environmental racism

Montreal last June, as a summer of smoky skies began across North America. Researchers say there's a lack of a data on how wildfire smoke affects low-income communities, as well as Black, Indigenous and other racialized people.

Canada lacks data on how wildfire smoke affects minority communities, experts say

By Serena Austin

July 27, 2023 6 min. read

With a vast majority of Black, Indigenous and people of colour living in overheated areas,...

Kids fish for rock bass, pike and muskie in Trout Lake, near North Bay. The lake and other Nipissing District waterways are contaminated with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, from a foam that was used to train firefighters by the Department of National Defence. Under existing legislation, a new plastics factory using PFAS opening up near the city is not required to do an environmental assessment.

Chemicals are forever: a new factory opens near Lake Nipissing, where water is already contaminated

By Leah Borts-Kuperman (Local Journalism Initiative Reporter)

July 6, 2023 18 min. read

Imagine driving down a two-lane road on a sunny day in northeastern Ontario, just east...

After spending the first decade of the millennium as head coach of Jamaica’s national swim team through three Olympic games, Beckford Henriques came to Waterloo, where she has been the university’s head swim coach since 2017.

Not everyone in Canada can swim. A former Olympic coach in Waterloo is trying to change that

June 22, 2023 15 min. read

By teaching Black and other racialized people to swim for free, Jacky Beckford-Henriques and her...

A playground in Winnipeg's Point Douglas neighbourhood sits adjacent to a vacant industrial lot

‘A toxic soup’: why a Winnipeg neighbourhood is fighting for its right to a healthy environment

By Julia-Simone Rutgers

June 9, 2023 23 min. read

Lead, dust and soil so contaminated it isn’t fit for food gardens are a part...

Chickens roam freely at Paper Kite Farm in Prince Edward County, Ont.

They left the city for rural Ontario during the pandemic — and they’re still farming

By Alicia Cox Thomson

June 7, 2023 14 min. read

Adventurous customers and open-minded communities proved easier for these racialized farmers to find than affordable...

Oilsands tailings pond from above

Addressing Alberta’s leaky tailings ponds is Canada’s chance to keep promises to Indigenous Peoples

By Aliénor Rougeot and Melody Lepine

March 8, 2023 4 min. read

The tailings ponds in Alberta are growing — and leaking. The feds need to ask...

Clayton Thomas Müller wears all black and leans against a chainlink fence above a trainyard in Winnipeg

Healing from ‘incredible sickness’: Cree author Clayton Thomas-Müller talks environmental justice

By Julia-Simone Rutgers

Feb. 23, 2023 7 min. read

A Winnipeg author and environmental activist shares his vision for transforming colonial power structures to...

Chloe Cooley is on Canada Post’s 2023 Black History Month stamp. She was enslaved in Niagara-on-the-Lake and resisted being sold across the Niagara River to the U.S. in March 1793. Her resistance led to the Act to Limit Slavery in Upper Canada a few months later, a significant step on the long road to the Abolition of Slavery in Canada and the rest of the British Empire.

Uncovering the Black history of 10 Ontario rivers

By Jacqueline L. Scott

Feb. 22, 2023 9 min. read

Canada often tries to erase Black people from both history and the environmental movement, but...

A truck drives through a deep puddle in Peguis First Nation during the 2022 flood

A new approach to flood mapping could be on the way for Manitoba First Nations

By Julia-Simone Rutgers

Feb. 15, 2023 8 min. read

With floods affecting almost 90 per cent of Manitoba First Nations, new flood management could...

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