Tina Brobby understands the issue of race relations in Canada all too well. At age 14, her son was approached by police while simply sitting in a park. The experience made her reevaluate the country she had moved to.

In our Cross Country Checkup discussion about police and race relations, she called in from Yellowknife, N.W.T., to share her thoughts on the matter. Listen to her conversation with guest host Asha Tomlinson.

Tina Brobby: When my son was a teenager just entering early teens, we lived in Toronto at the time. He was on his way home from school and was stopped in a park and was sitting there basically—gazing into space not really doing anything. And the park bench that he had chosen just happened to overlook a block of houses in a middle class area.

A police cruiser came by and I'll never know, and I don't think [my son] knew, whether somebody had called—somebody who had thought he looked suspicious—or if the police cruiser just happened to come by. He was stopped and asked what he was doing there, and why he was there, what he had in his bag, those kinds of things. And that was his first experience as a 14-year-old.

I never prepared him for that. I never really thought about it up until that point. I've always felt guilty about that: I should have had him prepared because it was going to happen.