Part 1: Intuition and Curiosity in Shaping an Environmental Justice Leader with Dr. Ingrid Waldron

This episode is hosted by Dr. Anna Gunz, with guest Dr. Ingrid Waldron (Part 1) 

In this episode, Dr. Waldron opens up about her personal background and early aspirations, including how her family shaped her academic path. She also shares about her struggles with finding a sense of direction and times when she felt  lost and unmotivated.

We also hear about her chance encounter with an environmental activist that sparked her interest in the intersection of health and environmental justice, ultimately leading to her groundbreaking focus on environmental racism and its impact on community health.

Recording Date: 2024-11-22

Episode Production & Management Team:  

Jakob Wilk, Emma Cornell, Abby Walker, Olivia D'Andrea Brooks, Emily Douglas, Danielle Pineda, Amaan Thawer, and Mariah Peters

Show Artwork:   

Laney Beaulieu 

Transcript

Anna Gunz
Thank you so much for being here with me today. I'm really excited to chat with you.

Anna Gunz
The first thing I'd like to ask you is just about your journey. I think it's really easy. And I get wrapped up in this myself. You see someone like you, we see where you've come in the phenomenal things that you've done. And I don't want to embarrass you, but, you know, I, I feel like a bit of a fangirl, you know, you know, as I've been through and I've been grateful, to connect with you.

Anna Gunz
And I think it's really easy to look at you and your life and where you've come and go. Wow, that's amazing. And, well, obviously, this was a part of their plan. And so my question to you is, was this where you are today and you know, where you've come? Was this all part of the plan? Is this is this what you thought you would do or how did you how did you start out on this pathway?

Anna Gunz
You've been, you know, even towards your academic goals, like where did you start and how does that look, you know, looking backwards.

Ingrid Waldron
certainly wasn't my plan. Number one to be a professor or something. I stayed away from when I was doing my PhD. I think I was thinking of perhaps working, at Health Canada at a desk with data. Like, I was an introvert. I was shy, and I had, I had anxiety over speaking in public.

Ingrid Waldron
So the fact that I am speaking in public now, doing talks and speaking to students doesn't make a lot of sense to me. So in one, it's so in one way, being a professor was not something I ever dreamed of, even when I was doing my PhD. And I was atypical. When I think of my, my, colleagues who are doing their PhD in every single one of them said, oh, I want to be professor, and I didn't, I was a bit of a lone wolf.

Ingrid Waldron
And then in terms of environmental justice, that I'm seen as a leader. And this also doesn't make any sense. This was not part of my plan. I don't have any background or degrees in environmental science or environmental studies. It wasn't something that that I was ever concerned with. Something that I paid any attention to. It wasn't a passion in any way.

Ingrid Waldron
What's interesting that you bring up that question because none of it really makes sense. So when you say part of the plan, maybe somebody else's plan, a higher a higher power, I don't know. And I don't know why, but definitely not mine. I think the very first thing I wanted my father, was a dentist. He was he he went to dental school at McGill.

Ingrid Waldron
And that was my initial plan. You know, when you're young, it was a thing in my. It was a thing in my family. You know, with my sisters, we always talked about what we wanted to be. It wasn't a question whether or not we were going to university. We were going to university. We had models in our family, and I wanted to be a dentist simply because my father was one.

Ingrid Waldron
And then later I realized, oh, I'm going to need biology and science. Okay. No thanks. But that's the very first thing I wanted to be. At some point, I wanted to be a psychologist and a psychiatrist, and I think that was probably the most powerful a dream I had. I always wanted to help people. I probably saw documentaries or different things on television when I was young, and I would see images of people who to me, look sad.

Ingrid Waldron
They were probably clinically depressed, but I didn't know that at that time, at that age. And I thought to myself, I want to help people. So after after deciding that I did not want to be a dentist, I think the second passion was psychiatrist or child psychologist. And my college degree in Montreal is called Cegep. My, my main focus was psychology, and my second focus was, sociology.

