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Avenue‘s Top 40 Under 40 celebration was a night to remember, attended by hundreds of Calgarians on November 20 at Mount Royal University’s Bella Concert Hall.

The event kicked off with a VIP pre-party for the Class of 2025, Top 40 alumni, invited guests and dignitaries. Live music was performed by Rick Climan’s Jazz Trio, hors d’oeuvres were served and VIP attendees ushered in the new cohort of Top 40s with the annual tradition of a toast — this year with sparkling wine Cune (CVNE) Cava Brut, sponsored by Pacific Wine & Spirits.

Congratulatory speeches by RedPoint Media Group president and co-owner Käthe Lemon and Avenue senior editor Tsering Asha Leba kicked off both the VIP party and the main awards presentation. The main presentation of the Class of 2025 was emceed by Global News anchor Dallas Flexhaug. It also included music by the Top 40 house band and remarks from Mayor Jeromy Farkas, the Calgary Chamber of Commerce’s president and CEO, Deborah Yedlin, and Mount Royal University’s vice president for community engagement, Melanie Rogers.

Afterwards, Top 40s, their family, friends, colleagues and community members celebrated the night in style with food, drinks and music. Activities included a guessing game installation sponsored by Calgary Chamber, Dean Stanton’s live art collaboration inside the Hunter Hub for Entrepreneurial Thinking lounge, photo opportunities like the photo booth inside the Bloom Benefits Group lounge and a DJ.

We are also excited to announce that nominations for Avenue‘s Top 40 Under 40 Class of 2026 are now open at top40under40.com.

Read the Top 40 Under 40 2025 profiles in Avenue’s Nov-Dec issue, on stands now, or online at avenuecalgary.com.

Thank you to our sponsors: Mount Royal University, Calgary Chamber, Oxford Properties, Global News, Cerco Creative Marketing and Pacific Wines & Spirits.

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Tickets are available now

Avenue‘s Top 40 Under 40 Class of 2025 has officially been revealed, and as usual, it’s full of inspiring Calgarians making the city a better place to live, work and play. At the 2025 Top 40 Under 40 celebration on November 20, don’t miss your chance to meet this year’s Top 40 class, as well as alumni and other notable Calgarians, all in one place at Mount Royal University’s Bella Concert Hall.

Here’s why you should get tickets today.

There will be tasty food, music and fun activations

Along with music and DJs, guests can expect a night filled with fun activations like a photo booth, lounge areas and games. After the awards ceremony, indulge in tasty snacks like beef mini sliders, falafel kebabs, chicken and waffle bites, cheese and crudite platters, cranberry brie bites and more.

There is a VIP pre-party

The 2025 Top 40 celebration will be an exciting evening for everyone, but those who purchase tickets to the VIP Pre-Party will enjoy some additional perks. Not only will you get to experience everything that comes with a general admission ticket, but you’ll gain access to the VIP pre-party where you can enjoy a sparkling wine toast, hear live music, mingle with Top 40s and snack on hors d’oeuvres like Asian meatballs, grilled tofu, pesto veggie skewers and more.

You can network and mingle with the 2025 Top 40, alumni and other notable Calgarians

Exciting things are happening in Calgary, and at the Top 40 celebration, you’ll be surrounded by many of the people who are making the city great now and for years to come. This is your chance to network and mingle with some of the city’s most influential change-makers.

Tickets are available now

Thank you to our sponsors: Calgary Chamber, Mount Royal University, Oxford Properties, Global News, Cerco Creative Marketing and Pacific Wines & Spirits.

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For many people, pets are not just cute companions — they are lifelines. That’s the guiding principle behind Parachutes for Pets, which supports Calgarians in crisis who are temporarily unable to care for their pets.

Former law-enforcement officer Melissa David founded Parachutes out of her firm belief that nobody should have to choose between their own safety and their pet’s well-being. Moved in part by the emotional strength she gained from her own dog, Charlie, when she was diagnosed with cancer, David was driven to break barriers to pet companionship for others. She couldn’t fathom having to give up her dog when she most needed him.

So, in 2019, she started Parachutes for Pets, which provides short- and long-term safekeeping, a pet food bank, assistance with grooming, and emergency veterinary support for local pet owners facing hardship, whether it be illness, domestic abuse or homelessness. Parachutes employs nine staff and has around 100 volunteers every year.

Staffer Baylee Dorchester says the organization’s safekeeping program is “the step before a pet would be surrendered to a shelter by someone having a tough time.” While it might seem counterintuitive for an individual struggling to feed or shelter themselves to expend resources on their pet, Dorchester says that “these are often people for whom a pet is their entire family. If they lose their pet, they may not have anything left to care about.” Two facilities in southeast Calgary can each take in a few dozen pets until their humans are able to take them home.

Dorchester shares a story about an elderly man who was shot while walking his dogs. Without friends or family to turn to, he may have had to surrender or euthanize his pets during his six-week recovery. Thanks to Parachutes, he was able to heal in hospital knowing his dogs were taken care of. Not only that, volunteers also kept his spirits up by arranging for him to say hello to his dogs on FaceTime every day. That’s one heck of a helping paw.

