The American dream and Canada's great outdoors: how these national ideals leave out people of colour

Author Reniqua Allen says once segregation ended as official U.S. policy, black Americans started believing they too could benefit from the promise of economic freedom and upward mobility white Americans took for granted. Decades later, she says, the failure of that promise is driving young black Americans to burnout. 

That stereotype that black people don't do the great outdoors … the poet and writer Phillip Dwight Morgan blows it out of the water. He's an experienced rock climber, canoeist and camper with an endless list of back-country adventure stories. His status as a "real Canadian" is unimpeachable. But he wonders, why did he need to prove himself in the first place? Why is cycling the Trans-Canada any more Canadian than playing soccer in Scarborough, like he did as a kid?