I’ve come to appreciate my summer camping trips along Ontario lakes (but don't ask me to set up a tent in the winter).
Photo: Denise Balkissoon / The Narwhal
Who gets to go outside?How do we build stronger connections to nature? This week, we look at efforts across Canada to make the outdoors more accessible.
“Who in your life has had the greatest impact on your connection to nature?” When we ask that as part of our Moose Questionnaire, many subjects say a parent or grandparent. For me, it’s my spouse, who grew up backcountry camping.
As is common among another cohort of Moose interviewees, I have immigrant parents who don’t find it fun to sleep on the ground. To use a term that got a former prime minister in hot water, it took an “old-stock Canadian” to convince me. I now agree that paddling to a place where you can’t hear any motors (like a family trip to the Kawartha Lakes, pictured above!) is one of summer’s great joys. (Winter camping? Still a hard no.)
But my spouse is a cis dude who’s never had to crawl out of a sleeping bag in the middle of the night to deal with blood pouring out of him. It took me years to accept that periods happen in the woods and more years to figure out how to deal with them. The first item I pack now is a lack of shame: approximately half the world menstruates at some point and I was tired of pretending it didn’t happen. That’s why I asked Canice Leung, an avid hiker, backpacker and outdoor adventure-seeker, to write a guide to camping with your period. It’s fun and interesting, but also incredibly useful. DIY bidets! Who knew?!
At The Narwhal, we want everyone to get outside — and we want to talk about what that means. Last week, senior editor Michelle Cyca wrote about some First Nations working with the British Columbia government to temporarily close parks in their ancestral homelands “to reconnect to their land and culture, while also providing time for the land to rest from human impacts,” as Lil’wat First Nation put it.
One of the closures was for just 24 hours, yet the backlash has been intense. Some non-Indigenous people labelled any limit on their access as racist, without any sense of irony. As Michelle reminds us, most of Canada’s celebrated parks were created by kicking Indigenous nations off their lands in order to “create an image of untouched wilderness for settlers to enjoy.”
But Indigenous stewardship — which includes hunting, fishing and other harvesting — isn’t what has degraded the outdoors. The real risk to popular recreation spots is uneducated or entitled visitors who feed wildlife, disregard trail markings and don’t take garbage home with them. General overuse can be an issue, too. There were 20.8 million parks visitors across B.C. from 2013 to 2014; a decade later, that figure was just over 27 million. It’s a lot. Just like humans, lands and waters need a bit of rest to stay healthy.
Besides, hanging out with nature doesn’t have to be a big event that happens far away — it can be a regular occurrence at home. That’s the point of freelancer Vanessa Chiasson’s story on urban swimming. In it, she looks at the efforts of cities including Halifax, Ottawa and St. John’s, N.L., to get people into local water bodies, from cleaning up pollution to building docks and beaches.
One swimmer in Oakville, Ont., told her he’s amped to dive into Lake Ontario and frustrated at how few of his neighbours join him. Rather than step out their front doors for a swim, they spend hours driving to other, farther waters they’ve decided are better. He believes cooling off locally as temperatures spike would encourage people to take better care of one of the largest freshwater lakes on the planet.
As much as I love a quieter spot, I’m also grateful that in 20 minutes I can cycle to the same gorgeous Great Lake, which also provides the water I need to drink, cook and clean. Whatever lands and waters you visit this summer, take a moment to consider how to protect them — and who’s already doing it.
Take care and get outside,
Denise Balkissoon
Executive editor
P.S. Have a backpack, tent or other piece of outdoor gear you love? Maybe one that’s lasted decades, like my MEC pack circa 2005? We want to hear from you! Send us an email with your name, a picture of your cherished item and a short tale about your adventures with it and we might feature you in a future newsletter.
Here’s some cool news: B.C. politics and environment reporter Shannon Waters won a national award for her timely reporting on the tumultuous and surprising downfall of British Columbia’s carbon tax.
Shannon’s story, What on earth just happened with B.C.’s carbon tax?, received the award for daily excellence at a Canadian Association of Journalists ceremony in Calgary. The piece dug into B.C. Premier David Eby’s sudden flip-flop on consumer carbon pricing, amid a flurry of “axe-the-tax” politicking across the country.
“I think a lot of people were very surprised, maybe particularly in B.C., with what happened with the carbon tax,” Shannon said. She had expected “a completely different story” to come out of the news conference she attended in September, when Eby made his sudden announcement.
The Narwhal’s staff and contributors were also finalists in three other categories. Read more here.
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The PRGT pipeline is co-owned by a First Nation government and a Texas fossil fuel company — and opposed by Indigenous and non-Indigenous leaders and groups. With the project’s approval, opposition on the ground could soon unfold.
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Opinion: First Nations consultations aren’t the roadblock to ‘unleashing’ the Ring of Fire By Lev Marder READ MORE
What causes wildfires? Lightning, people, climate change … and obsessively putting them out By Drew Anderson READ MORE
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The land just outside the powwow arbour is filled with overgrown prairie grasses, patches of invasive plants and soil along the riverbank that is just...
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