Avenue NovDec 2025

top forty under forty

HOT SHOT

MEET FELIPE ALBERTO PAREDES-CANEVARI, LOCAL LAWYER, GLOBAL MUSICIAN, AND THE REST OF THE TOP 40 CLASS OF 2025

to APEGA registrants:

CONGRATULATIONS

ASEEM PANDEY, P.ENG.,

on receiving an Avenue Top 40 Under 40 award!

MARIA MARIANAYAGAM , P.ENG.,

For more than a century, the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta has protected Albertans by regulating the practices of engineering and geoscience in our province. We are proud to recognize our registrants on this distinction and the role regulated professionals play in enabling safe, innovative engineering in Alberta.

Discover more at apega.ca.

Cerco Creative Marketing is a dynamic media production company specializing in the creation of original content across various platforms, including branding services, custom website design and development, video series, documentaries, news programs, blogs, social media posts, and environmental design. Equipped with our own production house and a skilled team comprised of designers, content writers, creators, producers, and technical staff, we are dedicated to delivering high-quality media content to meet your marketing and communication requirements.

email hello@cerco.design for inquiries

CRAFT BEER FOR ALL

Eden Fraser of Burn Block Social Club invites everyone to the table.

The friendly team at local microbrewery Burn Block Social Club welcomes everyone to enjoy its creative and tasty selection of beer and pinball machines. At the helm is founder Eden Fraser, who is on a mission to create a space where everyone belongs.

Fraser, who has a background in event management and hospitality, has always been a host at heart. So, when the opportunity to found Burn Block Social Club came, she went all in.

At only 28 years old, Fraser is dedicated to creating a sustainable place where all can come to laugh, drink and make friends. Her welcoming approach is paying off. Despite having only recently opened in the spring of 2024, Burn Block is a vibrant and bustling addition to the community.

“I lead with kindness,” says Fraser. “It’s about being kind to everybody, whether it's the staff or customers, and I really pride myself on having my staff create this inclusive environment where anybody can come and enjoy themselves.”

DESIGNED FOR EVERYONE

Located on Inglewood's 9th Avenue, the Burn Block building was formerly home to Revival Brewcade, where Fraser was a manager. “My whole idea was to take that concept and add a little more warmth and comfort, and make it even more welcoming to everybody,” she says. “I wanted

everybody to come and enjoy this cozy space.”

Fraser thoughtfully designed the space to encourage more conversation and engagement with one another. She took away the TVs behind the bar, brought in longer tables for larger groups and took out some of the barstools to invite a more natural flow of conversation between groups.

Designed as a social club, Burn Block offers a variety of fun events, including a weekly knitting club, a pinball league, karaoke, drag events and Brews & Banter, a monthly tasting event with Burn Block’s brewer.

BEER LOVERS UNITE

Beyond the inclusive atmosphere, Burn Block’s beer is pretty darn good, too. In fact, Burn Block’s God Speed Stout became one of the beers served on tap at the G7 conference last June after a Kananaskis resort staff member wandered in for a pint, loved it and quickly inquired about getting the stout in bulk for the summit. Small but mighty, Burn

Block has yet to join any province-wide liquor distributions, so it was Fraser and her team who brewed up a batch and delivered it to Kananaskis for world leaders to taste.

Crafted by brewer Jason Hoeve, Burn Block’s beers are deliciously unique creations — think blueberry basil ales and lavender sours. It’s Hoeve’s passion, meticulous detail and master craftsmanship that make the batches stand out. Burn Block offers five core beers and rotating seasonal beers, so all beer lovers can find something to love.

After only a year and a half, the brewery can already say it serves award-winning pints — its Homestead Helles Lager and Lavender Haze Sour recently won the Judge's Selection Award at the 2025 Alberta Beverage Awards. Burn Block’s beers are slowly expanding into more niche liquor stores, and it hopes to brew on a larger scale in the future. And beyond just beer growth, Fraser hopes the relationships formed within the social club continue to grow, too.

Jason Hoeve and Eden Fraser

For four decades, the Alberta Cancer Foundation has fueled advancements in cancer research, treatment and care — made possible by the generosity of our donors.

Surrounded by the energy and vision of leaders shaping our community, we are looking to the future — creating more moments and building the next chapter for cancer care in Alberta.

albertacancer.ca/your-impact

Forget museums. Forget concert halls. Calgary is reinventing the future of art.

The world’s first accessible arts learning campus and community hub is rising here, not anywhere else.

Bigger Than Bricks and Mortar

Calgary is in the middle of a cultural building boom. The Arts Commons and Glenbow redevelopments are commanding hundreds of millions in investment. Impressive, yes — but they’re the kind of shiny landmarks you’ll find in any major city.

What no city has dared to do — until now — is reimagine who art is truly for. That’s where the National accessArts Centre (NaAC) comes in. This isn’t another concert hall or museum. It’s the world’s first accessible arts learning campus — a global model for creativity without barriers.

Why It Matters

Most arts projects measure success in ticket sales and gala openings. This one measures it in something far more radical: who gets to create.

A dancer with Down syndrome choreographing her first work. A blind painter leading a master class. Young artists with autism discovering their voice in music.

This doesn’t happen in pristine galleries. It happens in spaces built for accessibility, equity, and belonging. When complete, this campus will prove that when everyone belongs, creativity explodes — and Calgary will be the city that showed the world how.

Calgary on the World Stage

Who would’ve thought a disability arts organization would become Calgary’s — and one of Canada’s — most globally

active arts leaders? Yet NaAC has already toured across continents, headlined major festivals, and even stepped into cultural diplomacy — the only Calgary arts group invited to welcome a high-profile G7 dignitary.