Ingrid Waldron
And then I went to McGill and did my undergrad in psychology. So, ironically, that was the path. And then I decided I wasn't interested in psychology anymore, and I think probably had a lot to do with just the way I was taught at McGill. I didn't really know what I was looking for, but I thought I didn't like the way it was taught.

Ingrid Waldron
So I kind of lost interest in that, and I felt like I was just somebody who was who didn't know what I wanted to do for a long time. And I was kind of that person in my family, not in my immediate family, but my cousins used to used to joke around with me or not, or with other people, always saying, Ingrid doesn't know what she wants to do.

Ingrid Waldron
And is Ingrid ever going to figure out what she. I was like a joke in a way, because I. I just never settled on anything. Everything bored me. I went to a lot of jobs where I was bored. I was spent three months there, love it. In the beginning. And then after three months, bored. And my mother was constantly concerned about me.

Ingrid Waldron
Why are you always bored? Why do you lack motivation? Yeah. I never found that thing. And, And then, you know, my my, my my education was very interdisciplinary. I think that's part of it, too. I mean, my first degree was psychology. My second degree was intercultural education, and my third degree was in sociology, I think is when I did my PhD in sociology at U of T, that I realized that I love sociology, but I still love psychology.

Ingrid Waldron
But how could I bring the two together? And through my PhD thesis, I was able to do that by looking at the impact of discrimination, sexism, racism on black women's mental health. And I suddenly found my passion. I didn't want to teach at that point, but I love research and I love that topic of racism and equity.

Ingrid Waldron
That was strengthened during my PhD. And I did a postdoc on black women and coping and mental health, and I really thought that's what I would go into, in some way, once again, maybe at, at, Health Canada, or in a policy position and, and I and I that time I spent a lot of time just dismissing teaching.

Ingrid Waldron
You know, I kind of counted it out, even though I had never really done it. And then opportunity came to me in January of, 2005 to to teach a course at the University of Toronto, Scarborough campus. And I said, well, I know I'm not gonna like it, but I'm just going to try it and then I'm going to cancel it out, but at least I'll know for sure that I'm going to hate it.

Ingrid Waldron
This teaching. Because why would anybody want to stand up for three hours in a classroom talking to people? And I also had that social anxiety. So I thought, this is going to be horrible, but let me try it. Let me cancel it out. And then I could focus on something else. And I walked up to the podium that night, my first time teaching in a classroom, and instantly fell in love.

Ingrid Waldron
As I opened my mouth, I was looking at 300 students staring at me. This is somebody with social, very serious social anxiety, to the point where my mother used to say to me, you know, you might want to sign up for a Dale Carnegie course. You know, Dale Carnegie was this course or program that made you comfortable speaking in public, but also gave you the skills to speak?

Ingrid Waldron
And I considered it. It was very expensive, so I never did it. But as I said to many people that that night when I taught my first course at University of Toronto, my fear of speaking dissipated forever. And I fell in love with teaching. And my mother was up for on vacation. And I went home and I said, mom.

Ingrid Waldron
And she said, what I said, I think I found my calling. And she was like, finally! Because all throughout my teenage years, I was always unmotivated. And bored. So bored that she apparently spoke to my father about putting me in, having me see a psychiatrist. But she told me later in my life I was shocked.

Ingrid Waldron
So we wanted to send you to a psychiatrist because you were always unmotivated and bored, and maybe they saw that as depression. I don't know, but I was always trying to figure things out. And, that night, teaching, I had canceled teaching out. I was so sure I would hate it. And also the component where you have to speak in front of people.

Ingrid Waldron
Horrible. I thought I'd never want to do that. Why would anyone want to do that? And I fell in love right then and there, and my fear speaking dissipated. And that doesn't mean that I don't feel some anxiety when I speak like everybody does. But the kind of anxiety I used to have where I would find ways to get out of it, I found ways to get out of speaking in many instances, and work opposite in the workplace and in other, spaces.

