On one of the last sunny days of 2021, Zoe-Blue Coates was clamoring up a rocky hillside in East Sooke Park, binoculars around her neck, hoping to get a closer glimpse of a hawk circling overhead.
It was her first time joining an excursion of the Special Bird Service Society, a group formed earlier that year to create a welcoming space for people to get together and enjoy nature during the pandemic.
The society isn’t just about getting outside, however. The goal of the group, based in Victoria and Vancouver, is to build an outdoor community for Black, Indigenous and other people of colour, as well 2SLGBTQIA+ people.
Founder Trenton Franco, 26, who was born and raised in Victoria, was inspired by a bird-watching group he joined while attending law school in Berkshire, England. Around that time, a confrontation in New York City’s Central Park between Black bird watcher Christian Cooper and a white woman named Amy Cooper (no relation) had gone viral.
The incident sparked conversations about racism in nature and reinforced Franco’s desire to create an outdoor group for people of colour in his hometown.
“[Bird watching] was such an activity that’s been portrayed as inaccessible for people who look like me, or people in my age group or demographic,” said Franco, a recent law-school graduate and first-generation Canadian of South Indian and European descent. “I like to lean into those things and really challenge them and examine why that is.”
Franco was also inspired by Colour the Trails, an outdoor adventure group that advocates for more inclusive representation in outdoor spaces.
The group’s name is a cheeky homage to the British Special Forces and the U.K.’s Special Air and Boat Service units.
Coates, who describes herself as a queer Black woman who is passionate about ecology and herbal medicine, heard about the organization through friends, and quickly found a sense of belonging.
“One thing that really drew me to the group was community with non-white people,” she said. “Especially having that community with folks who wanted to learn about local ecologies.”
Coates said when you’re the only person of colour in outdoor spaces that are “dominated by white folks, your racial difference is so prominent. And it’s something people bring up.
“When I rowed in high school, people were like: ‘You’re going to be really good at rowing because black people are really good at rowing.’
The first Victoria Special Bird Service get-together was held at Rithet’s Bog in February 2021. About eight people showed up to the Saanich peat bog that day, but a little over a year later, the group has almost 400 Instagram followers and sees up to 40 attendees at its events.
Participants range from infants to seniors, with many in their 20s, 40s and 60s. The initiative draws students, doctors, politicians, artists, painters and more.
In the beginning, SBS meet-ups were mostly bird-watching walks and hikes. But soon the group began offering educational opportunities, such as an urban ecology walk, plant-identification sessions, a Goldstream hatchery event and more recently, a bat session with the Royal B.C. Museum and Habitat Acquisition Trust. Events are held almost every month, with a few breaks through the year.
When possible, they end with a campfire and some food.
“It’s about taking photos, telling jokes and stories, sharing knowledge and cool anecdotes,” said Franco, who pointed to a U.S. study showing that people of colour are three times less likely than white people to live somewhere with immediate access to nature.
The study, published by the Center for American Progress, notes that the U.S. systematically segregated and excluded people of colour from public lands and parks, denying people of colour entry to Civilian Conservation Corps and the National Park System, which found in its most recent survey that 70 per cent of 2018 national park visitors were white. In Canada, some Indigenous communities were banished from their lands to make room for national parks.
Marketing of outdoor activities has also typically excluded people of colour, Franco notes.
Mountain Equipment Company, a Canadian outdoor equipment retailer, didn’t make the decision to represent communities of colour in its imagery until 2018.
The year prior, the Journal of Leisure Research analyzed more than 4,000 advertisements from outdoors magazines published between 1984 and 2000, concluding that advertisements taking place in the outdoors rarely included Black models.
“When you don’t see representation in media and advertising of people who look like you, it’s pretty hard to feel comfortable,” Franco said.
Coates writes zines for the Compost Education Centre, with stories focused on historical and contemporary Black, Indigenous, Hispanic and people of colour who were or are ecological stewards.
Abolitionist Harriet Tubman, for example, relied on ecological wisdom to keep people alive as she helped them flee slavery through the Underground Railroad.
Tubman used plants to feed the group and heal the wounded, Coates said. She navigated with the stars and used the call of the barred owl to communicate with hidden fugitives.
SBS is the perfect place to share that type of knowledge, Coates said. “It’s giving opportunities to our community to have those conversations together, before we go to MEC, before we go to [outdoor clothing brand] Arc’teryx. We want to strengthen our communities first so that it’s not being exploited.”
The group is planning events that include snowshoeing, survival skills, sea-bird counts, food-security sessions and more.
“I go to a Special Bird Service event and I feel rejuvenated, I feel energized and I feel this real sense of belonging in community,” Franco said. “That’s the takeaway I would like others to have, and I think we’ve succeeded so far.”
Special Bird Service Society events are free and open to people of all ages and backgrounds. Events are posted on the group’s Instagram page, newsletter and website.