Toronto has TIFF. Montreal has Jazz. Calgary will have the world’s first accessible arts campus.

Be Part of It

This project belongs to Calgary — but its impact will be global. To learn more, get involved, or support the campus vision, visit www.disabilityandthearts.ca

Forget following. Forget fitting in. Calgary is showing the world what’s next in art.

PIVOT PROPERTIES

TRANSFORMING LEGACY PROPERTIES INTO TIMELESS MODERN LIVING

THE LIZZIE

936 Elizabeth Road SW

The Lizzie reimagines a split-level home into a modern residence in one of Calgary’s most walkable communities, Britannia. Just steps from the Elbow River and the shops of Britannia Plaza, Lizzie combines open design, natural light, and warm textures to create an inviting family home. Architectural design by Meghan Bannon of MERA Studios Architects and built by Rawyluk Developments. Currently listed for $3,275,000, all you need to do is bring your personal items and call it home!

Pivot Properties is a Calgary-based boutique development company founded by sisters Jo-Ann and Patricia. Specializing in studs-out renovations and new builds, Pivot reimagines homes in Calgary’s most sought-after neighborhoods with timeless design, modern functionality, and deep respect for community character.

Every project we take on carries a name tied to its street or community. Lizzie for Elizabeth Road in Britannia, Bella for Belvedere Road in Bel-Aire — connecting each home to its neighborhood’s identity and story.

THE BELLA

The Entry

A timeless stone façade combined with elegant wooden doors creates a sophisticated and welcoming entrance.

The Bella Project

Named after Belvedere Road, Bella has been transformed through a studs-out renovation that highlights Tuscan limestone and custom ironwork expertly crafted by Mystic Forge and built by Kyle Brantner Construction. Now sold, Bella exemplifies Pivot’s dedication to outstanding craftsmanship and enduring design.

COMING SOON THE

BOWIE

Currently in development, The Bowie reimagines a bungalow with an interior courtyard. With expansive windows, clean modern lines, and a strong emphasis on windoor-outdoor living, Bowie blends natural light, warmth, and functionality to create a striking yet inviting home in Upper Elbow Park.

Architectural Design is by Meghan Bannon of MERA Studios Architects.

by Calgary’s architectural heritage, this development community features beautiful executive homes, breathtaking views, walking and biking paths, as well as west Calgary’s premier shopping destination Aspen Landing Shopping Centre.

Homes By Us

Crystal Creek Homes

Homes By Us

Homes By Us

Crystal Creek Homes

Inspired

22 Editor’s Note

DEPARTMENTS

28 Shop Talk Cherry Tree Lane Toys offers toys to spark imagination and a space for play and community gathering.

28 Made Here StumpCraft offers quality wooden puzzles that can stump you in the best way.

31 How To Be Good Parachutes for Pets provides support for local pet owners facing hardship.

32 The Fun-Things-To-Do List in November and December.

126 Decor: Favourite Spaces

The personal touches in this Currie Barracks condo create a thoughtful, elegant home.

138 Parting Shots Calgary Farmers' Market West

FEATURES

35 Top 40 Under 40

Celebrating the Class of 2025 — their achievements, community impact, and the opportunities they help create across Calgary and beyond.

96 Fashion: Local Looks

No matter what look you're after, local designers offer everything you need.

104 The Lonely City

Despite being named the friendliest city in the world by Condé Nast Traveller, Calgarians are not immune to loneliness — and it’s proving to be a public health concern.

116 Art of the Cart

Get ready for home-entertaining season by building the perfect Alberta bar cart with these locally available products.

119 The Perfect Batch

We share some of our favourite local cookies and where to get them.

129 Your Guide to Finding Peace in the Mountains

Discover quieter corners of the Rockies with lesser-known, but impressive restaurants, cozy, calm stays and quiet activities. See why it’s well worth the extra mile to find peace among the peaks.

40

Felipe Alberto Paredes-Canevari

PHOTO BY Jared Sych

TSERING ASHA SENIOR EDITOR tleba@redpointmedia.ca

LOCAL CELEBRATION

Working on Avenue’s Top 40 Under 40 always provides me with a thrumming feeling of awe and astonishment. It’s impossible not to be proud of the people in this city when you spend months learning about their scientific research, their thriving business ventures, their medical breakthroughs, their award-winning art projects and so much more.

This year, my involvement in the Top 40 project increased tenfold. Since last November, I’ve been riding that high, seeing the process simultaneously from a granular and bird’s-eye perspective. Helping nominators and nominees fill out forms, hosting webinars with top tips for applications, working with the judging committee, and assisting with planning the various celebrations — these are just a few of the tasks our team works on year-round to put the Top 40 together.

Being hyper-focused on Top 40 has given me a new proximity to these folks — who are, quite simply, doing exceptionally cool things in Calgary. We receive hundreds of applicants annually for the Top 40 Under 40; this issue is a testament to a world of talent living and working in Calgary. Read the profiles of our incredible Class of 2025, starting on page 35, and join us to celebrate this year's Class at Mount Royal University’s Bella Concert Hall on November 20. Tickets are on sale now at AvenueCalgary. com/T40Tickets.

But, even a city like ours, teeming with life and community as the Top 40 demonstrate, isn’t immune to the public-health crisis of loneliness. Did you know that more than one

in 10 Canadians aged 15 years and older often feel lonely? In “The Lonely City” on page 104, executive editor Colleen Seto explores the mental-health implications of loneliness in one of the “friendliest cities in the world,” and local resources to help you overcome it. Help us do more of this kind of reporting by contributing to our Community Story Development Fund, (avenuecalgary.com/storyfund), which allows us to report on homelessness, intimate-partner violence, mental health and other social issues.