Ingrid Waldron
And and now I'm excited to do a public talk. So everything came together then when I fell in love with teaching, although I thought I would never love it with the environmental justice part. You know, as I mentioned in my book that came to me, an environmental activist came to me when I was, teaching at Dalhousie in Halifax and said, can you take on this project of environmental racism?

Ingrid Waldron
I had never heard of it. And I said to myself, well, this is certainly not a topic that I'm interested in. The environment is not something I thought of. I don't have any degrees in this. Why is he asking me to do this? I realized, though, that there was a health component to it, and I was a health researcher, and that it was an opportunity to meet with and develop relationships with indigenous communities in Nova Scotia and African Nova Scotian communities.

Ingrid Waldron
And I didn't feel I had made any inroads into developing relationships with those communities. So I thought, this is a perfect opportunity. But I also felt that there was something about the project on environmental racism that was that if I just got it right in some way, that it would have a significant impact. There was something important about it, I felt, and I felt like it was an opportunity to perhaps meet with diverse professionals and individuals and politicians, and it felt like a bit of a rest, something I didn't really know much about.

Ingrid Waldron
But it was an opportunity to learn, particularly around environmental issues. So I had that at least at yesterday. Activists. And there we go. And as I say, it's all it almost feels serendipitous. My work on environmental racism from someone who knew nothing about the area to certain opportunities is coming to me, you know, not searching for those opportunities, but having those opportunities come to me for whatever reason and not making an effort in some cases, not in all, but in some cases to get those opportunities.

Ingrid Waldron
So I feel it's serendipitous. But also I feel, as you said earlier, it was some kind of

Anna Gunz
Yeah, I know I, I love that, though. And I feel like we've talked. I mean, I have a similar sort of, you know, going one direction and going another. And I think, you know, when I listen, there's a few pieces. That one is you're trusting your intuition, you know, even, you know, when you were board like, clearly speaks to stuff is when you're engaged, when something speaks to you, that's when you are motivated.

Anna Gunz
And I think as we look at, you know, youth and children now, I think the one of the most frustrating things for me as a pediatrician is when you see that sort of the system or education is getting in the way of passion and that passion, that obsessive and dangerous, but really allowing, allowing youth and children, especially now in this changing world.

Anna Gunz
And as we're if we're serious about reconciliation, decolonization, to actually really reflect on what is doing to learn and you will develop skills that we'll use in the future and when it really it really is sort of a, you know, forcing the boredom and not allowing that spark. And I but I think that intuition piece and the other thing I'm curious about just going back even to the beginning, is you said that, you know, you you and you, you found that you love teaching, but you didn't love psychology at the beginning.

Anna Gunz
And I'm just thinking about even forward to the work that you've done since. Was it the teaching that you saw? Was it some of the like I think of my I didn't do a ton of psychology in university, but I think the thing that I found the reason I was interested in it was because of the relational component, and some of these sort of really complex relationships and the way that a lot of at least the historic science, you know, you know, we distill everything down, take everything apart and manipulate a variable and then draw conclusions on it.

Anna Gunz
There was something that I felt it didn't appeal to me as opposed to, you know, these relational other understanding fields and emotions, the mind body connection, which I've been drawn back to afterwards and even the teaching is, you know, I just wonder if is some of it this relational piece that that you need or it's like bringing the psychology that engaged you and how you thought as a sociologist, as opposed to I, I don't know.

Ingrid Waldron
think later I realized that the psychology I was taught at McGill was a traditional psychology, a Euro Western psychology. We learned about Freud. And I know Freud is important. And we learned about all those. Some people will say that that that dead white men. Right. I didn't know that at the time because I wasn't that much engaged in equity and diversity and racism.