Parachutes for Pets, a local non-profit, is dedicated to supporting vulnerable Calgarians temporarily unable to care for their animals due to crisis situations like domestic abuse, hospitalization, wildfire evacuation or homelessness. To volunteer or donate, visit parachutesforpets.com.

The post Parachutes for Pets Provides Support for Local Pet Owners Facing Hardship appeared first on Avenue Calgary.

Feeling lonely. We’ve all been there at one time or another — after a move, a breakup or losing a loved one. Maybe it’s the time of year; loneliness often rears its gloomy head during the holidays. And, heck, sometimes we feel lonely just because.

But loneliness seems to be a more common affliction in recent years. Loneliness has become such a serious concern that the World Health Organization created a commission in 2023 to reduce social isolation and loneliness, focusing on social connection as a public-health priority.

In Canada, it is enough of a national concern that Statistics Canada started asking about it in 2021. In the last quarter of 2024, StatsCan reported more than one in 10 Canadians aged 15 years and older (13.4 per cent) said that they always or often feel lonely, and nearly 40 per cent said they sometimes feel lonely.

That’s more than half of Canadians feeling lonely at least some of the time. While the COVID-19 pandemic magnified and exacerbated the problem, particularly among older adults and teenagers, a 2019 Angus Reid Institute poll from before the pandemic already reported a third of Canadians feeling lonely or “desolate.”

But given Calgary is consistently lauded for being friendly and liveable, is loneliness plaguing The Blue Sky City? Unfortunately, yes.

Calgary Foundation’s 2024 Quality-of-Life Report found that two out of 10 Calgarians feel lonely often or always — higher than the national average. Similarly, United Way reports that one in five Calgarians say they don’t feel a sense of belonging, which can lead to loneliness.

David Kirby*, clinical services manager at Distress Centre Calgary, confirms that loneliness is an issue the centre hears about more frequently.

“Loneliness is typically in our top five presenting issues in our crisis counselling program,” he says. “During the COVID-19 lockdowns, loneliness rose to the top. It has since stayed consistently in our top issues.”

Mr. Lonely

When Thomas Ambrozaitis moved to Calgary from Toronto two years ago, he didn’t anticipate being lonely.

The 42-year-old ventured west because he enjoys the outdoors and wanted to be close to the mountains. In a bid to meet new friends and potentially a “mountain wife,” he joined hiking groups.

“My strategy was to go to the places for people with similar interests, so I joined a Facebook hiking group,” he says.

He was aware that it’s tougher to make friends as an adult, but he didn’t expect it to be as hard as it has been.

“I met a lot of people but I never really met my people. I am a bit of a hippie, and I knew that coming into Calgary — that this wasn’t the ‘hippiest’ place. I’ve done a lot of meetups, but it’s been a lonely two years. It’s been pretty challenging for my mental health and emotional well-being,” he says.

Loneliness is a distressing experience that results from perceived isolation or inadequate meaningful connections. Loneliness differs from social isolation — a state of having limited social contacts and few people to interact with regularly — because of the sense of distress. Essentially, if you’re alone but not upset about it, you might be socially isolated, but if you’re distressed about your feelings of being alone, that’s loneliness.

Social isolation can increase the risk of loneliness, but not everyone who is isolated feels lonely, and not everyone who feels lonely is socially isolated. Your perception of the quality of your relationships and connections determines whether you feel lonely or not.

“You can have social contact, but if you’re not having the level of connection that you’re hoping for, you can feel isolated or lonely in those relationships,” says Sarah Rosenfeld, associate director of counselling services for the Calgary Counselling Centre. “It’s about the authenticity of a relationship and feeling really seen and heard by that other person. It can also be that people are trying to reach out to you, but if you’re not able to understand that or observe that behaviour as caring, you’re also going to feel lonely.”

The New Smoking

Loneliness is more than a bad feeling; it’s actually a health hazard. Loneliness is often regarded as somewhat trivial, but it can do real harm.

“The health impacts of loneliness are believed to be on par with the impacts of high blood pressure, lack of exercise, obesity or smoking,” says Kirby. “Loneliness is a very big social problem with serious implications for public health.”

According to the 2023 U.S. Surgeon General’s advisory entitled, Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation, loneliness is associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety and premature death. In fact, the mortality impact of being lonely is similar to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, and greater than the health risk associated with obesity and physical inactivity.

The advisory goes on to discuss how social connection is a critical, yet underappreciated, contributor to individual and population health, community safety, resilience and prosperity. Persistent loneliness is linked to poorer mental health outcomes — people with poor mental health are often more socially isolated and lonely, and loneliness can spur both mental and physical health concerns.

A lack of social connection can have significant economic costs, as well. Social isolation among older adults contributes to increased health-care costs, and loneliness and isolation are associated with lower academic achievement and lower work performance.

“We talk a lot about anxiety, depression and other mental health issues, but we don’t have a lot of information about how to manage [loneliness],” says Rosenfeld. “People think that they have to navigate it themselves, or it’s only them dealing with it. Or that they should just get over it.”

