(Voice of Tom Murphy) Tuesdays are the big day.
Right are you still in charge of safety.
On you bet buddy.
Suits on, boards waxed
and some of Atlantic Canada's best surfers.
Nice waves.
Ready to impart their knowledge of the ocean swells.
Sounds good.
OK superman it, push towards me.
This is Martinique Beach on Nova Scotia's eastern shore.
It's a perfect place to learn the coastal sport for the kids of North Preston.
A community close to the province's best surf beaches,
but not traditionally part of the surfing community.
That's starting to change.
Anyone here surf before? Has anyone tried it? No.
What do you think, excited nervous? Excited. Anyone nervous?
It's OK. It's OK to be nervous yeah.
An initiative specifically for the kids from the historic black community of North Preston.
The North Preston surf program is in its second year.
Our third safety rule. Oh you open this
Safety assistant. How far, what's the distance we want
to stay between one another?
Eight-year-old Katrell is one of the veteran students.
Because you don't want to get hit by the board.
Boom! Exactly you don't want to get hit by the board.
What are you feeling when you're out there surfing?
I feel confident because I know what I can do out there.
And what can you do out there?
I can stand up. I can kneel down. I can jump over big waves.
I'm just like the daredevil on the ocean.
It's exactly that kind of excitement that fuels Durrell Borden,
one of Nova Scotia's few experienced Black surfers.
He's a program director.
I've been the only one that I've seen visibly for years,
and we thought it'd be great for there to be more than just myself
and the few that exist in the world.
I mean for me, I'm super proud to even just be a part of this program,
because the water, the ocean itself has
like a transformational thing to it.
When you're out there with the kids there's a whole other
complex degree to it that isn't about the surfing
and it's just about the kids being comfortable in who they are and opening up.
Which is a beautiful thing to see and the smiles and the joy
and for surfers we call it stoked and that's the kids are stoked!
It's hard not to feel stoked just watching.
These surfers are hooked.
Another morning, not the hot sunny kind.
This is North Preston, 40 minutes inland.
Co-founders of the North Preston Surf Program Lameia Reddick and Beth Amiro
didn't even know each other two years ago.
Beth saw a gap in her surf world,
so as the head of the local surf association she reached out to Lameia
for her expertise as a resident of North Preston,
and advocate for its young people.
My vision is that the young people
and children here in North Preston can go far and wide and and that's certainly
what i've been able to do.
I've traveled a lot and saw a lot of things in the world,
but I always kind of have a home to come back to.
And so that's what we kind of create, it's like we can meet here and
then we can go and explore and do something and then come back home
and have some time to say how was that?
A simple question that can lead to a critical consideration.
You know with segregation with the violent history
of crossing the waters of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
so these are really big issues that you know we are
kind of with our surf program overcoming.
And we're not actually just talking about that,
we're just kind of looking at where we're at now
and in some ways healing from that past trauma
See you at the beach.
For those kids who don't have a ride Lameia and Beth give them a lift.
But two years in, the program is becoming more popular.
Now even the parents want to go too.
Two communities coming together I think accurately describes it.
Every week it feels like magic.
Just watching all those kids catching waves watching their parents
watch them catch waves.
It's something that every child should have access to.
Twyla we've been shredding from the beginning she's awesome,
it's been like insane watching her kind of progression
We've kind of formed like a really fun team and she's ripping.
Yeah it's great.
He's good? No no I got him! I got it.
Inevitably, a day of surfing leads to a little time in the sand.
It's been pretty fun, just playing in the water turns into
like you joke around you find out a lot about each other and then
through surfing alone like challenges, I know you become good friends right?
There you go he said he said it.
I'm just really excited for the future and to know that we're doing something
like, you know, phenomenal here in the sense of
really like changing, you know, a generation of history.
And the kids, they're just excited about the next wave.
Tom Murphy CBC News, Martinique Beach, Nova Scotia