The past decade has been nothing short of extraordinary for Dr. Ingrid Waldron, whose research inspired a Netflix documentary co-produced by Elliot Page and helped bring Canada’s first environmental racism legislation to life. In 2024, she returned to her academic roots and celebrated the publication of her second book.  

Dr. Waldron has become a household name in Canada when it comes to tackling environmental racism. But her path to this work wasn’t a straight line—it wasn’t something she dreamed of studying as a child or even planned to pursue during her early academic years.  

Dr. Waldron was interested in mental health. “One of the first things I wanted to be when I was a child was a child psychiatrist or psychologist,” she explains. “So, my college degree and my undergraduate degree focused on psychology, and that’s what I thought I would just stick with.”  

As her passion for understanding mental health and race developed, Dr. Waldron’s academic journey led her to explore the mental health and help-seeking experiences of Black women in Toronto during her PhD research. 

In 2008, she moved to Kjipuktuk (Halifax) to teach at Dalhousie University. It was here that she encountered an unexpected opportunity to broaden her focus, when a local environmentalist reached out to her by email. The individual introduced her to the concept of “environmental racism” and asked if she would be interested in leading a new project on environmental racism. 

At first, Dr. Waldron was hesitant. “I had never done any work on environmental issues. Because I wasn’t an environmental scientist or an environmental science professor, I thought, ‘this is way out of my expertise.’” However, it didn’t take long for her to connect the dots. 

“I realized, it’s a health issue ultimately,” she explains. “If people are worried about having a toxic industry in their backyard, it’s because they’re probably worried about getting sick.” 

Being new to Nova Scotia, Dr. Waldron also saw that it was an opportunity to work with Mi’kmaq and African Nova Scotian communities. “While I was hesitant because I didn’t think I had the right background in environmental science, I saw the other pluses: the chance to do community-based research and to work with these communities.” 

Building Community Buy-In and Solutions 

Although Dr. Ingrid Waldron has played a pivotal role in bringing attention to environmental racism in Canada, the term itself was first coined in the 1980s by Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr., an African-American civil rights activist and author. He defined environmental racism as the deliberate placement of polluting and waste facilities near communities of colour and the homes of migrant farmworkers and low-income workers. 

When approached to explore the issue in Nova Scotia, Dr. Waldron took a collaborative approach. In 2012, she brought together community members and leaders, fellow academics, and others interested in the topic. Together, they began applying for grants to develop a dedicated team to study the issue. This effort led to the creation of the Environmental Noxiousness, Racial Inequities and Community Health Project (The ENRICH Project). 

 The team traveled across Nova Scotia, engaging with communities through informal discussions to better understand their experiences. For Dr. Waldron, it was crucial not to enter these spaces with predetermined research objectives but instead to listen, learn, and let the communities’ needs shape the direction of the project. 

 “I wanted to approach these meetings with communities in an open-ended way and ask them, ‘What do you want me to do? I’m starting this project, it’s new. What do you think my objective should be?’” she explains. 

 This approach required Dr. Waldron to step outside her comfort zone. While she wasn’t trained as a community-based researcher, she embraced the challenge, learning from her mistakes and refining her approach over time. 

From Nova Scotia to Toronto and Hollywood 

Over the next few years, Dr. Waldron’s team uncovered and documented instances where polluting and hazardous facilities—like landfills, paper mills, and coal plants—were placed in or near Mi’kmaw and African Nova Scotian communities, including Pictou Landing First Nation, Lincolnville, and Shelburne. Through their research and public workshops, communities were empowered with vital data and practical tools to advocate for the removal of these harmful facilities and to push for justice. 

As the project gained visibility, requests for speaking events, media appearances, and lectures began pouring in. “I was the only one doing that work—particularly putting the racism spin on it. There were activists who are certainly doing that work, but I’m talking about scholars,” she explained. 

In 2018, Dr. Waldron published her first book, There’s Something in the Water: Environmental Racism in Indigenous and Black Communities, which examines the legacy of environmental racism and its health impacts on Indigenous and Black communities in Canada, using Nova Scotia as a case study. It also highlights grassroots resistance efforts. 

Then, something serendipitous happened: actor Elliot Page tweeted about Dr. Waldron’s book, sparking a chain of events that led Page to later fund, direct, and co-produce a documentary of the same name in 2019. The documentary was accepted to the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and later picked up by Netflix.  

“That TIFF experience was amazing,” remembers Dr. Waldron. “Still, it is one of the best experiences of my life.” Page also coordinated interviews with outlets such as The Los Angeles Times, Entertainment Tonight, and TIME Magazine to bring more attention to environmental racism. 

“For me it was important because I still felt that people didn’t understand the term environmental racism, and here we are, we’re getting it out to the media in the United States and Canada,” explains Dr. Waldron. “I’m still in shock about everything that’s happened.” 

Targeting Systemic Change with Environmental Racism Legislation  

In 2021, ENRICH joined MakeWay’s Shared Platform, which provides over 70 community projects with strategic, administrative, and organizational support. This was an exciting development for MakeWay, as ENRICH’s mission aligned with several of emerging priority areas, including our commitment to bold, inclusive leadership for healing and justice, as well as advancing community-driven solutions for climate justice and a healthier environment. 

