read more from the series here. We’re going to ask as many artists, athletes, politicians and cultural personalities as we can to answer it, so let us know if you have suggestions.

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.

Get the inside scoop on The Narwhal’s environment and climate reporting by signing up for our free newsletter.

Aamjiwnaang First Nation and the federal government will work together on a pilot project to address environmental racism.  

The nation, located in Sarnia, Ont., has spent decades fighting to stop pollution from a cluster of petrochemical plants known as Chemical Valley that surround it. On Monday, Aamjiwnaang Chief Janelle Nahmabin and Environment and Climate Change Canada signed the terms of reference to kick off the Lighting of the 8th Fire conference, bringing together various nations, as well as industry and government, to discuss the impacts of development on communities. The terms of reference includes the creation of a new joint committee aimed at addressing contaminants in the air, water and soil.

The agreement stems from the federal government’s Bill C-226, a law aimed at addressing environmental racism — the ways Indigenous, Black and other racialized communities in Canada disproportionately bear the harm of pollution and contamination. The bill, which passed last year, requires Canada to come up with a national strategy to prevent and address environmental racism, in collaboration with the most affected communities.

“Today is a significant day that will chart a course that acknowledges the historic and ongoing injustices that people of Aamjiwnaang have endured,” Nahmabin told an audience at Aamjiwnaang’s community centre for the signing ceremony. 

Aamjiwnaang First Nation Chief Janelle Nahmabin, top right, signed terms of reference for addressing environmental racism with John Moffet, top left, the associate deputy minister of Environment and Climate Change Canada, during the Lighting of the 8th Fire conference. The conference brought together various nations, as well as industry and government. Photos: Carlos Osorio / The Narwhal

“Although we are strong, resilient, beautiful people who are rich in community and ambition, we still have been impacted for decades by systematic pollution and lack of environmental protection … Aamjiwnaang will be a pilot for how this rolls out across Canada, and we are ready.”

Aamjiwnaang is an Ojibwe community tucked alongside the St. Clair River, a stone’s throw from the southern tip of Lake Huron. Studies have confirmed what many in the community have been saying for decades: air pollution from industrial plants, particularly the cancer-causing chemical benzene, are putting people’s health at risk in Aamjiwnaang and Sarnia.

The terms of reference, which were read aloud after the signing, lay the groundwork for Aamjiwnaang and Environment and Climate Change Canada to co-develop “tangible and meaningful” solutions through the joint committee. The federal government agreed to follow Aamjiwnaang’s protocols for consulting with the nation. The terms of reference also acknowledged the nation may need capacity funding to fully participate in the joint committee. 

The Suncor refinery, located near Aamjiwnaang First Nation, is one of many operating in the area around Sarnia. The nation experiences worse air quality than both Toronto and Ottawa, and even cities with comparable industrial development. Photo: Carlos Osorio / The Narwhal

John Moffet, an associate deputy minister at Environment and Climate Change Canada, signed the agreement on behalf of the federal government. In a speech before the signing ceremony, he thanked the nation for its leadership on environmental justice and said the government recognizes the need for trust and honesty.

“We have to be honest about how we got to where we are, honest about the actual impacts in the community,” he said. “We have to be honest with each other about what is possible for the future.” 

Aamjiwnaang has been pushing for change in Sarnia’s Chemical Valley for decades 

Sarnia has a long history with the petrochemical industry. The first oil well in North America was drilled just southeast of Sarnia in the mid-1800s, in a village now named Oil Springs. Further wells followed in the area and, in the 1890s, Imperial Oil bought one of the first refineries to open in Sarnia. More refineries also followed, and during the Second World War, synthetic rubber for the Allied forces was produced in Sarnia. 

More companies set up shop once the war ended, and today, Chemical Valley is home to about 60 refineries and chemical plants. 

Air monitoring data shows Aamjiwnaang residents are exposed to 30 times more benzene than people living in Toronto and Ottawa, the nation has said. And the pollution is worse than in other cities with heavy industries — Aamjiwnaang experiences 10 times more benzene exposure than a city in California with a similar mix of facilities.

A state of emergency in Ontario’s Chemical Valley

Aamjiwnaang’s then-chief and council declared a state of emergency in April 2024, when air monitors in the community picked up massive spikes of benzene. The carcinogen appeared to be coming from the INEOS Styrolution plastics plant across the road from Aamjiwnaang’s band office, and people in the area were hit with headaches and nausea. Band members were warned to stay away from the office and outdoor recreation areas near the plant. Later in the fall, when the company removed benzene from a tank, part of the reserve was evacuated. 