Ingrid Waldron
I was doing that as a student in a student club, a black student club. But in terms of theory and academics, I didn't really understand the importance of equity at that time. But something was missing. And later, when I gravitated towards, sociology in my PhD, I realized, oh, there's a way to talk about race, some culture in psychology.

Ingrid Waldron
I got none of that, you know? So we learn about abnormal psychology. What's the other one? Perception, I think, was another course in gender excited me.

Ingrid Waldron
So now I know exactly what I was missing

Ingrid Waldron
PhD, I would have loved psychology, but I. I found a way to make it make psychology my own, I guess.

Ingrid Waldron
black youth in Hamilton. Right? So I've gone back to mental illnesses. Well,

Anna Gunz
Or even in universities. I think.

Anna Gunz
there's so much encouragement about cross-disciplinary work and transdisciplinary work,

Anna Gunz
There's a lot of infrastructure in an academic environment that makes that challenging. And I do believe so much in following your intuition, following your passion. That's what I did. And then I felt like I kept turning, taking left turns. And then it turns out I needed all those skills.

Anna Gunz
And I'm so grateful for them. And I think of this, that I. I'm so curious about your story, because I can think of young women or men who are looking at you and going, like, I want to do what she did. And it sounds like what you did was chase your passions and try different things. And then what was the path that was supposed to come to you?

Anna Gunz
Came to you, and you were just like, yes, okay, I'll try something new. Even though I'm a professor and I've got a tenure track and you do this like, let's join forces with this, like activism, I thought, I think that's important for people to hear these stories. And I don't know if I summarize that correctly. So please, please correct it because I think, yeah, so much.

Anna Gunz
It's easy to look at someone's personality and how your passions have evolved. And you're coming right back through to that, you know, supporting mental health. Again, I don't I don't know if that rings true or that's an accurate depiction, but that's my reflection and why I love hearing this.

Ingrid Waldron
Yeah. I think my journey didn't make sense at some point.

Ingrid Waldron
I said to myself, well, it actually does make sense. But there was a certain point I was looking at my CV and I thought, everything seems very haphazard.

Ingrid Waldron
It looks

Ingrid Waldron
also appreciate and value

Anna Gunz
That one.

Anna Gunz
We hear.

Ingrid Waldron
This is something tangible. But I never thought I'd be working with a I think he's a hydrogeologist, you know? And I continued, you know, when I started the project to say, yes, that's another key. I think, is to say yes to people who said, I'd love to meet with you in your office.

Ingrid Waldron
Is that possible? And I was very busy, but I always thought, it's really important to say yes. And to meet new people, because those people took me down a different path and I remained open to new ideas, new people, the new

Ingrid Waldron
work with somebody like that.

Ingrid Waldron
I don't see how they would have a place,

Anna Gunz
Now. And it's. I think that's the. You know, collaborative work takes time. I feel I keep going. What have I done? But I spend a lot of time meeting people and listening and when I look back, even in the last few years, the things, the ideas and what, you know, trying to think about how to approach these wicked problems, right?

Anna Gunz
All of these things are wicked problems. They don't come from one source. They have deep cultural, colonial, environmental, economic, like there's these deep roots. And so I agree, like we need to look if we're going to change, things have to shift kind of at this transdisciplinary approach. Could you talk a little bit about the enrich project? For those of you who aren't aware of what it is?

Ingrid Waldron
in his age group, around 26, 27, were leaving Halifax.

Ingrid Waldron
It weren't any jobs, and they weren't even to go elsewhere. He thought he would try his luck in Oakland, California, but he wanted to find somebody who

Ingrid Waldron
because we have access to grants.

Ingrid Waldron
I'm not sure. I'm also not sure why he chose me. So he went to a health clinic in Halifax and he said, I'm looking for somebody to take on a project on environmental racism. And they said, have you heard of Ingrid Waldron?

