Written by Reilly Doucet

Amid spring foliage on Vancouver Island, Reilly Doucet, member of the Altitude Sports Marketing team, learned the story behind creating welcoming outdoor communities, in collaboration with Merrell. 

“My pockets are always overflowing.”

Kieren Britton laughs as she bends down to pick up a granola bar wrapper someone left fluttering in the grass, then stuffs it into the back pocket of her jeans.

There along the trails of Highrock Cairn Park, looking out at a clear blue British Columbia sky, I got the chance to hear her story. Specifically, the whole story behind the LA Foundation, an organization she founded with the goal of making the outdoors more inclusive. It’s something that started as an idea, then an Instagram account, then evolved into a welcoming community that offers resources like workshops and scholarships. One of these workshops, led by Kieren herself, I would soon experience. 

A MISSED MEMO

That humble park trail actually served as just one of many settings for conversations that took place over a long weekend I spent with Kieren this April. Getting to know her meant more than witnessing her habit of collecting stray garbage no matter where she is - it also meant visiting her favourite spots in Esquimalt, the municipality across the water from Victoria, where she calls home.

For our first day together, I traveled via Harbour Taxi from Victoria to meet Kieren at Esquimalt Roasting Company, and was a little blown away by how well she knew every single person working there. Sure, it’s a cafe she frequents all the time, but to me, it served as an early testament to how incredibly important and natural it is for her to form connections with everyone that crosses her path.

Something else important to Kieren, of course, is the outdoors. So our next stop was Saxe Point Park, where she often walks her big, fluffy, lovable dog Asia. Amid trees that were already bearing spring leaves and the Pacific sparkling under the afternoon sun, I listened as she told me about the role her parents played in introducing her to the outdoors in her hometown of Saskatoon. Like being taken on her first camping trip at 6 weeks old, for starters. Camping, hiking, climbing… her dad facilitated the more backcountry experiences, but always in a way that was welcoming for the whole family. Nature was a happy place, yet throughout all those years playing and growing amid the outdoor industry, she started to notice an unsettling reality: that her white dad and mom of Indian descent weren’t always treated equally. 

“I watched the outdoor industry treat and accept them differently, back in the 90s, back in the early 2000s,” she said. “And I think that did have a profound impact on me.” With the outdoor foundation her family provided, Kieren went on to undertake many solo adventures, like cycling across Canada or living in a school bus, where she was often told she was “brave for a girl.” 

Which she hated. 

But she took those frustrations and shaped them into an idea: a community where the limitations she’s witnessed and experienced could be broken down, and the outdoors could be what her family always taught her: welcoming. In 2016, that idea became a reality. With some time, The LA Foundation, formerly known as The Lady Alliance, transformed into a non-profit organization with local chapters in over 15 Canadian cities, offering scholarships to help change the face of leadership in the outdoors by giving BIPOC, LGBTQ2S+, women, and gender-non-conforming individuals access to certification programs to excel in the backcountry. 

“I felt like people were missing the memo that women are incredibly brave. I wanted to create a space where we celebrated that, where everyone feels welcome and anyone can be a leader in the outdoors. And I think that growing up with a multicultural family really paved the way for me to create that experience,” Kieren expressed. 

NOT YOUR AVERAGE WORKSHOP 

My personalized tour of Esquimalt concluded at Driftwood Brewery Company, where—surprise—Kieren knew almost everyone. We winded and down and talked about what tomorrow had in store: a workshop focused on unconscious biases. It’s a topic that Kieren is well versed in, since she’d be leading the event, but something quite new to me. 

When you think of a workshop, in general, you might picture a classroom or conference room or lanyards or powerpoint presentations, but what I experienced couldn’t have been further from that. The focus of The LA Foundation, after all, is the outdoors. Our day of learning thus unravelled over a light hike at East Sooke Park. As I arrived there on Saturday morning, Kieren was in the parking lot, unloading notebooks, pens, and shoe boxes from the bed of her truck, handing them out to the other women who’d be joining us. Inside the boxes: Merrell hiking shoes. 

“The collaboration with Merrell came about really organically,” Kieren said, herself a Merrell ambassador. Sometimes, just having the right gear can be enough of a barrier in itself to getting outside. So for everyone to be starting off with solid, comfortable footwear - like the Moab 3s I was lacing up - already cemented an instantly appreciative vibe to the hike. We made our way to the trail, getting to know each other through the ups and downs that eventually led to an elevated, grassy clearing overlooking a cliff. Seals played in the ocean below as we pulled out our lunches and notebooks. 

To begin, she prompted us to identify our lens, meaning the identifiers through which we experience the world: our name, pronouns, gender, ethnic background, as well as a sentence that we felt described us. She challenged us to make it one only about ourselves, not a reflection of who we are in relation to other people. Women, Kieren explained, are sometimes more likely to define themselves with terms like mother or wife, for example, and she wanted us to look beyond that, to look within. 

From there, we created a grid, with columns for those in our lives, and rows for their identifiable traits. When we had a trait in common, we marked it with a checkmark, representing our “known knowns.” At the end of the exercise, we took a moment to look at the empty spaces, representing “known unknowns,” experiences that we maybe can’t relate to, but can empathize with. Finally, we discussed unknown unknowns, representing the things we don’t even know we don’t know, that didn’t make it onto our grid at all, and which can lead to unconscious biases. 

These ingrained societal limitations are something we all possess, but by recognizing them, and getting out of a comfort zone to turn them into “known unknowns,” progress can be made. “Because they can not only limit ourselves in life,” Kieren stated, “but they also really show up in how we mentally limit others or mentally categorize others.” And a good first step to dismantling them can be as simple as attending a community event, in nature, with people you’ve never met before. 

“Nature is a very open, grounded space where somebody can maybe find a little bit more peace with themselves,” adds another participant, who’s been attending LA Foundation events for years. The greenery, the ocean breeze, the way everything else falls away—it’s the comfort zone of all comfort zones. And what you experience in the great outdoors, follows you wherever you go.

For another activity, we took advantage of those sublime surroundings. Standing up, feet planted, we faced the forest while Kieren encouraged us to turn our bodies and stretch an arm as far as we could to the horizon. After a few rounds of this, she instructed us next to pause, close our eyes, and picture ourselves reaching even further than ever before, to really concentrate on the vivid image of where the rocky land meets the water behind us. Then we redid the reaching exercise, all happily shocked to discover that we were actually capable of stretching our bodies further, as we had imagined. 

“When you start to visualize your success instead of dwelling on your limiting beliefs, you’re able to achieve more than you previously thought possible,” Kieren affirmed. 

REACHING FORWARD

We’d all like to think the outdoor industry has changed greatly from what she witnessed growing up, but once again, there is always progress to be made. We can start to achieve it when we strive to broaden our horizons through getting to know ourselves and others, and believing in a vision for a more welcoming outdoors. After spending a weekend with Kieren, and experiencing how she combines her valuable perspectives with a devoted passion for connecting others, I know her vision is one I’d like to live in.