Adds Ambrozaitis: “Loneliness almost has this heavy stigma. I felt shame talking about it.”

Social connection has always been a fundamental human need, as essential to survival as food, water and shelter. In fact, long ago, not being part of a group greatly reduced your chances of survival. Loneliness could be an evolutionary response that indicates something is wrong with your social situation and it needs addressing.

Nowadays, we’re able to survive without engaging with others — all of our basic needs can be met with a click and often with “contactless” delivery — but our inherent need to connect remains.

“Because we’re interdependent, we need connection as human beings,” says Rosenfeld. “We need other people in order to personally grow. We get validation from other people. Social connection and integration gives us a sense of identity and inclusion. When you’re feeling lonely, you’re not getting those things. And the impacts of loneliness are really profound. It can feel like the world is empty. You can feel desperate, invisible, like you don’t belong. It hurts.”

The Lonely City

In Calgary, like in most big cities, people move house frequently, commute for school and work, and often live alone. Calgary also has an increasing cost of living. All of these factors can contribute to loneliness.

Low income, in particular, increases the consequences and likelihood of loneliness. According to a Community Food Centres Canada report, lower-income Canadians across age groups feel a lower sense of belonging and experience more isolation and exclusion than higher-income people. Financial struggles limit the ability to go out socially, to grab a bite with others or join in activities, not to mention the isolating stigma attached to not having money. If you have to commute for work, and work multiple jobs to make ends meet, you simply don’t have time to connect with friends or family, or even chat with neighbours. That’s why groups like Vibrant Communities Calgary advocate for tackling poverty through adequate wages, housing and transit as a means to help fight loneliness and build stronger communities.

People often move to bigger cities for new work or school opportunities, but then find themselves without social opportunities. Ambrozaitis found his few closer friends in Calgary are like him — new to the city and without real connections here. In the first hiking group that he led, he was the only person who wasn’t a newcomer to Canada. Everyone else was even less connected to Calgary than him.

As a registered social worker working as a counsellor at Student Wellness Services at the University of Calgary, Ambrozaitis also finds this experience echoed on campus. Students often tell him about their social disconnection. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say Calgary is just not a friendly city. But I have a lot of students who say that their university experience is not as social as they expected,” he says.

Technology is a Double-Edged Sword

People working from home leave their homes less frequently, and have less face time with colleagues. That also means fewer IRL interactions with friends and neighbours, such as grabbing a coffee, commuting together or picking up dinner on the way home.

“We’re in the most digitally interconnected society we’ve ever been in, and yet we see rates of loneliness going up,” says Ambrozaitis.

Technology can foster connection by making it easier to stay in touch with friends and family, providing more access for social participation and creating opportunities to find community. But technology can also displace in-person engagement, monopolize our attention and reduce the quality of face-to-face interactions, which can lead to greater loneliness. Think how often you’ve missed what someone has said or had an unsatisfying conversation because of a distracting text. At too many gatherings, people are looking at a screen instead of talking with one another.

Rosenfeld agrees. “While I think that [technology is] important and gives people a sense of community, it’s different from face-to-face interactions because there’s actually more good feelings and release of oxytocin [a natural hormone related to social bonding and warm fuzzies] during face-to-face interactions,” she says. “So being with people and connecting to them, it’s not the same as having that interaction online.”

Facing Loneliness Together

Inspired by his personal struggle with loneliness, Ambrozaitis began hosting monthly “speed-friending” events at UCalgary in an effort to help others. Speed-friending facilitates a safer space for social interactions to happen. It gives formal, structured permission to interact.

“[Participants] know that everybody in the room wants to make a friend, so they can drop the detective work around that,” Ambrozaitis says. “People are starved for this. They just want to connect.”

The events also include social courage workshops to help equip students with the skills to socially connect.

“We think it’s almost a guarantee we’re going to get rejected, whereas our odds of making a connection are really much better than we think,” he notes.

Such negative assumptions lead people to think rejection is inevitable and devastating, so they opt not to take the risk. Like anything worth having, connecting with others requires effort that can be difficult.

“Some people assume that it’s better and easier to avoid others and commit to being alone,” says Kirby. He recommends accessing community programs and online resources to share interests and interact with others. Kirby also emphasizes prioritizing self-care and exercise to help manage difficult feelings like loneliness.

Rosenfeld suggests using strategies like focusing on your breathing to help ground yourself in distressing social situations so that you can connect with other people. She also advocates for volunteering as a counterbalance to loneliness.

“Altruism and volunteering helps people with their perception of themselves and their relationship to loneliness,” she says. Plus, volunteering is a great way to meet people. And, if you think someone is struggling with loneliness, reach out.

“People won’t necessarily say they’re lonely or ask for help,” says Rosenfeld. “It’s just about creating space and saying, ‘I’m doing this today and I thought you’d like to join.’ You don’t have to make it about the loneliness.”

It’s Okay to Feel Lonely (Sometimes)

We’re all human and we get the feels, including loneliness.

“Acknowledging that you are lonely and normalizing that it happens is part of the human condition,” says Rosenfeld. “Know that these feelings are okay from time to time, but also remember that you have agency and an ability to do something about it. You might be having some negative thoughts. You can challenge those.”

