NATURE’S NEWBIES
Luring immigrants to Canada’s parks
The first time Fei Wu went camping, she spent part of the time cowering in her aunt’s car.
The 26-year-old had just arrived from China to study at the University of Ottawa. She’d never pitched a tent, camped out in the wild or cooked food in the open air. “It’s not something that we learn from a very young age,” Wu says.
When her aunt’s family suggested she join them on a family outing to a provincial park near Markham, Wu was nervous. “We had never done this in China before.”
That night, a huge thunderstorm rolled through the park. When her relatives urged her to take shelter with them in the tent, she demurred. “I said, ‘No, I think I’m going to stay in the car,’” she confesses, with a giggle. “Because I was scared!”
Once the storm passed, Wu abandoned the car for the tent and the experience took a turn for the better. “It was a lovely family time.”
In the four years since then, Wu has gone camping several times in Gatineau Park and camped twice in Algonquin Park, travelling there as a volunteer with Parkbus, which transports campers — including many new Canadians — to parks from Toronto and Ottawa.
The first time she went to Algonquin, Wu watched, transfixed, as a meteor shower streaked through the night sky. She was bowled over by the beauty of water lilies near a bridge. “It was just like a Monet painting,” she says in wonder.
Wu is a poster girl for the aspirations of those who run Canada’s parks and organizations such as the Canadian Wildlife Federation, whose mission it is to ensure that Canadians continue to value and protect this country’s natural areas.
Success increasingly depends on their ability to attract the immigrants and visible minorities who now make up 20 per cent of the population and two-thirds of the country’s population growth. By 2030, one in three Canadian workers will have been born in another country.
While definitive statistics are lacking, there’s plenty of evidence that many immigrants to Canada aren’t taking advantage of our provincial and national parks.
An Ontario Parks campground survey in 2011, for example, found that people born in India made up fewer than half of one per cent of campers even though 2.6 per cent of Ontario residents were born there.
People born in China and Hong Kong constitute more than three per cent of the province’s population but fewer than one per cent of park camp users.
The story is similar in the national parks. According to Parks Canada, socio-demographic research shows that new Canadians from different cultural backgrounds are under-represented among visitors to national parks.
There’s a whole bunch of people who would love to have opportunities in nature. They just don’t know where to start. DON CARRUTHERS DEN HOED, Alberta Parks
“It’s a large enough gap for us to want to take action and reach out to these communities,” says Ellen Bertrand, Parks Canada’s vicepresident for external relations and visitor experience.
The situation is much the same in other western nations. In the United States, Hispanics and especially African-Americans are conspicuous by their relative absence from national parks.
The result is that our parks risk becoming preserves for affluent, aging Caucasians even as the country’s population becomes more diverse.
Pop culture confirmation of that fact can be found on Stuff White People Like, a satirical blog created in 2008 by Christian Lander, who grew up in Toronto.
Its list of things favoured by “leftleaning, city-dwelling, white folk” includes camping, outdoor performance clothes and “making you feel bad about not going outdoors.”
The under-representation of a large and growing segment of our population only exacerbates the challenges posed by urbanization. With 80 per cent of Canadians now living in cities — including the vast majority of immigrants — more of us are becoming disconnected from nature.
That’s especially true of cityraised youth, raising alarm among park officials and environmental advocates about “nature-deficit disorder,” a term coined by American author Richard Louv in his bestselling 2005 book, Last Child in the Woods.
There’s more at stake than just the future of our parks, says Nik Lopoukhine, a one-time director general of national parks in Canada and former chair of the World Commission on Protected Areas. “The whole notion of conservation is at risk if you don’t value nature. The heart follows what you value.”
All environmental or conservation groups should be concerned, says James Bartram, the Canadian Wildlife Federation’s director of education. “You need diversity if you ever hope to have resilience,” Bartram says. “And we do not have a diverse, representative group of Canadians experiencing nature.”
Edmonton filmmaker Brandy Yanchyk explored the issue in Nature’s Invitation, her 2012 documentary for OMNI Television. It’s not that new Canadians aren’t interested in Canada’s natural places, she says. “There’s definitely an enthusiasm to learn more and find out about the country that they’ve come to. Everyone I met was open and wanted to learn about all of these things.”
New Canadians “want to be part of a community that includes nature,” says Don Carruthers Den Hoed, head of inclusion and public engagement for the Kananaskis region of Alberta Parks. “They want to be able to give back to the place they chose to live.”
But there are many barriers, starting with unfamiliarity with Canadian-style park experiences. While new Canadians flock to parks in large numbers for group barbecues and picnics, few grew up in countries where camping in the wild is part of the culture.
“It’s primarily an education issue,” says Albi Sole, executive director of the Outdoor Council of Canada. “They’re not exposed to outdoor activity. They don’t know how to dress. They don’t know what to do. It’s an alien place to them.”
Norman Goh’s parents are ethnic Chinese and came to Canada from Malaysia. Goh, a 30-year-old North York resident, has become an enthusiastic camper and hiker, but he’s the only one in his extended family to embrace those park experiences.
“My relatives are like, ‘Why would you go hiking?’ ” he says. “It sounds uncomfortable and there could be something dangerous, like bears.”
If you came to Canada from a refugee camp, says Yanchyk, “the last thing you want to do on a weekend is hang out in a tent in a forest.” She heard that a lot while making her film. “Why the heck would we want to spend our weekends living rough?” people told her. “That’s not a vacation for us.”
Fear is a concern for some. “If you don’t have a lot of access to nature, the sounds of the forest can scare you,” says Yanchyk.
Newcomers usually know that Canada is full of wild, natural spaces, says Bertrand. “There’s a perception that you have to have all of the equipment and you have to have knowledge about the backcountry and rock-climbing to experience our places.
“Part of breaking down the knowledge barrier is showing new Canadians that there’s lots to do that’s accessible and easy and fun.”
Then there are practical barriers, such as cost and transportation. New Canadians “rarely have the gear that’s necessary, even simple things like raincoats, flashlights and hiking boots,” says Adrienne Blattel, whose organization in Montreal, Plein Air Interculturel, has run outdoor sports excursions for about 2,500 newcomers since 2010.
“If they’re just settling in and don’t have a job yet they certainly don’t have a lot of money to put into that kind of thing,” says Blattel, who grew up in Ottawa. “They often don’t have cars.”