One way to avoid being lonesome is to gather with friends — check out assistant editor Chris Landry’s suggestions on building the perfect bar cart for some home-entertaining inspo on page 116. Every product featured is from Alberta, so you can enjoy supporting local this holiday season.

In fact, you can support hyper-local at Avenue’s first-ever Cookie Market on December 4 at Eau Claire Tower (600 3 Ave. S.W.). Get a sneak peek of yummy locally made cookies on page 119. Our director of strategy and content, Meredith Bailey, offers delicious insight into the city’s bakeries.

And, don’t miss our popular mountains guide, this time focusing on finding peace in the peaks, starting on page 129, with quiet places to stay, activities to do, places to dine and more.

Thanks for being an Avenue reader and see you in the New Year.

Note: In the “State of the Arts” story in the Sept/Oct issue, we incorrectly stated the Artist Development Microgrant given by Calgary Arts Development is up to $15,000 when in fact it is $5,000. We regret the error.

Join us at avenue’s 1st cookie market featuring highlighted vendors: Thursday December 4, 2025 Lobby @ Eau Claire Tower 10 a.m. - 3 p.m. in partnership

CONGRATS TO THE 40 UNDER 40

Focus on w a ’s .

Book your refractive surgery consultation today

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Publisher Käthe Lemon, klemon@redpointmedia.ca

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Staff Photographer Jared Sych

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The Avenue Editorial Advisory Council

Laura Anderson, Julianne Beatty, Chrysta Benning, Alexis Berezan, Erin Best, Robert Blood, Shalini Bhatty, Brian Boulanger, Victoria Bradbury, Heather Campbell, Danielle Carrafo, Melinda Channon, Hildy Chong, Nicole Claiter, Amy Cooper, Steve Cordick, Michal Cote, Sidney Craig Courtice, Carolyn Cox, Brett Decarie, James DeKryger, Grant Doyle, Tania Drews, Brian Duggan, José Duchesne, Nicole Dyer, Russell Erickson, Meaghan Farquharson, Will Freeman, Janice Froese, Drew Gillson, Briggitte Gingras, Giono Studio Design, Naomi Grattan, Kelsey Hahn, Jillian Haneiph, Amanda Hamilton, Cat Hackman, Mark Heard, Lindsay Hill, Alayne Hing, Tara Hluchy, Rameez Husseini, Kyla Ilic, Tania Kaschl, La Klayman, Michelle Lee, Jamie Leong-Huxley, Jolene Livington, Brad Lohman, Quan Ly, Jil MacDonald, Leah Makin, Jodie Masikewich, Kris Matthews, Tammy McCorkell, Loni McDonough, Trina Morison, Heather Morris, Anna Murphy, Jeff Nechka, Melissa Norris, Maxim Olshevsky, William O'Yeung, Viktoria Paulovich, Kelly Pitaoulis, Colleen Pound, Natalie Preer, Rithesh Ram, Becky Rock, Paul Salvatore, Nolandeep Sangha, Ranny Shibley, D Smith, Mandy Smith-Haber, Cynthia Solano, Rachelle Starntes, Janet St Germain, Heather Stubbs, Ian Sutherland, Anila Umar, Gail Urquhart, Edie Vlooswyk, Janet Wakal, Andrew Ward, Christa Welsh, Wendy Winder, Naomi Withers, Kevin Wong, Stephanie Wozniak

Members of Avenue’s A-List become a part of our team and have the opportunity to get a seat on Avenue’s Editorial Advisory Council and see their names here in the masthead of the magazine.

JOIN THE A-LIST TODAY

Gain access to unparalleled behind-the-scenes tours, intimate dinners, secret tastings and exclusive parties. The A-List is more than a membership, it’s your passport to the extraordinary.

JAN | FEB 2026

CALGARY’S BEST WEDDING SERVICES

Our annual list of the winners of Avenue’s Best Wedding Services ballot, as voted by readers.

SKEPTIC’S GUIDE TO MODERN HIGH PERFORMANCE

A glimpse at the growing popularity of high-performance products and wellness services for your mental, physical and creative health.

SENIOR LIVING

A showcase of the plethora of housing options for seniors in Calgary.

by December 1 to get the January/ February 2026 issue to your door. Three-issue subscription $18, one-year $30. AVENUECALGARY.COM/SHOP

contributors

Private Chef

KARA CHOMISTEK is the president and co-founder of PARK, a non-profit organization for emerging fashion designers and artists in Alberta. Kara's unique creative perspective stems from her professional background in engineering and the arts. In this issue, she helped put together the fashion spread (on page 96), showcasing her appreciation for storytelling through beautiful and meticulously executed imagery. @parkproductionhouse Her favourite local coffee spot: Kawa Espresso Bar shops: Leo Boutique + Less 17 thing to eat: Model Milk Apple Pie restaurant: Nupo find: Kit Interior Objects

COLLEEN SETO first wrote for Avenue 25 years ago, fresh out of uni. Nowadays, she’s Avenue’s executive editor. In this issue, she swaps her editor hat for her writer one and explores the rather widespread affliction of loneliness, beginning on page 104. Colleen also manages magazines for RedPoint’s Content Studio, including Breakthroughs, Create Calgary, Leap and spur, and writes for national magazines. Outside of work, Colleen enjoys life in Bragg Creek with her family. cseto@redpointmedia.ca