Loneliness is a continuum, not a dichotomy. It’s not that someone is lonely or not, but rather, that we all experience degrees of loneliness. Transient feelings of loneliness tend to be less worrisome, and can even prompt us to reconnect socially. But chronic loneliness represents a significant health concern.

“Loneliness becomes problematic when our experience of it becomes chronic. Over time, it can reduce our motivation to reach out for support,” says Kirby. “The more chronic and long-standing the experience of loneliness, the more likely we are to forget how to read social signals and activate our social skills.”

Ambrozaitis recognized that his prolonged loneliness was causing him harm. “I was struggling with the start of a mild depression and knew that, if the loneliness continued, I would likely slip into a worse depression that would spiral downward. My emotional distress was the kick in the butt that said, ‘Hey, get on this.’”

As a mental health therapist, he knew he had to take responsibility for managing his emotions by changing his circumstances. “I couldn’t magically make myself feel less lonely or less depressed, [but]I could change what I was doing and go from isolating/avoiding towards engaging and seeking out others,” he says. “I had to accept that it’s okay to feel lonely. Sometimes, what really exacerbates the suffering is our non-acceptance of the feeling. If you try to push it away or force it down or say we shouldn’t have that feeling, all that happens is that feeling is intensified.”

Making a connection doesn’t require a grand gesture. It can be asking a co-worker to get a midday coffee or go for a walk. Or giving a friend or family member a call. Or showing up to an event you’re interested in and striking up a conversation with another attendee. Even if you’re not feeling lonely, making it a habit to reach out to others helps ensure that you’re less likely to start feeling lonesome. In doing so, you’re also supporting others who may be struggling.

For Ambrozaitis, it was the seemingly small acts of a co-worker discovering his single status and Ambrozaitis sharing he was lonely that would change the course of his loneliness. Through this co-worker, he has met his “future mountain wife.”

“It was because I opened up and let people know where I was at,” he says. “I talked about my loneliness and that acknowledgement was key, but also having courage to face it.” Things are looking up for Ambrozaitis, but that doesn’t mean he never feels lonely anymore. He’s still looking for close friendships, and he knows it’s worth the effort.

Kirby notes that effort includes recognizing the value of relationships. “We have to constantly stretch in the direction of connection with others, and trust the value and benefits of those connections,” Kirby says. “As a society, we need to promote the importance of family, friendships and nurturing a broader sense of community.”

Ultimately, hanging onto hope and the belief that social connections matter makes all the difference. You are not alone — cliché, but true — and you have to keep putting yourself out there.

“If nothing else, knowing that so many people are lonely, I hope it encourages people to reach out to each other,” says Ambrozaitis. “If I’m lonely, probably another person is, too. Just take a chance.”

*David Kirby passed away on September 5, 2025. We are grateful for his invaluable insights to this story. We send our condolences to his family and friends.

Local Programs to Overcome Loneliness

Speed-friending and social-courage events for UCalgary students are hosted by Student Wellness Services. ucalgary.ca/wellness-services

Launched by the Calgary Catholic Immigration Society, the Calgary Seniors Ethnocultural Network aims to give lonely immigrant seniors a sense of community. Seniors who came to Canada as adults and long-term immigrants are at a higher risk of loneliness than Canadian-born seniors, according to Statistics Canada. ccisab.ca

Carya offers counselling and the Elder Friendly Communities program to help older adults combat loneliness. caryacalgary.ca

Calgary Public Library’s Wellness Desk offers free mental health support and referrals to services with a Wood’s Homes mental health professional. Call 403-299-9699 between 8 a.m. to 11 p.m., or text 587-315-5000 from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Text or call for support from the Calgary Distress Centre at 403-266-4357, or register for no-barrier counselling at the Calgary Counselling Centre at onlineintake.calgarycounselling.com.

Call 211 for help navigating available mental health resources.

This story was created with the support of the Avenue Community Story Development Fund. The Fund supports the creation of local reporting on issues such as intimate-partner violence, mental health and addiction, the housing crisis, and more. Thank you to our partners, including reader donors. To find out more, or contribute, visit AvenueCalgary.com/StoryFund.

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If you had walked into a downtown-Calgary shelter in the early 2000s, you would have seen a crisis peaking. Overcrowded facilities, long waitlists and growing encampments told a story of a city grappling with a sharp rise in homelessness.

In 1992, Calgary’s first-ever “point-in-time count” — an estimate of people experiencing homelessness in a community done through a single night’s count — recorded almost 450 people experiencing homelessness. By 2006, that number had ballooned past 3,000. It was a trajectory that alarmed business leaders, social service providers and the public, alike.

Out of that crisis, a bold idea was born: what if, instead of managing homelessness, Calgary tried to end it?

Until then, the city had been “managing” homelessness by adding shelter beds. While that strategy kept people off the streets for a few nights, it wasn’t really doing anything to address the root causes of homelessness itself — or to stop it from continuing.