Following the incident, both the Ontario government and Environment and Climate Change Canada ordered the company to cut its benzene emissions. The company temporarily shut down the plant last spring, and has since announced it will permanently shutter and decommission the site. But other industrial sites continue to emit pollutants and, in recent months, Aamjiwnaang has called on the provincial government to crack down and address the problem.

Chief Nahmabin told the crowd gathered for the Lighting of the 8th Fire conference that Aamjiwnaang First Nation can lead the way in addressing how environmental harm disproportionately affects Indigenous and other racialized communities in Canada. Photo: Carlos Osorio / The Narwhal

Speaking in Aamjiwnaang on Monday, Nahmabin acknowledged the efforts of people from the community who have spent years advocating for environmental justice, including some who have passed away. It will take time for the nation to undo years and years of environmental damage, Nahmabin said, but the nation knows what needs to change and is ready to lead the way. 

“What we want for our community is clean air, less pollution, pristine waters, plants we can grow and not be afraid to eat,” she said. “And the most basic ask for every living being on this planet: a healthy environment.”

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.

Get the inside scoop on The Narwhal’s environment and climate reporting by signing up for our free newsletter.

BlueTriton, a water bottling company formerly known as Nestlé Waters North America, is ending its operations in Ontario. 

Since 2007, the U.S. based-company has operated a facility in Guelph, Ont., and two wells in the Town of Erin and Wellington County, where it collects groundwater to bottle and sell. In 2017, the former Ontario Liberal government imposed a moratorium on new permits to take water for bottling, in order to study its impacts on the environment and quantity of water available for other users. The province allowed Nestlé to continue extracting up to 4.7 million litres of water a day from the two wells. Over a week, that would fill 13 Olympic swimming pools.

In 2021, Nestlé sold its North American water divisions to venture capitalists that renamed the business BlueTriton. A day after the name change was announced, the Doug Ford government lifted a moratorium on new permits for water extraction for bottling, saying the province’s studies concluded water taking did not adversely impact the environment or other users. In lifting the moratorium, it introduced new regulations, including a need for municipalities to approve new permits to take more than 379,000 litres of water per day. 

This did not, however, apply to BlueTriton as a few months later, in November 2021, the province granted BlueTriton a five-year renewal on Nestlé’s permits.The company is leaving Ontario before its permit expires. “We have initiated a public sale process for our Guelph facility and will wind down our operations in Ontario by the end of January,” Carrie Ratner, a spokesperson for BlueTriton, told The Narwhal in an email. 

Ratner did not specify the reasons behind this move. 

BlueTriton, and Nestlé previously, faced significant and persistent opposition from residents in Guelph and surrounding areas, who are celebrating the company’s exit from Ontario. The company operates in the traditional territory of Six Nations of the Grand River, where water insecurity is severe, with just one aquifer to draw from, and residents often have to purchase clean drinking water due to boil advisories. 

BlueTriton, and Nestlé previously, have faced significant and persistent opposition from residents in Guelph, Ont., and Six Nations of the Grand River. Photos: Supplied by Water Watchers

According to a 2021 statement by the Haudenosaunee Confederacy Council, the longstanding traditional leadership of Six Nations, the community did not give Nestlé or BlueTriton consent to extract water from its lands. After the sale by Nestlé, the council issued a cease-and-desist order that was ignored. (Neither the Haudenosaunee Confederacy Council or the elected government of Six Nations of the Grand River responded to The Narwhal’s request for comment by the time of publication.) 

“It’s been beyond maddening,” Dawn Martin-Hill, a Six Nations member and professor of anthropology at McMaster University, told The Narwhal. “So of course, we’re thrilled.” 

Martin-Hill is currently leading a water research program at the university to study the impacts of water insecurity in Indigenous communities. She has worked closely with others in Six Nations that oppose the company’s water extraction efforts. 

By her research group’s calculations, BlueTriton has made half a trillion dollars in profit, none of which has been shared or reinvested with the First Nation, Martin-Hill said. Similar to a youth climate action case arguing the Ford government has breached the human right to a healthy environment, Six Nations is hoping to argue for the human right to clean water. 

Martin-Hill said Six Nations youth are spearheading an effort to have ownership of BlueTriton’s wells transferred to the community, to make that water more readily available to their people. “People don’t understand how important water is,” Martin-Hill said. “It’s more important than oil.” 