Her favourite local coffee spot: The Heart of Bragg Creek new shop: Faire Living thing to eat: Pineapple Dole Whip from Inglewood Drive In restaurant: Asian Bistro find: A cozy fleece by Camp Brand Goods

SARAH COMBER is a local writer and photographer. Her writing focuses on Calgary's arts and culture scene, and, in this issue, she writes many of the Top 40 profiles. As a brand-and-lifestyle photographer, Sarah specializes in food, travel and portraiture. When she's not working, Sarah can be found nursing a decaf latte while engrossed in a good book, or exploring the city and mountains with her toddler. sarahcomber.com, @sarah.comber

Her favourite local coffee spot: And Some Flower Cafe shop: Nanao Kimono thing to eat: Green Curry at De Thai Cuisine restaurant: Paper Lantern find: Bloom Smoothing Balm by The Potion Masters

shop talk

BRINGING BACK PLAYTIME

CHERRY TREE LANE TOYS WELCOMES ALL TO COME PLAY.

When shoppers swing by Cherry Tree Lane Toys, they often say,

“This isn’t just a store,” says owner Bekki Leon. They’re right.

Inside the Bridgeland shop, visitors find toy vehicles for cruising on the floor, cutouts in the walls for children to crawl through and pony walls so parents can keep an eye on their kids playing while they shop — all in the name of imaginative play and community building.

“Local, independent stores can be community,” says Bekki’s husband and shop co-owner, Ben. “That’s what we really wanted to foster. We had memories of that from when we were younger: walking home from school, you might pop in and not buy anything, but it was fun, and you knew the shopkeepers, and you were part of something.”

The couple established Cherry Tree Lane Toys in 2020 as an online business offering

open-ended toys promoting play, imagination and creativity (toys that aren’t pre-programmed to play for you). They quickly realized that, to promote play, they needed a physical space. In 2023, they found their current home.

Today, Cherry Tree Lane’s storefront serves as more than just a toy shop; it’s a community hub. Its event space often hosts free activities, like crafts and games, and families can visit for storytime on Saturdays. And, of course, you’ll find imagination-building toys of all kinds, including pretend-play kits like wooden tea sets or a doctor’s kit, natural Play-Doh, stacking stones, and books.

“It’s about the magic of play and wanting to make sure that it’s accessible for everyone,” says Bekki.

905 1 Ave. N.E., 403-243-1993, cherrytreelane.ca, @cherrytreelanetoys

PUTTING THE PIECES TOGETHER

STUMPCRAFT OFFERS QUALITY WOODEN PUZZLES THAT CAN STUMP YOU IN THE BEST WAY.

For years, Jasen Robillard and his wife, Heather, sat at their dining room table, completing beautiful jigsaw puzzles together. “It gave us an excuse to hang out, which, given how busy our lives are, we kind of need that reason to just not be busy,” he says. But highend jigsaw puzzles are somewhat scarce in Canada and can be expensive to import, so Robillard decided to start making his own in 2017 in his Dalhousie basement.

With Canadian-made art printed on six-millimetre-thick wood and laser-cut into unique, thematic pieces, StumpCraft’s name reflects the difficult, yet enjoyable nature of the puzzles.

After selling nearly 2,500 puzzles made and packaged from his home, Robillard decided to establish a small factory shop in southeast Calgary in 2021. Today, people across the globe enjoy doing StumpCraft’s colourful and whimsical puzzles as a relaxing solo activity or for cherished time with loved ones.

“This ability to draw people together is a rare thing, and that’s one of the things that I appreciate the most about the work that we do,” says Robillard.

WHERE TO FIND IT

Bay D2, 6115 3 St. S.E., 825-540-4670, stumpcraft.com, @stumpcraft

Over the last 70 years, Calgary Foundation has granted $1 billion to the Calgary and area community – helping to care for our city of over a million people. We have thousands to thank for building a more vibrant and healthy community where everyone belongs. It takes strong partnerships between visionary philanthropists and our effective charitable sector to address the current and future needs of people in our community. Fueled by a permanent endowment, we invest donations over the long term, making it possible to care for generations to come. Thank you, Calgary, for helping us to give more, do more, grant more and invest more.

calgaryfoundation.org

JUSTIN TURNS GEMS INTO MILESTONES

GEM BY CARATI LEVEL 2

SAVING PETS SAVES PEOPLE

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. how

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.

MELISSA DAVID WITH BEAR AT THE PARACHUTES FOR PETS FACILITY.

Strike and Spare at Splitsville

Have a good old-fashioned day of fun at Splitsville’s new 26,500 square-foot facility in the Creekside Shopping Centre. Go 10-pin bowling (in your own shoes!), play at the arcade, enjoy tasty snacks and more. Other locations include Glamorgan, Highfield and Meridian. splitsvillebowl.ca

Cheer on the Calgary Hitmen

November 14, 19, 23, 27, 30 Head to the Saddledome to cheer on the Hitmen at one of their home games in November. chl.ca/whl-hitmen

Mingle at Avenue’s

Top 40 Under 40 Gala

November 20

This year, we celebrate the Top 40 Under 40 Class of 2025 at Mount Royal University’s iconic Bella Concert Hall. Come rub shoulders with Calgary’s best and brightest. avenuecalgary.com/T40Tickets

Shop at Spruce Meadows

International Christmas Market

November 14 to 16; 21 to 23; 28 to 30

The annual Christmas market returns to Spruce Meadows, where you can find a variety of gifts and treats for the season. New this year — a food hall and entertainment stage in Congress Hall. sprucemeadows.com

DECEMBER

Grab a Sweet Treat at Avenue’s Cookie Market

December 4

Indulge in a variety of local cookies and treats at Avenue’s cookie market at Oxford Properties’ Eau Claire Tower.