In January 2008, Calgary launched Canada’s first official 10 Year Plan to End Homelessness, led by the then 10-year-old Calgary Homeless Foundation (CHF). This wasn’t just a policy document. It was a community-wide rallying cry that galvanized non-profits, governments, philanthropists and citizens.

“We were trying to do something radically different,” says Tim Richter, who was a key architect of the plan and later CEO of the CHF during most of the plan’s tenure. “It was a 180-degree shift from responding to homelessness to actually solving it.”

A Vision Takes Shape

The Calgary Committee to End Homelessness, formed in the lead up to the plan, included prominent leaders from government, the corporate world, non-profits, and faith and Indigenous communities. Steve Snyder, then CEO of TransAlta, chaired the group. Other members included Richter, representatives from the United Way, Mayor Dave Bronconnier, and Fred Henry, then the Catholic Bishop of Calgary. Prominent philanthropist and oil and gas executive Jim Gray helped with setting up the committee, but didn’t serve on it himself.

The committee aimed to create a solution-focused road map, rather than a patchwork of emergency responses. Every part of the plan’s rollout reflected the spirit of collaboration that sparked the committee’s formation.

The plan’s backbone was “Housing First,” a philosophy that emphasizes putting people into stable housing before tackling other challenges, like addiction or mental illness. The logic was simple, but at the time revolutionary: it’s hard to recover or hold down a job if you don’t know where you’re sleeping each night. A shelter might keep you warm, but it isn’t really an environment that is conducive to getting your life back in order.

But even more transformative was the level of coordination across the city that came with the plan. Dozens of agencies began operating as an interconnected system, instead of separately or in competition. This approach came to be known as Calgary’s Homeless-Serving System of Care. It’s a network of agencies and people working together to this day to ensure those who are experiencing homelessness (and those at risk of experiencing it) have timely access to the right housing and the right resources.

“The idea wasn’t just to build more shelters,” says Richter. “It was to build a coordinated response, where services and data and goals were shared.”

That shared infrastructure also included another system still in place today: the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS). HMIS helps agencies track housing placements, measure success and avoid duplication of services, and it is key to coordination across agencies that now have more tools to work in the same direction.

The Resolve Campaign

Launched in 2012, four years into the 10 Year Plan, The Resolve Campaign emerged as a direct response to a key insight of the plan: that solving homelessness required not just better coordination and service delivery, but also a dramatic increase in affordable housing stock.

While the campaign was not officially part of Calgary’s 10 Year Plan to End Homelessness, the plan’s momentum and the structure it created definitely shaped Resolve.

The campaign brought together nine housing-focused agencies, many of which were deeply involved in implementing the 10 Year Plan, and united them under a single fundraising umbrella. This level of coordination mirrored the systemic thinking embedded in the plan.

Resolve’s goal was to raise $80 million and build affordable rental housing for 3,000 vulnerable and homeless Calgarians. By the time it wrapped in 2018, the campaign had raised $74 million, which provided 1,850 Calgarians with a place to call home.

Resolve’s projects included two new properties for the Calgary Homeless Foundation — a 23-unit apartment building with wraparound support services named Murray’s House, and Hope Heights, a four-storey apartment building with 35 one-bedroom units for young parents, children and seniors.

David McElhanney, now board chair of the Calgary Affordable Housing Foundation, was deeply involved. “What we learned through Resolve is that the philanthropic community wanted one voice and one ask. We became that conduit between donors and housing providers,” he says.

The campaign was not just a funding drive; it was a cultural moment for the city. Each participating agency had its own fundraising goal, and the shared strategy and communications plan guided their efforts. Major corporate and individual donors stepped forward, including high-profile Calgary philanthropists. The campaign also showed that building housing could be a unifying civic project that connected business executives and outreach workers, housing providers and social workers around a common goal.

McElhanney and his peers saw that the campaign’s collaborative model worked — and they weren’t ready to let that momentum fizzle out when Resolve wrapped up. In 2025, five of the nine Resolve agencies officially launched the Calgary Affordable Housing Foundation to sustain the flow of private dollars into housing projects.

“There’s still a massive need,” says McElhanney. “We’re talking about 15,000 to 20,000 units of affordable housing that are needed in Calgary. Government can’t do it alone.”

The 10 Year Plan Results

The plan clearly didn’t end homelessness. The most current point-in-time count, completed in 2024, found 3,121 people experiencing homelessness in Calgary. However, by many metrics, the 10 Year Plan was a success.

Between 2008 and 2018, nearly 10,000 individuals were housed — an achievement that underscored the effectiveness of the City’s Housing First approach. In addition to securing housing for thousands, the efforts made as a result of the plan had developed almost 600 units — including multi-family — of permanent supportive housing, offering stable, long-term options for many facing homelessness.

These efforts didn’t go unnoticed. Calgary became a national, and even international, model for coordinated homelessness response. Cities across North America looked to mirror Calgary’s successful plan, particularly the Homeless-Serving System of Care and its use of real-time data.

Perhaps most notably, the plan stopped the growth in homelessness, despite an overall growth in population. This is significant considering Calgary’s population grew by more than 220,000 people from 2008 to 2018 — and has increased by more than that since 2018.