Advocacy groups are celebrating BlueTriton’s decision to leave Ontario but say the work to achieve long-lasting water justice continues. They are seeking a permanent moratorium on permits for water bottling activities from the provincial government. Photo: Supplied by Water Watchers

The company’s departure “marks a significant victory in the ongoing battle for water justice in this province,” Arlene Slocombe told The Narwhal. Slocombe is the executive director of Water Watchers, an advocacy group created in 2007 in response to Nestlé and then BlueTriton’s operations. “We didn’t envision they would leave,” she said. “It’s a testament to collective action.”

BlueTriton has offered few details of its exit plan, except to say it is “unrelated” to a recently completed merger with Primo, another water bottling company. BlueTriton’s spokesperson told The Narwhal the company will maintain its facility in Hope, B.C.

Slocombe said Water Watchers will be following the company’s departure closely. The group wants to ensure workers are supported in the company’s transition. It also wants to see ownership of the wells transferred back to Six Nations. In the long-term, the group hopes to see permits for commercial water bottling phased out entirely in Ontario and also have water be provincially declared as a human right in a legally binding framework. 

“When we first started, we opposed their operations for environmental reasons, but over the years it’s become a justice issue,” Slocombe said. “A local one, but also a global one. BlueTriton is leaving Ontario but we have a responsibility to watch where they go next.” 

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.

Get the inside scoop on The Narwhal’s environment and climate reporting by signing up for our free newsletter.

The boat saws left, kicking out a tail of spray that sends a flock of 70-odd geese fluttering into the northern Manitoba sky. Ryan West watches from behind the wheel as they soar over the treetops and the maze of transmission towers that stand like steel scarecrows in the boreal woods. For a few moments, the flock keeps pace with the little aluminum fishing vessel, their reflections dancing on the glassy surface of the Nelson River. 

West is leading a group of visitors on a tour of the river, showing off its mesmerizing beauty and lamenting the damage it has sustained over many decades of industrial development. The Nelson is the lifeblood of this corner of the province — for generations it served as both a well-travelled highway and a key source of sustenance. Now, its slow decline has prompted members of five nearby First Nations to band together to protect what remains of the sprawling watershed.

As the geese fade into the distance, West turns and shouts over the din of the outboard motor:

“Well, I’d like to take you a lot further, but I guess we can’t — somebody’s put a big dam there.”

A little ways upstream, the path is cut off by the Long Spruce hydroelectric dam. It’s unassuming from here, dwarfed by the sheer breadth of the river. Still, West doesn’t venture much closer. It’s time to turn around. The former Manitoba Hydro millwright — who now leads land-based education programs for youth in his home community, Fox Lake Cree Nation — says the river didn’t always look this way. His grandparents would paddle its churning rapids and precarious falls all the way to the Hudson Bay coastline to hunt, fish and trap. The water was crystal clear then, and good to drink.

Nowadays the Nelson is a swollen, sluggish thing. West reckons if you could peer beneath its murky grey-green surface, you’d see the tops of trees drowned by repeated flooding from the dams. Erosion has eaten away at the banks, swallowing trees and spitting them back out as driftwood on the beaches.

“It hurts,” West says, his voice barely audible over the motor.

Like many of those who live in northeastern Manitoba, Ryan West has worked for Manitoba Hydro over the years and has seen its impacts on the Nelson River up close. Today he leads land-based education programs for youth to help encourage the next generation to develop a relationship with the land.

It’s not long before he steers toward shore. He couldn’t go further downstream if he wanted to. Manitoba’s largest dam — the Limestone — looms ahead, marked with “danger keep away” signs.

Past the Limestone dam, the river flows unencumbered into the Arctic Ocean. But between here and its source at Lake Winnipeg it’s been choked off at six points, its powerful flow squeezed through successive turbines to generate electricity for Manitoba Hydro and its customers in Ontario, Saskatchewan and the United States. Today, three dams here generate approximately 70 per cent of Manitoba’s electricity.

The Limestone dam, built between 1976 and 1992, is Manitoba’s largest hydroelectric generating station. Progress stalled on the dam in the early 1980s, but resumed after Manitoba Hydro signed a deal to sell power to the United States.

Back on the shore, Fox Lake Cree Nation’s Okimaw (leader) Morris Beardy looks toward the Limestone dam — a project he worked on as an electrician — and recounts the challenges since Manitoba Hydro began damming the Nelson in the 1950s: flooding, a loss of hunting and fishing lands, declining water quality, new animal migration patterns, new bugs and pests.

“We’re a resilient people. We’ve been through much,” he says.

Beardy knows there’s no going back; climate change is only bringing new challenges.

“We just have to adapt.”