Ingrid Waldron
would be great. And at that time there was really nothing on my website, so it still confuses me. But I met with him and I listened to

Ingrid Waldron
I recognized that it was it was health. It was a health issue. Even though he didn't necessarily point that out, I said to myself, if people are worried about having a toxic facility in their backyard, it's probably because they're worried about getting cancer.

Ingrid Waldron
Like, that was my go to. I thought, yeah, I wouldn't want that facility in my backyard because I would be worried about cancer. I didn't know about all the other health problems that could come from it, but that was my immediate thought. And I thought, this is obviously a health issue, and I love health. And once again, you know, it's an opportunity to meet with indigenous and get to know them, indigenous and black communities.

Ingrid Waldron
So I said yes to him. And, we started meeting with communities, the year after, in 2013, I got a team grant, and that allowed us to go down to the communities and meet with them. We go down to, Mi'kmaq communities and African Nova Scotian communities. In 2013, in the fall. And my approach was, this obviously has to be community engaged.

Ingrid Waldron
So I'm not going to go there. As a typical professor with my research objectives and research questions prepared, they need to tell me what I need to do. So I left it very open. I had a kind of focus group questionnaire, very loose, and it was more of a conversation I held with the communities at these

Ingrid Waldron
in Halifax, I remember an indigenous person said, oh, I didn't know African Nova Scotians were dealing with this.

Ingrid Waldron
And an African Nova Scotian person said the same thing. Oh, I didn't know

Ingrid Waldron
both deal with the same social determinants, poverty, low income housing issues, in inequities in the labor market, inequities in the educational system like black communities and indigenous communities share so much.

Ingrid Waldron
I do realize they have different histories, though,

Ingrid Waldron
I need to visit the folks in the Department of Environment. And I need to visit, I need to meet with politicians. So in 2014, that work started. I met with Eleanor, then who co-developed, the environmental racism Bill with me.

Ingrid Waldron
And I also met with the Department of Environment, probably at the end of 2014, several times to kind of get a sense of what they can do. And then from there on in, In Risk became kind of everything and anything. It was an awareness raising project where I felt that people needed to become more aware of the issue, because there was a lot of doubt and skepticism about environmental racism.

Ingrid Waldron
Directed at me and my project. And I think that all the awareness raising that I've done through conferences and talks and events in Halifax specifically and Nova Scotia really helped because people started to understand the systemic

Anna Gunz
Yeah.

Ingrid Waldron
The policies are racist. Just like educational policy can be racist and labor policy and employment policy can be racist.

Ingrid Waldron
And then when we see the spatial patterning of industry disproportionately, for example, across the country, in indigenous communities, that's an outcome of policy that can be racist. So I got to better understand it and through these events that I was holding, I was able to communicate that to people. So then there was this kind of, okay, I got it now.

Anna Gunz
When.

Ingrid Waldron
racism based on my first book that went to the Toronto International Film Festival in 2019 and then started streaming on Netflix. I do a lot of workshops.

Ingrid Waldron
is building capacity in communities so that they can do the work on their own. I always say

Ingrid Waldron
I might have introduced to them

Ingrid Waldron
have brought to them financial resources through my grants and some skills and knowledge. But to see some of the communities, particularly, I'm thinking of Shelbourne, be able to fly on their own where they don't need me anymore

Ingrid Waldron
to be a typical professor. I shouldn't say that because not all professors are that

Anna Gunz
Her.

Ingrid Waldron
So I made it a point to continue where I can to develop new projects with those communities, or identify, gaps or places where they still need me and to continue working with those communities.

Ingrid Waldron
And to me, that's what community based research is about, is to continue to have ongoing relationships with these communities. Over the past

Anna Gunz
The.

Ingrid Waldron
what is greenhouse gas emissions and why should I care? And

Ingrid Waldron
said, why are they asking me to speak? I don't know, yes, I know about environmental racism and they know I know about environmental racism. But climate change is different and I don't get why they're asking me to speak.