Hire a Private Chef for a Holiday Dinner

Elevate your holidays by hiring a private chef, like one of the folks at Søm or Top Chef Canada 2021 competitor and personal chef Alex Edmonson, to prepare a special dinner for your next dinner party. Or order a homemade meal prepared by a local chef on the Home Yum app.

Watch A Christmas Carol

November 28 to December 31

Catch a performance of the iconic holiday play at Theatre Calgary and watch Ebenezer Scrooge drift through his past, present and future to learn the real meaning of the holiday season.

theatrecalgary.com/shows/20252026-a-christmas-carol

Embrace the Cold at Zoolights

November 14 to January 4, 2026

The annual festival of lights at the Wilder Institute/Calgary Zoo lets you explore the magic of the zoo at night — all lit up creatively and with fun around every corner.

calgaryzoo.com

TOP FORTY UNDER FORT Y

This year’s Top 40 Under 40 list reflects the growth and expansion of ideas that continue to make Calgary a world-class city. The Class of 2025 features scientists and researchers, entrepreneurs and investors, artists, filmmakers, authors, athletes, restaurateurs, and more. Avenue magazine is proud to celebrate this group of young Calgarians whose excellence continues to inspire us all.

BY TSERING ASHA, KENDALL BISTRETZAN, CATRINA BOWLES, ELIZABETH CHORNEY-BOOTH, SARAH COMBER, RILEY FONGER, CHRISTINA FRANGOU, XIMENA GONZÁLEZ, DANYAEL HALPRIN, ALYSSA HIROSE, CHRIS LANDRY, ALICIA L'ARCHEVÊQUE, FABIAN MAYER, OLIVIA PICHÉ, VIANCY SALUBRE, ALANA WILLERTON, SEAN P. YOUNG

BY JARED SYCH PHOTOGRAPHED AT MOUNT ROYAL UNIVERSITY

PHOTOS

NEEPIN AUGER

ARTIST; VICE-PRINCIPAL, MANYHORSES HIGH SCHOOL

WHY SHE ’ S A TOP 40

Neepin Auger is an established painter and full-time educator who champions Indigenous visibility and cultural understanding through art.

Despite never attending high school (because she was homeschooled), Neepin Auger is the vice-principal at Manyhorses High School on the Tsuut’ina Nation.

The artist and educator, originally from the Bigstone Cree Nation in Treaty 8, comes from a family that instilled in her the importance of higher education. Her mother, Grace Auger, is a provincial court judge, and her late father, Dale Auger, had a PhD in education.

They also encouraged her to keep her Indigenous culture close to her through art. Her father was an accomplished painter who showed his paintings in the Calgary Stampede's Western Showcase Art Show and was inducted into its Hall of Fame in 2009.

When Auger had her own daughter at age 19, it inspired her to go back to school, and she eventually graduated as part of Mount Royal University’s (MRU) first Bachelor of Education class in 2015.

She then completed her master’s degree at the University of Calgary. Through it all, painting remained her anchor.

“It’s energy,” Auger says. “It's a movement. These paintings say who I am.”

Rich with Indigenous motifs and vibrant colours, her work is a form of cultural storytelling and often focuses on her Indigenous cultural background as a Cree woman.

This past June, Auger’s daughter graduated from the same school where Auger is viceprincipal, and started at MRU in September. Meanwhile, Auger continues to balance her many hats: educator, artist and mother. She

“IT'S IN EVERYTHING, MY [INDIGENOUS] CULTURE JUST KEEPS ME GROUNDED IN WHO I AM AS A PERSON, EVERYTHING I DO — MY ARTWORK, RAISING MY KID, EVERYTHING.”

sells more than 25 paintings each year, and, since 2020, her paintings have been exhibited at the Stampede’s Art Show, just like her father's were.

She was recently commissioned by Calgary’s new BMO Centre, where her painting highlights her work as an Indigenous artist. Auger is

also an accomplished author, illustrating four children’s books about Indigenous culture and publishing them in English, Cree and French.

“I think connecting people is a part of that story I tell in my work,” says Auger. “They are a part of that spirit that's in the painting and the story and energy that's there.” —Viancy Salubre

SAYEH BAYAT

DIRECTOR, HEALTHY CITY LAB; ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, SCHULICH SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING, UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY

WHY SHE ’ S A TOP 40

Sayeh Bayat’s cutting-edge research uses AI with everyday technologies to reimagine aging and help older adults live longer, healthier, more independent lives.

Initially, Sayeh Bayat’s interest in space systems led her to pursue a degree in aerospace engineering. But, when her grandmother was diagnosed with dementia, everything changed. Witnessing the gaps in care for older patients and the emotional toll of aging inspired Bayat to pivot toward biomedical engineering.

“There are lots of ways that technology can help diagnose dementia, and support people who are living with dementia to have a better quality of life,” says Bayat, who founded the University of Calgary's Healthy City Lab in 2021.

Leading what has grown to a team of 22 members, Bayat has secured more than $6 million in research funding and led or co-led 17 major projects at the Lab. Bayat’s projects involve a Dementia Advisory Committee, so those impacted by the condition are part of the conversation.

“Designing with people instead of for them is a big theme in my research,” says Bayat, adding that a proactive, rather than reactive, approach to care would not only alleviate the burden on our health-care systems, but also give patients greater autonomy over their health.

For example, one of Bayat’s projects used sensors and AI machine learning to analyze how different driving patterns can indicate dementia early. These indicators empower patients to manage their symptoms sooner.