Through the 1960s and ‘70s, Manitoba Hydro homed in on the Nelson river as an abundant power source for the growing province — and its customers. The hope was to harness its size, power and steep elevation changes (it drains a one million square kilometre watershed and drops some 217 metres from Playgreen Lake to Hudson Bay.)

Since 2020, Fox Lake and four neighbouring Cree nations — York Factory, Shamattawa, Tataskweyak and War Lake First Nations — have been working toward just that. Burgeoning funding and public support for Indigenous-led conservation has offered the nations an opportunity for recognition of sovereignty over their traditional lands and the chance to safeguard them for generations to come. Spearheaded by York Factory, the five nations are working on a proposal for an Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area (IPCA) called Kitaskeenan Kaweekanawaynichikatek, which would recognize the nations’ longtime stewardship of the region and leverage federal funds to formally manage and protect their shared homelands under Indigenous laws and governance.

Kitaskeenan Kaweekanawaynichikatek, which translates as “the land we want to protect,” is one of more than 50 IPCA proposals that have sprung up across Canada since the federal government began funding these critical conservation efforts in 2018. Indigenous-led conservation has, in recent years, been recognized as key to preserving biodiversity and meeting international goals to protect 30 per cent of lands and waters by 2030.

Like other proposals, Kitaskeenan isn’t without its challenges: the waterways have been flooded, re-routed and polluted in the name of hydroelectric development, prospectors have surveyed for underground minerals and politicians have floated plans to use the northern lands to pipe crude oil, lay fibre internet cables or build new ports. All the while, the nations have been divided by displacement, flood settlements and the erosion of their rights to hunt, fish and trap on their own lands.

But the five Cree — or Inninew — nations are hoping Kitaskeenan will help to mend the divisions of the past and redefine the future prosperity of the northeast coast by preserving the land, water, language and culture for generations to come. The proposal, they say, is a chance to come together with one voice to decide what comes next for their traditional lands.

Members of the five nations arrived at Fox Lake’s culture camp by train, plane and truck to celebrate the launch of Kitaskeenan Kaweekanawaynichikatek. On the first morning, the crowd gathered in the main hall to listen to stories from elders — in English and Cree — and to hear speeches from leaders like Morris Beardy (bottom left).

In early September, the five communities have gathered northeast of Gillam to officially launch the proposal, joined by political representatives, Manitoba Hydro staff and First Nations leaders. On the first morning, the crowd settles around folding tables to listen to stories from elders and speeches from leaders.

“It fills my heart with pride and joy that we are coming together as five nations,” Beardy says to the 100 or so people gathered more than 750 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg.

“If you look around Fox Lake, we’re no stranger to development,” he continues.

The road here crosses the river on the Long Spruce dam and winds through the seemingly endless sea of trees that is the northern boreal forest, broken only by rows of transmission towers. Manitoba Hydro, Beardy says, “is all around us.”

He points to his two granddaughters and acknowledges the many children packed into the hall.

“This is what we’re trying to do: protect the area for them, so they can enjoy the land, the waters and everything that we offer.”

FISHING

As evening light starts to fade, Jimmy Lockhart sits at a picnic table, flipping through a vision book outlining the five nations’ hopes for Kitaskeenan. The book compiles learnings from the last four years of discussion among the nations about what their protected area might look like. It will take many more years to define the boundaries and decide on tourism opportunities, educational programs and the fate of industrial developments.

Lockhart traces a finger over aerial photos of the region, pointing out lakes and river bends he’s visited to hunt and fish.

He’s here as part of the gathering at Fox Lake’s culture camp, originally built as the community’s goose hunting and spring gathering camp. It’s nestled in the crook of the Nelson and Limestone rivers, less than two kilometres from the massive Limestone dam. A handful of buildings, a row of platform tents and a communal fire pit are shrouded on three sides by lush woods. Snarls of pine, spruce, alder and birch reach skyward; wild roses, low-bush blueberries, willows and fireweed blanket the terrain below.

There are already a handful of protected areas along the Hudson Bay coast, mostly in the form of provincial and national parks or wildlife management areas. Other parts of the region have been heavily impacted by mining, hydroelectric generation and other industrial developments.

These woods form the southern edge of the Hudson Bay lowlands, a unique ecological region that extends along the northern shores from Churchill, Man., through Ontario, to the edge of James Bay in Quebec. The low-lying silt is pockmarked by lakes, bogs and creeks, fed by major rivers like the Churchill, Hayes and Nelson. It’s the third largest wetland — and second largest peatland — in the world.