“We were the first in the country to see province-wide reductions in homelessness,” says Richter. “Medicine Hat ended chronic homelessness. Edmonton cut it in half. Calgary made major progress.”

And yet — the 10 Year Plan did not end homelessness.

So, the organizations involved reframed their vision. Rather than focusing on the aspirational goal of “absolute zero” homelessness, Calgary embraced the concept of Functional Zero, where homelessness is rare, brief and non-recurring, and, most importantly, doesn’t exceed the city’s available housing.

Functional Zero requires real-time data, consistent housing capacity and seamless transitions of people facing homelessness back into the public systems where prevention is most effective.

The 10 Year Plan found that part of the challenge in eliminating homelessness is structural. Issues outside the reach of shelters or housing programs — addiction, mental health, domestic violence, poverty and racism — impact homelessness deeply. Housing First is a powerful philosophy that reframes how to address the roots of homelessness, but “Housing First does not equal housing only,” as one of the plan’s final reports reminded readers.

The Housing First model is based on the principle that stable housing is a foundational step in addressing homelessness. People are first given a place to live, without preconditions like sobriety or treatment. Then they’re connected to support services, as needed.

However, putting the plan into action revealed that housing-focused non-profits could only do so much alone. Even if they offered support programming, they needed other public systems, in the areas of justice, health and children, to help address the needs of clients experiencing homelessness.

“The biggest shift was not in housing itself, but in how we work together,” says Richter.

“Agencies coordinated, data was shared, and we could measure real-time results.”

But, even with these changes, systemic gaps in health care, child welfare and justice continued to push people into homelessness faster than the system could house them. Indigenous people living in Calgary, for instance, remain dramatically overrepresented in homeless populations.

That’s why the final strategic shift of the plan focused on Functional Zero; not ending homelessness absolutely, but ensuring that anyone who became homeless could be rehoused quickly and didn’t return to homelessness. It was a sobering recalibration of goals, but also a more realistic one.

As Calgary’s 10 Year Plan to End Homelessness came to a close in 2018, the city faced a new question: what came next? The answer was “Together to Zero,” a final report built on the collective wisdom of more than 200 interested parties, including frontline workers, Indigenous leaders, government representatives and people with lived experience of homelessness. From these consultations emerged six strategic directives designed to carry the work forward. While all six are important, several stand out as foundational pillars for Calgary’s next chapter.

One of the most urgent priorities is better support for the frontline staff working in the homelessness sector. Throughout the feedback sessions, workers described the personal toll of working with limited resources and training while interacting with people who had highly complex needs.

A 2016 study commissioned by the Calgary Homeless Foundation found nearly 25 per cent of frontline workers reported symptoms consistent with burnout, and more than a third showed signs of PTSD. The report called for more investment in peer-to-peer support, leadership development and safer feedback channels within organizations to ensure those delivering care are also cared for.

Another key focus was the right of Indigenous communities to shape their own housing solutions. This means moving away from designing programs first and then trying to “Indigenize” them later. Instead, the report recommended building services in partnership with Indigenous governments, Elders, Knowledge Keepers and communities from the outset.

A third important priority was to get the homeless-serving organizations aligned with other public systems, such as health care, justice and child welfare. The Homeless-Serving System of Care often functions as a “catch-all” for people failed by these systems, but true prevention has to happen earlier. The report suggests the need for a neutral organization (one without its own service agenda) to lead planning and help everyone — housing agencies, health care, justice and others — work better together.

Finally, the report highlighted the need to consider peoples’ real, lived experiences in every level of decision making, from program design to policy advocacy. Groups like the Client Action Committee and Youth Advisory Table were called out as crucial voices. The final report called for deeper, more consistent involvement of people who have actually experienced homelessness, ensuring solutions are rooted in real-world understanding.

The Post-2018 Reality

Today, Calgary is dealing with a very different landscape when it comes to addressing homelessness. The remnants of the COVID-19 pandemic, the opioid crisis and a record-breaking surge in population have further strained the housing system. The affordability crisis has pushed more people into housing insecurity — those numbers are increasingly difficult to track.

“People think of homelessness as folks living in shelters or tents,” says Jolene Livingston, founder and CEO of Partners for Affordable Housing, a charity focused on national housing philanthropy. “But housing insecurity is more common than people think. It’s your neighbour who might have lost their job through the pandemic, or a young couple trying to raise a child on one income.”

Housing insecurity is essentially not having stable, safe, affordable housing for any reason, including, but not limited to living in housing that is too expensive — anything more than 30 per cent of household income.

“We’ve had brilliant campaigns — Resolve, the 10 Year Plan — but then there’s often a pause. We need continuous, long-term commitment to housing, just like we have for cancer research or education,” says Livingston, who wasn’t involved in the original 10 Year Plan.

“Philanthropy had long been missing from the affordable housing conversation at a national level,” she says. “Government isn’t set up to do this alone. Neither are non-profits. We need investors. We need business leaders. We need community members who see housing as a fundamental part of a healthy society.”

