Are Toronto ravines still the domain of white people?

And if so, what should we do about that?

That’s a question Park People’s third annual summit will discuss this Saturday.

“It’s like having a house and there is a room you don’t go into,” says David Harvey, who started and runs the city’s park lobby group. “We are really missing an opportunity.”

Harvey walks, bikes, even cross-country skis in the ravines. He’s going off what he’s seen down there — mostly white faces, like his.

He’s also going off what he’s heard, from people in Thorncliffe Park and Victoria Village, both low-income, highrise neighbourhoods that overlook ravines. In both places, ravine walking programs haven’t been popular, Harvey says.

“People didn’t feel welcome down there. They think the ravine is a rich people’s park,” Harvey says.

There are no official statistics on this. While city parks staff take regular counts of trail users, they differentiate cyclists from walkers, not Asians from blacks. But, if Harvey is right, Toronto’s ravines would simply be reflecting the findings outside the city.

National parks in the United States and Canada are grappling with white-camper complexes. Their clientele is aging and shrinking. So, perhaps, is their sacred place in our national identity.

In a recent study, the U.S. National Parks Service service found that despite 10 years of outreach to minorities, visitors to U.S. national parks remained largely white: 78 per cent. Ontario parks launched a “learn-to-camp” program directed at urbanites and minorities — basically, as my colleague Tony Wong wrote, bribing them to enjoy the outdoors.

A desperate ranger in California’s Yosemite Park, where only 1 per cent of visitors are African American, called Oprah Winfrey to the rescue.

(She arrived with her best friend Gayle and a television crew, announcing: “Two black people have come!”)

Mickey Fearn says the reasons run deeper than money and geography. He’s worked in American parks for 46 years and is Saturday’s keynote speaker.

Here is one unexpected reason: The wilderness evokes some grisly images from American history — black slaves being hanged and lynched by their masters.

“African American people feel safe in cities and less safe in nature,” says Fearn, who is black. “Preserving wild places is a white concept, going back to Rome.”

Given our history, that’s likely not the case in Toronto.

Shintu Cherian co-ordinates day trips for new immigrants for the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority. Many come from places where real danger lurks in the jungle.

“They often say, ‘There’s no poisonous snakes here, no poisonous spiders?’ ” she says.

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There is danger in our ravines too — rare flash floods, unleashed dogs, strangers. I grew up on a ravine, but didn’t dare go too far down there. That’s where the crazies and gay prowlers lurked, we were warned. (This was the ’70s, before gay men could safely hook up in any downtown bar.)

But then my Grade 7 phys-ed teacher started cross-country races through the ravine and I discovered their quiet glory.

They are this city’s unspoken national park, spread democratically to all corners. They are slivers of rugged nature, where you can escape the noise and traffic and commune with the trees. You don’t need to drive three hours to Algonquin Park to see wildlife, you can run 10 minutes from Bloor St. and come face to face with a fox.

I try to go as often as I can. I’ve never thought of running or walking in the ravine as a white thing, and if it is, that makes me sad.

No one should feel unwelcome by nature. We in Toronto are so lucky to have these hidden pockets of wilderness. Ravines should be places that relieve stress, not stoke it, particularly as the city grows.

After a long trip home on a crowded subway — where two jerks clogged the door, tripping everyone who came on and off — well, a trip to the woods is just the antidote to manslaughter.

Fearn thinks so too. When he was 30, he was going through a difficult time. He spent four months working in California’s Big Basin park, slowing his mind, reflecting on his life and examining the intricacies of the ecosystem around him.

He emerged understanding we are all connected.

“Nature,” he says, “is very civilizing.”

The Park People’s Summit takes place Saturday, March 2, at the Daniels Spectrum, 585 Dundas St. E., from 1-5 p.m. You can register at www.parkpeople.ca .