Lockhart has lived here all his life; he knows its waters like the back of his hand. His first job was with a commercial fishery at Kettle Rapids, near Gillam, hauling walleye, pickerel and trout.

“It was beautiful, the rapids, we’d fall asleep listening to them all night,” Lockhart recalls.

In time, the rapids would disappear, swallowed by the Kettle dam and repeated flooding. The fishery closed. Lockhart had planned to pass a licence on to one of his three children someday, but “there’s no commercial fishing out here now,” he says.

Jimmy Lockhart spent the week in charge of the fish. He manned the frying pans and the wood smoker, preparing trout, sturgeon and goldeye, and passed recipes on to some of the younger boys. His nephew, Matthew Naismith, eventually took over the frying pan.

Lockhart’s story is one echoed by elders, leaders and community members throughout the week in Fox Lake: Manitoba Hydro’s arrival on the Nelson River in the 1950s marked the beginning of many decades of devastation. As the waters changed, so too did each community’s economy and way of life.

“When I was a little girl … it was very clear water. You could take your pail there and get water from the lake. You could go fishing there down the lake and it was good,” Martha Spence, an elder and Anglican priest from Tataskweyak, shares on the first morning of the gathering.

The animals and fish in the region have changed since the dams arrived, says Martha Spence, an Anglican reverend and elder from Tataskweyak. There aren’t as many birds or caribou, the animals they trap — like rabbits — don’t taste the same. The fish aren’t as firm or meaty as they used to be.

Spence was a child when work started on the Kelsey dam — the first hydroelectric development on the Nelson, about 40 kilometres upstream of Tataskweyak — in the late 1950s.

“In the 1950s, the mentality of our country was so different — we didn’t matter,” Phyllis Sinclair, whose ancestors are from Kettle Rapids, chimes in.

“There was no consultation. All of the sudden you’re living in your community and you start seeing all these things happening and you really don’t have much of a voice because nobody’s listening to you.”

The Kelsey dam flooded more than 56 square kilometres of boreal forest, destroying hunting grounds. Hydroelectric development on the river only accelerated.

The Kettle dam came online in 1970, tripling the size of what is now called Stephens Lake (named after a Manitoba Hydro chairman) and flooding more than 200 square kilometres of land — including Cree harvesting and cultural sites. Construction quickly began on the next dam, Long Spruce, 16 kilometres downstream. Long Spruce flooded a further 13 square kilometers of Nelson River shoreline. The Limestone dam would soon follow.

At the time, Manitoba Hydro was looking to generate more electricity, both to meet growing demands and to sell power to other jurisdictions. According to a company document, it received permission from the provincial government to re-route “most of the flow” of the Churchill River, which carries five times more water than the Red River, into the Nelson via South Indian and Split Lakes.

The impacts on northern First Nations were, as Beardy says, “devastating.” Water levels at South Indian Lake, almost 200 kilometres northwest of Tatskweyak, rose an average of three metres. The members of O-Pipon-Na-Piwin Cree Nation, who lived on its shores, were forcibly relocated. The commercial fishery that once thrived on the lake — in its time the third-largest in North America — was destroyed.

Hydro appropriated more than six square kilometres of Tataskweyak’s reserve land for water storage, and drained more than 415 kilometres of the Churchill river shoreline. The diversion dumped new silt and sediment into Split Lake, muddying the waters, altering fish habitat and increasing the mercury content.

The Kelsey dam flooded more than 56 square kilometres of boreal forest, destroying hunting grounds.

Hydroelectric development on the river only accelerated.

Map: Shawn Parkinson / The Narwhal

The Kettle dam came online in 1970, tripling the size of what is now called Stephens Lake (named after a Manitoba Hydro chairman) and flooding more than 200 square kilometres of land — including Cree harvesting and cultural sites. Construction quickly began on the next dam, Long Spruce, 16 kilometres downstream. Long Spruce flooded a further 13 square kilometres of Nelson River shoreline. The Limestone dam would soon follow.

At the time, Manitoba Hydro was looking to generate more electricity, both to meet growing demands and to sell power to other jurisdictions. According to a company document, it received permission from the provincial government to re-route “most of the flow” of the Churchill River, which carries five times more water than the Red River, into the Nelson via South Indian and Split Lakes.

The impacts on northern First Nations were, as Beardy says, “devastating.”

Water levels at South Indian Lake, almost 200 kilometres northwest of Tatskweyak, rose an average of three metres. The members of O-Pipon-Na-Piwin Cree Nation, who lived on its shores, were forcibly relocated. The commercial fishery that once thrived on the lake — in its time the third-largest in North America — was destroyed. O-Pipon-Na-Piwin Cree Nation is still impacted by flooding today.

