The Truth About Being Black in the Outdoors
“Black people don’t go north of Steeles,” my dad quipped when I asked why we didn’t have a cottage, a second property somewhere beyond the city, that all my white friends seem to possess. There was an invisible force field made of generational wealth at Toronto’s northern boundary that, according to my dad, was decidedly not for us.
This wasn’t cruelty—it was cartography. My father was mapping out the world as he’d learned to navigate it, drawing boundaries not just around geography but around possibility itself. Everything north of that major arterial road might as well have been another country, one where our passports had never been approved.
I grew up accepting this invisible border as natural law and the message was reinforced everywhere I looked. Travel and outdoor magazines told the same story: white faces under expensive hiking gear, multi-generational families loading kayaks onto Land Rovers, ski trips to Whistler that spoke of trust funds and inherited memberships. Even the language felt foreign: ‘backcountry,’ ‘off-grid,’ ‘glamping.’ These were words that carried the weight of a culture I didn’t recognize as mine.
I didn’t see faces like mine in those spaces. I didn’t hear stories that resonated with my own family’s immigration narrative; didn’t recognize the casual confidence that seemed to come with inherited access to natural spaces. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized I was not the only one in my community who felt this way.
“I grew up in Jamaica, where nature and being outside, especially as kids, were a natural part of our everyday existence. There, the connection to land was deep and almost spiritual,” Demiesha Dennis of Brown Girl Outdoor World told me. “But when I moved to Canada, I didn’t immediately see the same sort of reverence, in relation to these spaces, being practiced… I’d often enter spaces that left me questioning what safety felt and looked like for others, who look like me, simply wanted to experience nature in the way it was advertised here.”
Brown Girl Outdoor World is a Canadian organization that focuses on delivering quality, culturally relevant programming that speak to the needs of the Black community. Launched in 2018, BGOW is intentional about how they engage partners and who gets to attach their name to what the growth of Black, Indigenous and racialized people in outdoor spaces means.
“Organizations like BGOW are disrupting dominant narratives on belonging and who gets to actively participate in making the outdoors more inclusive, accessible and reflective of the communities that have historically been excluded,” continued Dennis. “The outdoor industry has, for too long, framed access to the outdoors, especially for recreation and health, as belonging to whiteness. These narratives limit how Black, Indigenous and racialized folks see themselves in these spaces.
“We help people immerse themselves in nature and the outdoors that sees them learning skills, centering joy and ask relevant questions to further engage in what it means to know love and protect the places in which we work and recreate.”
Demiesha Dennia has given the wilderness a different soundtrack—one that includes our voices.
BGOW isn’t the only organization changing the narrative. Intrsxtn Surf in LA teaches women of colour to surf and reclaim the waves; Black Women Golfers creates a space to learn and grow together on the links; Black Canadian Hikers is a community focusing on well-being and connection in nature. These organizations go beyond creating access.
“The work is built on saying ‘you belong!’ in the gentlest, yet most affirming way possible,” exclaims Dennis. “We are rebuilding the bridge that is needed to move from solely recreation to stewardship and an overall deep sense of knowing that this, too, is our home to protect.”
Here’s what a society built on white supremacy never wanted us to remember: we’ve always belonged to the natural world. Long before ‘forest bathing’ became trendy, we found refuge in Jamaica’s Blue Mountains. Our ancestors surfed West African waters and navigated by stars with knowledge spanning millennia. Indigenous Peoples across Africa developed environmental relationships so sophisticated that modern outdoor education barely scratches their surface. Our connection to nature was severed and repackaged, sold back to us as foreign territory.
The cottage country north of Steeles carries its own complex history. That land was home to Indigenous Peoples long before any of our families arrived in Canada, stolen through treaties and violence that preceded our own displacement. The ‘wilderness’ we were told didn’t belong to us had already been taken from others. Understanding this doesn’t diminish the beauty of these places, but it complicates who gets to claim ownership and belonging.
I’m learning to navigate my relationship with the outdoors—snorkelling with embarrassing amounts of gear but zero shame, hiking in expensive shoes I finally understand are necessary, venturing north of Steeles without fear of invisible barriers.
Standing chest-deep in Thai waters, watching St. Lucia’s Pitons at sunset, lying beneath Kenya’s infinite stars—these moments revealed something undeniable. The ocean didn’t check my credentials. The mountains didn’t require membership. The stars shone without concern for human boundaries, their light touching my face the same way it has touched Black navigators for centuries.
Every step beyond that old boundary feels like returning home to something that was never really taken from us, only hidden behind stories designed to keep us small. The outdoors was never not for us—we just believed it wasn’t long enough for the lie to calcify into truth.
Now I understand: the wilderness was never waiting for my permission to belong to it. It was waiting for me to remember that I already did.
