For the past three years, Mayor Jyoti Gondek has been hosting round tables and having conversations about what it means to be Calgarian, and what Calgary means to the world.

Those chats have seen the mayor travel to L.A. to meet with the biggest Hollywood film companies, to Norway to promote Calgary as World Energy City, and at home, with groups diverse in interests, such as business, community, and faith.

Outside of events like those held by the Calgary Chamber of Commerce or Calgary Economic Development, those discussions have been largely out of the public eye.

On Oct. 18 though, Mayor Gondek launched the Calgary Talks series in an effort to invite Calgarians into those conversations firsthand, she said.

“What I wanted to do is make sure that I was able to open up the conversations I’ve been able to have with so many interesting people and share those conversations,” she said.

“This series is intended to invite you into the living room and have the conversations with the people that I get to talk to. It’s meant to be inspiring, it’s meant to offer challenges, and it’s meant to welcome all of you in.”

Why we love Calgary

The first talk was held at The Ampersand, and was moderated by long-time CBC Calgary journalist David Gray, with panellists Avatar Innovation CEO and co-founder Kevin Krausert.

Among the talk’s topics were the growth of Calgary as a city past 1.3 million people and the pressures on housing and inflation that have followed, along with the current business conditions and the challenges and opportunities that the city has been facing as part of the energy transition towards more sustainable fossil fuels and clean energy.

Other topics included why younger Calgarians should choose to live and work in Calgary instead of going elsewhere, and the challenges of attracting talent to the city.

The topic du jour ahead of a contentious election season in the United States, along with two provincial elections and the possibility of a federal election in Canada, why anyone would want to be a politician in a politically divisive world.

“I think one of the greatest things that we learned from today is that we are a city of people that wants other people to succeed,” said Mayor Gondek.

“When you listen to the stories of the small businesses, when you listen to stories of how people in the energy sector are well connected with folks in tech, you can see that we are a city of collaborators, and we want everyone to meet with prosperity and success here, and that is an important message to keep sending out.”

Telling Calgary’s story, one audience at a time

Part of that, and the reason for holding the talk, was to continue to have a space where Calgary could tell its own story, she said.

“There have been decades of people writing about Calgary, that we are a single focus, that we are a city that is stuck in the past and can’t get economic diversification going. That’s not even a fact. So we need to start telling our story ourselves, about how incredible we are, how we’ve grown our economy, how incredibly diverse it is, and how we are receiving so much population growth, and people are choosing to stay here,” the mayor said.

“This isn’t a place people just move to and then think of where else they’re going to go. They stay here. We need to deliver that message very clearly ourselves.”

A message, less so directed at anyone in Calgary, but more about those outside the city who pen headlines without taking the time to visit she said.

“It is not directed at anybody specifically, and it is actually a little bit of a poke to the east—people sitting in Toronto writing headlines about us without ever having come to our city. That’s got to stop,” Mayor Gondek said.

“The last time I had a journalist reach out and say, I want to write about any changes that you’re seeing on Stephen Avenue and your office to residential conversions, I asked him if he’d ever been to the city, and no, he hadn’t for 10 years. So I said, come on down. Happy to talk to you once you’re here.”

The topic of Friday’s talk was “why we love YYC.”

Brown said that her involvement in the talk came from an invitation from the Mayor’s office to be involved and that the topic and the panellists sounded interesting.

“I think people come to Calgary and they’re always surprised. Even people who decide they want to move here because they think the opportunities are here, they always end up being a little bit surprised about how welcoming it is and and how the opportunities are even bigger than they ever imagined before they came here,” she said.

She said that one takeaway from the talk was that despite dialogue coming out of the pandemic being exceptionally negative, Calgary really hasn’t changed.

“I think what we talked about here today is there’s still optimism in Calgary. There’s still this can-do attitude, and we definitely talked about the problems that the city’s facing. But I think this conversation was just a good reminder that the nature of Calgary hasn’t changed very much over the years. We’re still an optimistic, positive, forward-looking place of opportunity.”

Mayor Gondek said that the inaugural talk was well received and that there would be further Calgary Talks in the near future.

“I think it’s really important to engage often with the public and to do it in as many different ways as you can. I think the one big takeaway from the water feeder main break in June, is that you have to find every possible way to reach out to Calgarians to understand how they’re feeling about things. Whether it’s positive, or whether they’re a little bit down about things,” she said.

“The more you can learn about how people are feeling, the more you can do to serve them. So, I thought this was an excellent opportunity for people to have some conversations, very much like the ones I get to have with local leaders, and to be able to do it with a larger room. It was incredibly rewarding.”