Hydro expropriated more than six square kilometres of Tataskweyak’s reserve land for water storage, and drained more than 415 kilometres of the Churchill river shoreline. The diversion dumped new silt and sediment into Split Lake, muddying the waters, altering fish habitat and increasing the mercury content.

The iconic sturgeon, which can weigh up to 140 kilograms and is critical to several northern fishing economies, began to dwindle. Many First Nations say the sturgeon is now endangered, though it has not been formally recognized as such.

“Our ancestors were always concerned about it … because that was their livelihood,” Spence says of the waterway. “Now it’s always muddy and there’s no peace.”

Sturgeon is rare delicacy these days. The Inninewuk manage the fish population by only harvesting when the sturgeon are plentiful and fully grown. Most fishers only take one sturgeon at a time, sharing it with elders first. Morris Beardy warns that anyone who isn’t used to sturgeon should only take a small portion — not only for conservation, but because the fish is so rich, it can upset the stomachs of the uninitiated.

Manitoba Hydro and the provincial government eventually recognized these projects for their devastating effects on what they call the northern flood bands — York Factory, Nelson House, Split Lake, Norway House and Cross Lake.

In the late 1970s, the government began negotiating compensation for the damage wrought by the Churchill river diversion. The eventual deal, called the northern flood agreement, made several land use promises, including four hectares of reserve land for each hectare flooded by the diversion. But the vague language in the agreement left room for debate on how it should be implemented. The communities spent nearly 20 years fighting for compensation and would not reach final settlements until the 1990s and 2000s. 

Formally establishing a protected area around their traditional hunting, fishing and gathering places, the nations say, would mean an opportunity to have power over future land use decisions. 

“We have had it with people coming into our land and telling us what to do,” Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak Grand Chief Garrison Settee, who is from Cross Lake, says in a barnstorming speech on the first day of the gathering. 

“No one will dictate what we do on our territories and our lands. Our children are counting on us, our grandchildren are counting on us. We will not let them down. We will never give up fighting for our land.”

FAMILY

The week’s festivities have been charged with excitement. It’s been warm and sunny after several days of rain; the campground has been alight with shrieks and laughter of children, who spent the first day of the school year taking in lessons from elders and community leaders.

Flora Beardy is taking a moment’s quiet in the glow of a sacred fire lit in the heart of camp.

“It took us over four years to get to where we are today,” the York Factory elder says softly. “Now the hard work begins.”

Nelson Henderson (second from right) grew up hunting and fishing in the northern boreal woods. For him, a protected area is about giving the next generation of youth the opportunity to experience the peace, quiet — and hard work — of life on the land.

She was first introduced to Kitaskeenan at a community meeting in Thompson, about 250 kilometres west of Fox Lake, in 2019. Soon after, the nascent initiative’s organizing team was looking for members from the five nations to serve as liaisons between the project team and the wider community.

Flora Beardy had just retired from a career in York Factory’s band office, where she ran heritage programming, helped author an oral history of the nation and represented York Factory on land use committees. “So I said: ‘Ooh, right up my alley,’” she chuckles.

Kiarra Sayies, Aleigha Massan and Rayleigh Sayies were among many children who spent time at culture camp learning from teachers and elders.

Payge Beardy and Taylor Beardy of Fox Lake Cree Nation learn caribou tufting — a decorative art that evolved out of traditional moose and caribou hair decoration and European needlework.

Progress moved slowly by design, she says.

“The most important thing was to be able to trust … and respect each other again as five nations,” Beardy explains. “We were pulled apart so many times by the government with money and projects.”

In between COVID-19 interruptions and restrictions in those first years, co-ordinators hosted community meetings, sat down with elders, visited schools and held meetings with community leaders and regional resource management boards.

“When we first started I could tell there was doubt, but as time went on we started to build up knowledge,” Beardy says. “You don’t just do community visits once, you have to keep going back, make sure they understand the project and feel comfortable with it.”

For many members of the five nations, Kitaskeenan is as much about conserving the land as it is about restoring connections between the communities. Being united, many say, is crucial to seeing this area protected in the long term.

Last fall marked a significant moment as representatives from the Inninew nations came together at Troy Lake, in Tataskweyak, to adopt a vision statement.

“It was the first time ever to have the five nations come together in unity to talk about the land, how we felt about the land and how we wanted to protect the land together to make us stronger,” Lillian Spence, community co-ordinator for War Lake, says. 