The infrastructure built by the 10 Year Plan still exists, and Calgary’s Homeless-Serving System of Care remains one of the most coordinated in the country. But, the complexity of today’s challenges demands a new kind of resilience.

“Homelessness is a housing problem. But housing is also an economic problem, a political problem, a human rights problem,” says Richter.

McElhanney echoes that sentiment: “We’re still playing catch-up on supply. The need has grown faster than our response.”

A Living Legacy

Ultimately, the 10 Year Plan didn’t end homelessness. But it critically changed how Calgary tackles it — and who takes responsibility for doing so.

It launched a network of leaders, ideas, organizations and citizens who still believe that housing is a human right. It created the foundation upon which today’s efforts are built and tomorrow’s must be.

“We proved we could move the needle,” says Richter. “Now, the challenge is moving it again — and faster.”

As Calgary looks to the future, it does so with a decade of insight and infrastructure behind it. The question isn’t whether the city can reduce homelessness. It’s whether it can sustain the courage and collaboration it once showed, in even more complicated times.

Case Study: Trellis and the 10 Year Plan

Trellis Society, a family and youth support services non-profit, was one of the organizations involved in the 10 Year Plan and saw its approach to homelessness shift over the years. At the start of the plan, Trellis Society was the only organization that could deliver services to all of the groups the 10 Year Plan supported — youth, families and adults. When it came to homelessness, it was focused on providing shelter to young people at a building called Avenue 15.

“We would track how long that young person stayed. We’d track how full the building was, and all of those were badges of honour,” says Jeff Dyer, CEO of Trellis Society.

Now, what used to be about housing young people short-term has become a mission to rapidly reconnect them to community and family.

“We know that once you’re in the homeless system of care, your likelihood of remaining there is extremely high,” Dyer says. “But if we can rapidly restore these family and natural supports in your life, your experience of homelessness would be super short, we’ll consider it a great success and you’ll probably forget that you were ever at a place called Avenue 15.”

The organization now finds pride in shorter stays, and considers it a success that the city now only has to have one youth emergency shelter — Avenue 15. Dyer says one drawback of the 10 Year Plan was the way it was presented, which caused a gap between public expectation and realistic outcomes. It has created a perception that the agencies involved failed rather than highlighting successes.

“There’s a downside to branding it a 10 Year Plan to End Homelessness,” he says. “It was never funded to actually end it, just to radically reduce it.”

Overall, Dyer says the outcomes of the plan were “dramatic” in a good way, and strengthened non-profit connections in the city. “Fifteen years ago, it was a fractured system,” he says. “Now we know who to turn to when someone’s needs are bigger than what we can handle.” During the time the plan ran, Trellis was also able to get funding for two promising housing programs that are still running today — Home Fire for Indigenous youth and Aura, a housing-first program for 2SLGBTQIA+ youth.

Today, Trellis continues to make a big impact in the community. The non-profit’s 2022-23 report to the community states that it helped prevent 2,058 people from experiencing homelessness and supported 437 young people out of homelessness in the 2022-23 year, alone. — D.L.

Learn more at growwithtrellis.ca.

This story was created with the support of the Avenue Community Story Development Fund. The Fund supports the creation of local reporting on issues such as intimate-partner violence, mental health and addiction, the housing crisis, and more. Thank you to our partners, including The Calgary Foundation. To find out more, or contribute, visit AvenueCalgary.com/StoryFund.

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Shannon Doram

Shannon Doram (Top 40, 2022) is the president and CEO of YMCA Calgary. Her team has opened two of the world’s largest YMCAs and is extending the reach of the YMCA to more Calgarians each year. She is the Audit Committee Chair of the Calgary Municipal Land Corporation (CMLC) and was recently awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Award for community leadership.

Christy Lane

Christy Lane (Top 40, 2018) is a venture partner with IA Capital. She is a serial founder and award-winning exercise scientist with expertise in insurance, analytics, digital health and wearable devices. She is also the co-founder of Flora Fertility and the Stanford Wearable Health Lab, and the founder and former CEO of Vivametrica. She has been recognized as a Female Founders of Insuretech Winner and a Top 20 Women in Tech.

David Legg

David Legg (Top 40, 2003) is a professor of Sport Management and Adapted Physical Activity at Mount Royal University and the founder and chair of the Calgary Adapted Hub Powered by Jumpstart. He is a board member for both Commonwealth Sport Canada and the International Council of Sport Science and Physical Education and is also the incoming chair of the Calgary Sport and Major Event Committee for Tourism Calgary.

Käthe Lemon

Käthe Lemon is president and co-owner of RedPoint Media Group. RedPoint is the publisher of Avenue and The Scene, and, through RPM Content Studio, creates award-winning custom publications, including Leap on behalf of the Alberta Cancer Foundation, SPUR on behalf of the Calgary Foundation, Create Calgary on behalf of Calgary Arts Development, and others. Prior to acquiring RedPoint, Lemon was editor of Avenue for 15 years.

