Public libraries have run on overdue fines and quiet-please rules for generations. Increasingly, more of them are dropping both—and discovering that connection, not silence, is what makes a place worth belonging to.

Åsa Kachan is CEO and Chief Librarian of Halifax Public Libraries. She drawing on her own experience growing up in libraries, she shows how removing fines, welcoming food and conversation, and designing for accidental encounters can turn libraries into places where belonging happens by design. This special episode of The Conversation Piece features content from The Walrus Talks at Home: Place and Belonging, supported by The Belonging Forum.

Kachan spoke at The Walrus Talks at Home: Place and Belonging on November 4, 2025.

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Physical infrastructure can be seen. Relational infrastructure can only be felt—and it might be the difference between a park and a place worth belonging to.

Jorge Garza is director of Networks for Change at the Tamarack Institute. Drawing on communities like BC's Tri-Cities, he shows how relational infrastructure—the connections and collective intelligence beneath a place—is turns static spaces into ones that generate real belonging.

This special episode of The Conversation Piece features content from The Walrus Talks at Home: Place and Belonging, supported by The Belonging Forum.

Garza spoke at The Walrus Talks at Home: Place and Belonging on November 4, 2025.

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Beneath the noise of traffic, one Toronto space is quietly proving that conversation—not commerce—is what makes a neighborhood.

Anna Gallagher-Ross is senior manager of programming at The Bentway, a public space beneath Toronto's Gardiner Expressway that hosts year-round arts programming and social gatherings. Drawing on The Bentway's research, she shows how seating, art, and play turn passersby into neighbours—and why public space is public health infrastructure. This special episode of The Conversation Piece features content from her presentation at The Walrus Talks at Home: Place and Belonging, supported by The Belonging Forum.

Gallagher-Ross spoke at The Walrus Talks at Home: Place and Belonging on November 4, 2025.

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Housing is a human right we don't yet action—so what happens to belonging when your address depends on your bank account?

Michelle Hoar is a fellow at the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue at Simon Fraser University and project director for the Hey Neighbour Collective, an initiative building neighbourly connection and resilience in multi-unit housing. This special episode of The Conversation Piece features content from her presentation at The Walrus Talks at Home: Place and Belonging, supported by The Belonging Forum.

Hoar spoke at The Walrus Talks at Home: Place and Belonging on November 4, 2025.

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Conversations about accessibility are often framed around legislation and accommodations, but the stories we tell about disability can be equally powerful in shaping how accessibility is perceived and lived.

Human rights lawyer and Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Accessibility, and Belonging (DEIAB) consultant Prasanna Ranganathan argues that accessibility requires more than policy change—it demands new narratives that allow us to imagine the inclusive world we seek to build.

Ranganathan spoke at The Walrus Talks AccessAbility in Toronto on May 26, 2026.

To register for upcoming events happening online or in a city near you, and to catch up on our archive of The Walrus Talks, visit thewalrus.ca/events.

And subscribe to The Walrus Events newsletter for updates and announcements, at thewalrus.ca/newsletters.

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Gender shapes how we move through the world, but the expectations attached to it can be limiting and exclusionary, most especially for trans and gender non-conforming people.

Comedian, writer, and singer Tranna Wintour meditates on her experience as a trans woman and argues that it is not trans people who complicate our understanding of gender but the narrow binary that limits who we are allowed to be.

Wintour spoke at The Walrus Talks Disruption in Toronto on November 6, 2018.

To register for upcoming events happening online or in a city near you, and to catch up on our archive of The Walrus Talks, visit thewalrus.ca/events.

And subscribe to The Walrus Events newsletter for updates and announcements, at thewalrus.ca/newsletters.

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Cities are being asked to solve some of society’s biggest crises with limited resources and shrinking political authority. As pressure continues to mount on municipal governments, so do questions about who really shapes the communities we live in.

Jeff Gray, Queen’s Park reporter for the Globe and Mail, offers an inside look at the machinery of local democracy, and breaks down what it will take to alleviate the strain it's under.

Gray spoke at The Walrus Talks A New City in Toronto on April 26, 2023.

To register for upcoming events happening online or in a city near you, and to catch up on our archive of The Walrus Talks, visit thewalrus.ca/events.

And subscribe to The Walrus Events newsletter for updates and announcements, at thewalrus.ca/newsletters.

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Wildfires expose how responsibility for public safety is shared—and sometimes fragmented—across systems that are not always designed to work together.

Chief Ken McMullen, president of the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs, makes the case for stronger coordination as fires increasingly move from remote landscapes into the communities where people live.

Chief McMullen spoke at The Walrus Talks Wildfires in Saskatoon on April 1, 2026.

To register for upcoming events happening online or in a city near you, and to catch up on our archive of The Walrus Talks, visit thewalrus.ca/events.

And subscribe to The Walrus Events newsletter for updates and announcements, at thewalrus.ca/newsletters.

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