Spence initially felt reluctant about the protected area project, she shares after a few spirited rounds of bingo on the last night of the gathering. The Keeyask dam, Manitoba’s latest hydroelectric development upstream of Gillam, had already begun construction; Limestone, Long Spruce and Kettle had already left their marks. 

“What else are we going to protect?” she remembers thinking at the time. 

“As the program progressed I learned more about how we have to protect our lands, we have to talk on behalf of the animals that live there, the plants that grow there, the berries that are there,” she says.

“I grew up with the land, my family’s always lived off the land,” Flora Beardy says. But in nearly 30 years she’s lived in York Landing — today the home of York Factory First Nation — she’s watched the land and river change. “Our children can’t swim in our river, they break out. And the fish, I wouldn’t eat it. They have to get fish from a ways out. There’s so much pollution.”

Content for Apple News or Article only

“I grew up with the land, my family’s always lived off the land,” Flora Beardy says. But in nearly 30 years she’s lived in York Landing — today the home of York Factory First Nation — she’s watched the land and river change. “Our children can’t swim in our river, they break out. And the fish, I wouldn’t eat it. They have to get fish from a ways out. There’s so much pollution.”

The Cree of the Hudson Bay lowlands historically lived, hunted, trapped and fished “​​from the Moose River in northeastern Ontario to the Churchill River,” according to an oral history of York Factory that Beardy co-authored. It’s only in the last century they have been split into distinct nations.

“We’ve been here since before history began,” Robben Constant, a project support worker for Kitaskeenan, says. “Our families are from here. Everybody that you see around us, we’ve all been disconnected from our homeland at York Factory.”

Long before the disconnection, 17th century English traders established one of the first Hudson’s Bay Company trading posts at York Factory, near the mouths of the Hayes and Nelson Rivers.

“We helped them gather food, we helped them get furs, [we helped with] trapping. We helped them establish their initial economy,” Constant says.

The Inninewuk formed settlements near York Factory and hunted and trapped for the Hudson’s Bay Company. Successive interventions from the young federal and provincial governments — treaties, trapping restrictions and industrial developments — however, would drive wedges between the nations.

“We were all split up into these different groups because of jobs: some people worked on the railway to Churchill, some people were working at different dams, a lot of them started going to the cities too,” Constant says.

Robben Constant wants to see York Factory re-establish a presence in their original home — the Hudson Bay coast.

In 1957, the fur trade had become so dismal the Hudson’s Bay Company decided to shutter its long-standing trade post at York Factory and the town store that had been built along with it. For reasons still unclear, the government told the Inninewuk they would need to relocate some 250 kilometres inland to what’s now known as York Landing.

“My great-grandparents were Amelia and Joseph Saunders. What [the government] told them before they left York Factory is that there would be things provided for them in York Landing: a church, a school, housing. All these things were promised to them. So they left York Factory in 1957, they got to the location where the government put them and there was nothing there for them. They just had to start from scratch. They couldn’t go back for their stuff — they had their babies with them, other families depending on them,” Constant says.

“When she first came to York Landing [my great-grandmother] wept. She cried because nothing was familiar. The water was different, the land was different, the food was different. This is the injustice of being relocated from our homelands.”

Manitoba’s registered trapline system came into effect in 1940 in an effort to settle land use conflicts with southern trappers. The system hamstrung many Cree economies, restricting their abilities to trap and trade to earn a living. 

York Factory First Nation was not able to secure trapping rights because the lands had already been allocated to other First Nations. They attempted to return to York Factory to hunt and fish but the province had taken the land over as the Churchill and Kaskatamagan wildlife management areas. To this day, York Factory members still share a single registered trapline.

“We are a people without land and without resources,” former Chief Thomas Beardy wrote in a 1978 letter to Manitoba’s premier.

Kitaskeenan is the first initiative since the relocation to bring all five communities together in pursuit of the same goal: not only to have a powerful voice in what happens to the land, but to make those decisions together.

“For me, this project represents our reconnection back to that land and our reconnection back to each other,” Constant says. “Re-learning who your family is, who your people are, who you belong to.”

FUTURES

Under a brisk, overcast chill heralding the coming of a northern fall, Dylan Bignell leads a small group of the week’s guests through the brush on the outskirts of camp.

“This one here is fireweed,” he calls out, motioning to a stalk of wispy pink tendrils at the edge of the woods.

“When it blooms, it starts at the bottom … and works its way up. This is a good indicator of how much time you have left in the summer, how much time you have left to pick your medicine. By the time the fireweed is done growing, as you see here, the season is already beginning to change.”