Renee Matsalla

Renee Matsalla (Top 40, 2023) is the co-founder and CEO of Tacit Edge Product Leadership. Previously, as a senior product manager at Benevity, she helped scale the company to a $1.1 billion unicorn valuation and led the creation of flagship products used by brands like Nike, Apple and PayPal. She is an ICF-certified Professional Business Coach (ACPT) and globally recognized product leader and AI educator. She has received Start Alberta’s Digital Talent Award.

Avnish Mehta

Avnish Mehta (Top 40, 2017) is an entrepreneur. He is the principal at Stand and Command, the co-founder of FARE Developments, and a “Beer Baron” at Village Brewery. He is also a non-profit board-governance advisor. As a community volunteer, Mehta is a board member of organizations such as Heritage Calgary, GlobalFest and the Impact Investment Committee of Calgary Foundation.

Nuvyn Peters

Nuvyn Peters (Top 40, 2016) is CEO of Axis Connects, an organization that advocates for gender diversity in leadership. In her previous role as vice-president of advancement at the University of Calgary, she led the ambitious Energize campaign to exceed its fundraising goal, raising a milestone $1.41 billion. She is the founder of boutique consulting firm Peters & Associates. Maclean’s magazine named Peters one of Canada’s top newsmakers of the week, and she was a recipient of Canada’s Top 40 in 2018.

Nabeel Peermohammed

Nabeel Peermohammed (Top 40, 2024) has obtained successful results at the Alberta Court of Appeal, Alberta Court of King’s Bench, Alberta Provincial Court, British Columbia Supreme Court, British Columbia Provincial Court, Federal Court, Tax Court of Canada, and the Federal Umpire. He was named Lawyer to Watch in the 2018 and 2021 editions of the Lexpert Directory and joined his firm, Brownlee LLP Litigation, in 2013. His primary area of practice is Insurance Defence Litigation. He was invited to the Brownlee partnership in 2020.

Rob Roach

Rob Roach (Top 40, 2006) is the deputy chief economist at ATB Financial. He is a co-author with Todd Hirsch of three books: The Boiling Frog Dilemma: Saving Canada From Economic Decline; Spiders in Space: Successfully Adapting to Unwanted Change; and Spiders in COVID Space: Adapting During and After the Pandemic. Passionate about the arts and inclusion, Roach recently served as the chair of the National AccessArts Centre, Canada’s largest and oldest disability arts organization.

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Age: 36

Occupation: TV Host; Musician; Entertainer

Growing up, Lisette Xavier was often told that her energy and curiosity were “too much.” Now a prominent voice in children’s media, she says she’s in a role where she is just the right amount.

Xavier hosts Bestest Day Ever with My Best Friend, a popular CBC Kids show, with thousands of weekly viewers nationwide. Young guests join Xavier to treat their pets to the perfect day — think obstacle courses for pups, feline spa days and custom-made swings for chickens. The show welcomes children of all backgrounds and abilities, ensuring their unique needs are met so they feel comfortable participating on a big TV set.

She’s also a professional musician — she has performed with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, participated in the National Music Centre’s Rock the Nation showcase and earned nine YYC Music Awards nominations.

As someone completely entrenched in the creative scene, Xavier calls Calgary a “city of people willing to try.”

“At every level in Calgary, people are so aware of what the arts mean for the community,” she says.

Between her projects and out-of-town contracts, Xavier pours back into the city she calls home. She launched a free music-education program for underserved youth in 2020, and, as a BAM! Camp Calgary volunteer (she started volunteering in 2013 and is now a board member), she has supported music programming for more than 200 gender-diverse youth.

In 2018, the True Beauty Foundation recognized her with the Authentic Sound Humanitarian award.

Stretching beyond her work on Bestest Day Ever, Xavier has become a nationally recognized voice in youth entertainment, hosting both the 2025 Junior JUNOS and Avenue’s inaugural Top 20 Under 20 event earlier this year. Xavier attributes her success in front of young audiences to her sense of curiosity and a feeling of mutual respect.

“I think everyone’s fascinating. Kids are no different.”

Thank yous
“On my darkest days, when joy and hope felt out of reach, a past version of me still chose to keep going. She made impossible decisions so that I could live the life I have today. I owe everything to her — that brave, broken girl who refused to give up.”

Top 40 Under 40 2025

Neepin Auger

Sayeh Bayat

Kirstie Boyle

Angela Clarke

Trent Colberg

Adam Cragg

Haley Daniels

Geordie Day

Niki (Dunne) Doenz

Karen Dommett

Courtney Dragani

Brock Geiger

Jack Goodwin

April Hicke

Jasmine Ing

Safiqa Kara

Joe Kendal

Ashley King

David Langelier

Jase Lee

Dalmy Manan and Raj Manan

Alex Hawke Manitopyes

Maria Marianayagam

Leah Mayo

Tyler McCombs

Adam Muzychuk

Ana Nikolic

Meaghan Nolan

Dayo Ogunyemi

Serena L. Orr

Aseem Pandey and Shahrukh Shamim

Felipe Alberto Paredes-Canevari

Anna Posikera

Christopher Lee Primeau

Katie Samoil

Alexandra Daignault Sangster

Charlie Trafford

Emily Varga

Jessica Villeneuve

Lisette Xavier

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