Bayat’s work has been recognized with a range of awards, including UCalgary’s Research Excellence Award and the Alberta Immigrant Impact Award, and she's received

“THERE'S A LOT THAT CAN BE DONE TO MAKE AGING AND CARE BETTER FOR PEOPLE, AND THERE'S A LOT THAT THE TECHNOLOGIES WE HAVE CAN DO TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN PEOPLE'S LIVES.”

international media recognition from the New York Times and the BBC.

Looking toward the future, Bayat will lead a team of 20 investigators — including people with lived experience of dementia — on a national project examining how decision-making around driving can be more person-centred.

This research could lead to significant policy implications.

“I'm also excited about working with the next generation of students around the areas of digital health and AI,” she says. “Everything's changing quickly, but I think there's a lot of exciting potential.” —Sarah Comber

CEO, ENVIROSOFT CORPORATION

AGE

KIRSTIE BOYLE 38

WHY SHE ’ S A TOP 40

Kirstie Boyle has combined her impressive skills in science, technology and business to help energy companies reduce their large-scale, major emissions, while promoting the inclusion of women in STEM.

Kirstie Boyle grew up going to the science centre every weekend, so, naturally, she felt at home in the world of STEM. However, Boyle also has razor-sharp business skills and frequently acts as a “translator” between business and science — a skill that bodes well in her role as CEO of Envirosoft Corporation.

In 2020, she was recruited and then hired as the youngest-ever CEO of the software and technology company, which has been in business for more than 22 years. Envirosoft helps oil and gas companies reduce emissions, tackle reporting challenges, and improve their environmental impact.

“I love solving complex challenges,” says Boyle. “Being a builder and that translator helps me create value, and leave the world a better place than I found it.”

In just four years, Boyle has transformed Envirosoft, quadrupling its size and hiring 45 of Canada’s brightest minds in environmental analytics, 55 per cent of whom are women.

Boyle also volunteers extensively in Calgary’s startup and science communities. She has been a member of Telus Spark Science Centre’s board of directors since 2017. During Boyle’s time as board chair, from 2022 to 2023, Telus Spark saw a 237 per cent increase in attendance and an increase to 14,000 free admissions distributed through 70 community social partners, largely thanks to developments in accessibility.

“Not everyone has the opportunity to feel included in STEM, and it can feel quite intimi-

“I GET SO MUCH FULFILMENT OUT OF TAKING CUTTING-EDGE TECHNOLOGY AND PUTTING IT INTO ACTION THAT RESULTS IN REAL-WORLD OUTCOMES.”

dating,” Boyle says. “But, with the affordability programs the science centre runs, people are given opportunities they may not have otherwise, and it can change the trajectory of their lives.”

Boyle’s overall goals go beyond profit. She wants to facilitate inclusion in science and

high-tech industries, showing the next generation that science is for everyone.

“What brings me fulfilment is seeing communities and individuals lifted up. There’s huge power in science and technology for that.” —Kendall Bistretzan

CHIEF STRATEGY OFFICER, TRELLIS SOCIETY

ANGELA CLARKE 39 AGE

WHY SHE ’ S A TOP 40

Angela Clarke leads a non-profit that serves more than 7,000 of Calgary’s most vulnerable community members and has grown the organization’s annual fundraising by more than $4 million.

after graduating from university, Angela Clarke was ready to get out of Calgary. To pay the bills, she got a gig working 6 a.m. shifts at a local family shelter, and intended to move overseas to start her career in international development as soon as possible. But then she discovered that fulfilling work didn’t require relocation.

“I realized that you don't have to go far to find something that is going to make an impact,” she recalls.

Clarke spent 16 years supporting families navigating poverty and homelessness, first at Inn from the Cold and then at Aspen Family & Community Network, in progressively more senior roles. She was instrumental in the merging of Aspen and Boys & Girls Clubs of Calgary to form Trellis Society in 2020 (one of the largest non-profit mergers in Alberta history).

Since then, Clarke has served as chief strategy officer for Trellis, which champions accessibility with its “one-door” model.

“When someone is in crisis — facing homelessness, having their kids apprehended, losing a job — the last thing they have capacity for is jumping from agency to agency to get all the different pieces of support they need,” Clarke notes. Trellis services include preschools, emergency shelters, tax clinics, youth employment support and affordable therapy.

Indigenous knowledge is foundational across all of Trellis’s programs. “There is a massive overrepresentation of Indigenous people in the systems that we work in,” Clarke says. “Doing this work ethically calls you to be an

“YOU

HAVE TO PARK YOUR EGO AT THE DOOR — BECAUSE THE WORK CAN'T BE ABOUT YOU. IT HAS TO BE ABOUT THE COMMUNITY.”

ally in a way that you shouldn’t shrink away from.”

Clarke’s strategic leadership has resulted in a $4 million increase in fundraising for Trellis, and this year the non-profit announced its first purpose-built, affordable family housing project, which is now well underway. When

complete, it will provide up to 50 homes, with a mix of studio, two-bedroom, three-bedroom and connected three-bedroom-studio units.

“Being able to open doors for 50 families is something we’ve been dreaming about for a long time,” Clarke says. —Alyssa Hirose

TRENT COLBERG

FOUNDER AND OPTOMETRIST, EVOLUTIONEYES OPTOMETRY

WHY HE ’ S A TOP 40

Trent Colberg created a new model of eye care by bringing a mobile eye clinic to patients, helping the communities that need it most.

Five years into his career as an optometrist, Trent Colberg had a vision to make eye care more convenient and accessible with a fully mobile clinic. It didn’t come without startup jitters, though. “Winnebago gave us a blank template and said, ‘How do you want it set up?’” Colberg says. “I’m not a builder — it was stressful — but we figured it out.”