He stoops to pull stems of yarrow, aster and clover. He pauses at a tangle of wild roses, explaining how the red-orange rose hips can be dried and ground into a powder chock-full of vitamin C.

Understanding the medicines that the land provides has offered Dylan Bignell a way to escape what he calls “destructive outlets” that are “far too available” to youth in the north. His non-profit, Tapwewin Health, uses on-the-land learning to make space to talk about grief and trauma, he says.

Bignell was born and raised in Thompson, though his family is from Cross Lake, near the mouth of the Nelson. He struggled with his mental health growing up, weighed down by intergenerational trauma, he says. In a season of isolation, Bignell turned to the land, remembering the stories he had been taught about traditional medicines.

“This is what changed my life,” he says, looking out over a clearing above the banks of the Nelson. “This was a positive, constructive avenue that was available to me, and it’s available to all of our people — not just First Nations people, but everybody.”

Bignell is passionate about passing these teachings on to the next generation. He started non-profit Tapwewin Health as a path toward mental and physical wellness centred on land-based education. Through Tapwewin, he runs a berry farm, keeps bees, makes jam and leads workshops and plant walks to help youth reconnect with the land. Protected area initiatives like Kitaskeenan, he says, are critical to making sure this healing path is available long into the future.

“With the mines around my town, you can’t pick any of the medicine,” he says, referring to the nickel and other base metal mines in the Thompson region. “We don’t want that to spread to the point that we can’t even live off our land, we can’t hunt, we can’t fish, we can’t forage — and that’s very possible. Our land is very vulnerable and it needs us to protect it.”

Unpredictable water levels, silt and high mercury contents have made the Nelson River a poor place to fish. But smaller rivers and remote lakes throughout the watershed — like the Limestone River — are chock-full of trout.

The relocation of York Factory, the destruction of the Nelson River and the loss of fisheries and traplines have left painful scars on the Inninew nations. The nations face housing shortages and insufficient infrastructure; several communities do not have access to an all-season road and fluctuating water levels can make the ice roads unpredictable and perilous for communities around Split Lake.

Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak has spoken out about the youth suicide crisis in several northern First Nations. Tataskweyak (Split Lake) and Shamattawa have been without access to clean drinking water for years. (Federal lawyers recently responded to a class action lawsuit launched by Shamattawa’s leadership by claiming the government has no legal obligation to ensure clean water on First Nations.)

But members of the five nations agree: time on the land is a balm for many ailments.

“The land is truly a healer and a lot of our people need healing,” Flora Beardy says. “We need to keep those land-based programs going because I know they work.”

Though it’s yet to be finalized, land-based education will be at the heart of Kitaskeenan. Robben Constant would like to see the handful of existing cabins at York Factory transformed into a multiplex where families can seek healing resources, hunt, trap, fish, learn about traditional medicines, the river systems and the history of the lands.

“The overall goal of the project in my mind is re-establishing a presence in York Factory,” he says. “We want to go back now. We want to reclaim what we lost.”

There are some, like Beardy, who want to see the whole of the nation’s traditional territory protected from any kind of industrial development, while others believe some development is inevitable.

“I know we’re not going to be able to stop development … but I’d like for us to be part of the planning process and have a voice to be heard, not just pushed aside,” Jimmy Lockhart says.

Companies and governments have pitched plans for pipelines, ports, mines and power infrastructure that would cross into the Inninewuk territories. Delivering official remarks on behalf of the province, Eric Redhead — a former Chief of Shamattawa, now MLA for Thompson — notes Manitoba is “working towards removing barriers to ensure that Indigenous people are recentered to a position of strength in the economy” and highlights the potential for eco-tourism.

Whatever comes next for the region, all five communities are united: it should — and will — be up to the Inninewuk to decide.

The symbol of the five arrows is incorporated in Kitaskeenan’s logo. The child holding the sixth arrow represents an invitation to other nations in the region who want to add their voices and solidarity to the project, leaders say.

Fox Lake’s leader, Beardy, points to the symbol that has guided Kitaskeenan through its development: a bundle of five arrows the communities have brought to their gatherings since the vision statement was signed last year.

“One arrow you can bend it, you can break it. If you put two arrows together it gets stronger. When you put all five arrows together, just like the five nations that are doing this, you can’t break it,” he says. “It is strong.”

Julia-Simone Rutgers is a reporter covering environmental issues in Manitoba. Her position is part of a partnership between The Narwhal and the Winnipeg Free Press.

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.