The Shared Platform provided Dr. Waldron with the supported needed to formalize, stabilize, and grow ENRICH. During this time, she expanded the project’s focus to address not only environmental racism but also the impacts of climate change on Indigenous, Black, and other marginalized communities across Canada. 

Since she first began researching environmental racism, Dr. Waldron understood that her work needed a policy component to enable meaningful systems change. In 2014, during the Christmas holidays, she seized the opportunity to focus on this next step. 

“I went online and got all the names of Nova Scotia elected officials, and I created a little list with their emails and their phone numbers. I sat on the edge of my bed, and I called them,” she remembers. Many of those phone calls went to voicemail—it was the Christmas holidays, after all.  

After sending dozens of follow up emails, Dr. Waldron did eventually hear back from a few elected officials interested in learning more. One of the politicians who eventually agreed to support Dr. Waldron and shine light on environmental racism in Nova Scotia was Lenore Zann. In April 2015, Zann introduced Bill 111, the Environmental Racism Prevention Act in the provincial legislature. The bill advanced to second reading debate, but it never went further.  

In 2019, Zann was elected as a Member of Parliament (MP) and seized the opportunity to make a bigger impact by introducing a federal bill in Parliament. Sadly, a snap election was called in 2021, and the bill was shelved. During that election, Zann also lost her seat. 

In 2022, MP and former Green Party Leader Elizabeth May took up the cause, sponsoring the bill and reintroducing it to Parliament. This time, the bill reached the Senate. “It looked like things might actually work out,” remembers Dr. Waldron. “I was in shock and thinking, ‘It is probably going to pass.’”  

Finally, on June 20, 2024—almost ten years after Dr. Waldron’s first conversation with Zann—Bill C-226 became legislation in Canada. It requires the Minister of Environment to develop a national strategy to promote efforts across Canada to advance environmental justice and to assess, prevent and address environmental racism.  

Anti-black Racism in Mental Health 

In addition to the excitement surrounding Bill C-226, Dr. Waldron celebrated another achievement in 2024. In November, she published her second book, “From the Enlightenment to Black Lives Matter: Tracing the Impacts of Racial Trauma in Black Communities from the Colonial Era to Present.” 

 Dr. Waldron holds this book close to her heart because it’s a return to her academic roots. “I love investigating environmental racism, but mental health and looking at racism and the impacts on mental health, that’s my first love,” she shares. 

In its pages, she explores how anti-Black racism embedded in social structures has contributed to a mental health crisis in Black communities.  

 She also describes the biases and discrimination within psychiatry, shedding light on how stereotypes about racially diverse people can lead to misdiagnoses, inadequate treatment, or a lack of understanding.  

As she puts it, “Because stigmatizing negative stereotypes have informed diagnosis, particularly the over diagnosis of schizophrenia and the under diagnosis of depression in Black people, Black people are often seen as very strong and resilient. We’re not. We’re just like anybody else.” 

 These harmful stereotypes create significant barriers for Black people seeking mental health care. Dr. Waldron explains, “When you see people as strong and resilient, you don’t think they need as much care. You don’t think they need as much sensitivity or empathy.” 

Dr. Waldron stresses the need to build and support community-led initiatives to improve mental health care for Black communities, while also holding the healthcare system accountable. She has observed several promising changes in the past couple years: 

“There’s more funding for Black health research. There are more courses on disparities and the structural determinants of health. There are more research chairs on anti-Black racism targeted to Black researchers. That’s a huge, huge change.” She also highlights the Nova Scotia Sisterhood, a free community healthcare program for Black women in Nova Scotia, which resulted from the research she conducted on the experiences of Black Nova Scotian women with mental illnesses. 

The Next Puzzle 

Reflecting on the decade that has passed since she first met with Lenore Zann to discuss the possibility of addressing environmental racism through legislation, Dr. Waldron notes that it can be easy to feel defeated when pushing for change in the environmental field. 

“Whether you’re talking about climate change or environmental racism, it just seems to go so slowly,” she reflects. “There were times where I didn’t feel like giving up, but I felt that the bill was not going to pass in my lifetime. But what energizes me is young people—they inspire me because they keep going, even though this is such a challenging issue.”  

With Bill C-226 now enshrined in Canadian law and the release of her new book, Dr. Waldron is energized to continue seeking out new challenges. 

“Maybe it’s being a researcher, but I feel like I have a puzzle on the ground, and I need to find the missing piece of that puzzle. If I’m going to start something, there’s got to be some conclusion—something has to be solved.” 

 What’s the next puzzle? “I want to focus on the book a bit. I want to do some talks, and then, see where we go,” she says. 

At the same time, she’s deeply committed to supporting the communities that will be consulted by the federal government for its environmental justice strategy. For Dr. Waldron, using her skills, experiences, and passions to make a difference isn’t just a goal—it’s a calling. 

“I don’t know why we’re all here on this earth, but I do feel that we each have talents and that our job on this earth is to use those talents to help other people.” 

The Environmental Noxiousness, Racial Inequities and Community Health Project (The ENRICH Project) is part of MakeWay’s Shared Platform, which provides a charitable home and administrative and organization support to over 70 unique community projects. Donations to support this work can be made through MakeWay’s website.