Colberg had faith in his new venture because he had identified a growing population of people who weren’t getting eye care regularly, or at all. Since founding Evolutioneyes in 2019, the clinic has been rolling through Alberta, offering state-of-the-art optometry services to more than 100 workplaces and organizations.

With Colberg literally steering the business, his team sees more than 1,500 patients annually. Evolutioneyes also travels to remote communities, providing optometry services at Indigenous schools, shelters and recovery centres.

His clinic’s impact reflects Colberg’s humble upbringing in Drumheller, Alta., and his belief that eye care can improve lives.

“A 10-year-old doesn’t know how clear life should be if they’ve never had an eye exam,” says Colberg. “We want to change that.”

Colberg has provided eye exams and glasses at no cost to the patient since 2020 at Calgary recovery centres, including the RESET Society and Fresh Start Recovery.

He has also teamed up with the international charities Operation Eyesight and OneSight EssilorLuxottica Foundation to provide vision care in underserved communities.

“I’M GRATEFUL FOR WHAT I’VE BEEN GIVEN IN LIFE.

IF I CAN HELP OUT AND MAKE SOMEONE’S DAY A LITTLE BIT BETTER, THEN WHY SHOULDN’T I?”

Colberg balances his philanthropic aspirations with keen business savvy. He earned an MBA at the same time as his Doctor of Optometry at Pacific University in Oregon, in order to disrupt an industry he sees as being in need of transformation.

In the next five years, Colberg plans to

launch more Evolutioneyes mobile clinics in Alberta and two in another province.

“We’ve proven the model works, now it’s about scaling it where it’s needed most,” Colberg says. “Eye care shouldn’t be stuck in a mall.” —Sean P. Young

PHOTO BY STEVE COLLINS

Connections that open doors

ADAM CRAGG

PARTNER AND CO-FOUNDER, OSNEY CAPITAL

WHY HE ’ S A TOP 40

Adam Cragg’s venture capital firm gives early stage startups the funding they need to fight digital threats and make Calgary a national leader in cybersecurity.

in movies, bad actors are cult favourites at best and cringeworthy at worst — but, in cybersecurity, bad actors are downright dangerous.

“AI tools are allowing bad actors to move faster than ever in their attacks, resulting in more cybersecurity threats,” says Adam Cragg, partner and co-founder of Osney Capital.

He says misspelled phishing emails may be easy to ignore, but even the most tech-savvy person could be fooled by a video call deepfake impersonating their boss. That’s what the future of cyberattacks looks like.

Cragg notes that the province of Alberta has made significant investments in AI. “But, it’s important that investments in cybersecurity keep pace with investments in AI and other technologies to ensure that those technologies are scalable and secure,” he says. In other words, cybersecurity must develop alongside new technologies because every advancement is also a new opportunity for abuse. Cragg and his team fund the innovators that keep the hackers at bay.

Jointly based out of the U.K. and Calgary, Osney Capital is one of the first venture-capital firms to offer seed funding focusing solely on cybersecurity. Cragg, alongside his partners, leads Osney’s investment decision making, selecting which companies to support with his firm’s powerful funds.

In 2025 in the U.K., Osney Capital exceeded its goal of raising £50 million for its inaugural cybersecurity seed fund, securing £56 million from investors, including the British Business Bank and the British National Security Strate-

“I'M A BIG BELIEVER IN TRYING TO MAKE ENTREPRENEURSHIP THE RESPITE OF THE NOT-ALREADY PRIVILEGED.”

gic Investment Fund. That money will support 30 early stage cybersecurity businesses over the next five years.

The firm was founded in 2020, but Cragg’s support of startups goes way back: he was chief of staff at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Entrepreneurship Center, founded the Entrepreneurship Lab at New York University, and launched entrepreneurial programs

and innovation hubs with the University of Calgary and Innovate Calgary.

“Entrepreneurship self-selects for people that can accept a huge amount of risk,” Cragg says, adding that lifting up new entrepreneurs helps to “thoughtfully build inclusive innovation.” His past ventures have been lauded, particularly for actively investing in female founders. —Alyssa Hirose

CELEBRATING SUPER SENIORS

The Top 7 Over 70™ awards recognize extraordinary Calgarians achieving significant milestones later in life.

Founded by Calgary philanthropist Jim Gray in 2017, Top 7 Over 70™ is an awards program that celebrates remarkable people who have started or achieved something new over the age of 70. At a time when awards programs seemed to target most demographics except seniors, Gray found a way to highlight these exceptional older adults. Today, Top 7 Over 70™ has since grown beyond Calgary into a national program with chapters in southeastern Alberta and Atlantic Canada.

The Calgary event, which is held every other year, is organized by partner organization InterGen. The fifth biennial gala was held on October 21, 2025, at the Hyatt Regency Calgary. This year, along with celebrating seven remarkable Calgarians, an eighth senior was awarded the Special Achievement Award.

Here, we take a look at the 2025 winners.

ALF FISCHER

Age: 78

A forward thinker with boundless energy, Fischer helped develop a $600 million rural infrastructure initiative and a provincewide program to accelerate water, power, sewer, roads and communication infrastructure to rural communities. He’s also at the forefront of a project to find new uses for bitumen, a byproduct of crude oil.

DR. MARVIN FRITZLER

Age: 81

A sought-after medical leader and mentor who is still testing new technological medical developments, Fritzler is at the forefront of research into autoimmune and related autoinflammatory diseases. His work and research have impacted the lives of countless patients, with recent projects including key research into COVID-19, arthritis in children and lupus.

JACKIE BROMLEY

Age: 74

An Elder from the Kainai Blood Tribe who is a fearless advocate for the Indigenous community, Bromley was a key voice in the 113 Pathways to Justice report, which included recommendations to address the federal Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls inquiry. She is one of five First Nations grandmothers who formed the Grandmothers’ Wisdom Network to share teachings with younger generations. She’s also a champion for the Blackfoot language and works on various language projects.

GERRY DARICHUK

Age: 78

A mentor, motivator and the president of his local Rotary club, Darichuck helped develop support programs for Ukrainian evacuees and collected essential supplies for people in Ukraine. He led significant Rotary and private fundraising efforts to support hospitals in Ukraine, even travelling there himself to deliver medical supplies to front-line troops and help rebuild hospitals.

RON FRECKLETON

Age: 92

An inspirational speaker and fundraiser, Freckleton is committed to raising awareness about dementia and raising money for Alzheimer Calgary and the United Way, having given more than 50 speeches on the topic. He oversees a number of fundraising initiatives, and he has authored a book about his personal experience caring for his wife in her final days living with Alzheimer’s.

ESMAIL BHARWANI

Age: 84

A life-long believer in the power of education and volunteerism, Bharwani set up the Esmail Safana Farzana Fayaz Bharwani Foundation, which has funded hundreds of scholarships at post-secondary institutions for young people from historically under-represented groups, such as single parents, newcomers and Indigenous peoples. Bharwani is committed to continuing education, even furthering his own by taking a new course on artificial intelligence in his 80s.

DR. NEIL WEBBER

Age: 89

A motivational and visionary educator, Webber founded Webber Academy, a university preparatory school that has achieved acclaim across Canada. Still serving as its president at age 89, Webber has expanded the school to include a performing arts centre, a science centre, a baseball program and the Webber Academy Athletic Park.

THE HONOURABLE LOIS MITCHELL

Age: 86

For only the second time in Top 7 Over 70™ history, an eighth senior was acknowledged with the Special Achievement Award. This year, the Honourable Lois Mitchell was the recipient. Mitchell was 75 years old when she was appointed to one of Alberta’s highest positions, Lieutenant Governor of Alberta. She has achieved a myriad of accomplishments as an older adult, including becoming the president of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and co-chair of Ignite Calgary.

HALEY DANIELS

STRATEGIC SPONSORSHIP MANAGER, BANFF CENTRE FOR ARTS AND CREATIVITY

WHY SHE'S A TOP 40

Olympian Haley Daniels champions diversity and equity in sport and helps both female athletes and arts organizations get funding from brand sponsorships.

In the world of canoe slalom, Haley Daniels is a trailblazer. Historically, only men could participate in the Olympic sport.

But, in 2016, Daniels began a global-advocacy campaign to change that, independently raising the funding necessary to reach the Olympics through sponsorships, community fundraising and securing more than 100 media features.

Thanks to Daniels, along with a global group of women, the women’s canoe slalom debuted at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. She was the first Canadian woman to compete in the event.

Daniels retired as an athlete in 2022. Since then, she’s used her unique experience to build a career as a world-renowned keynote speaker and brand-partnership professional, helping people secure essential sponsorship support and funding from brands.

In 2022, she launched Peak Sponsorships, a consultancy that guides clients, including female-identifying athletes, in building partnerships with like-minded brands, furthering gender equality in sport. She also co-founded the Canmore Women’s Enduro, one of North America's largest female adaptive mountain bike races.

“Sponsorships are like a sandbox where we’re all building a beautiful castle together,” she says.

Daniels also works as the strategic sponsorship manager at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. She secures multi-year sponsorship agreements with both local and global brands, including Durston Gear and Wild Life Distillery, whose support makes world-class events such as the Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival possible.

“WHAT I LOVE MOST ABOUT SPONSORSHIPS

IS GIVING ATHLETES

THE TOOLS

TO STAND ON THEIR OWN BY BUILDING A BRAND, CREATING A BUSINESS PORTFOLIO AND COVERING THE HIGH COSTS OF SPORT IN CANADA.”

As a keynote speaker, Daniels speaks about the value of gender equity and diversity in sport across the globe, including telling the story of one of her parents, Kimberly Daniels, who became the first openly transgender woman to officiate at the Olympics, at the same time Daniels made history as the first

Canadian female canoeist to race for

“There’s three things I love doing: coaching athletes on how to build their sponsorships; speaking and sharing my story of fighting for gender equality; and supporting my dad, a transgender woman,” she says.

Ximena González

Canada.

GEORDIE DAY

FILMMAKER, NIGHTSCHOOL FILMS/TWO CANOES MEDIA

WHY HE'S A TOP 40

Geordie Day is an award-winning documentary filmmaker who elevates local stories to a global stage.

Geordie Day had always dreamed of being a travel documentarian. In 2022, that dream took him to Rome to film Pope Francis’s apology for the Catholic Church’s role in Canada’s residential school system. As Day watched Indigenous peoples from Canada dance in full regalia, with drums echoing through St. Peter’s Square, he had an important realization.

“I didn’t need to go abroad to find profound beauty and culture; it was all around me, right here at home,” Day says. “There’s incredible richness and diversity in Indigenous communities across Alberta, and I’m lucky to be able to film it.”

Day has shared powerful stories about political and social issues by collaborating with Cree/Iroquois/French journalist Brandi Morin on five Indigenous rights documentaries. Their 2023 film, Killer Water, exposes the coverup of water pollution in and around Fort Chipewyan, Alta., and its impacts on Indigenous communities living in Alberta’s oilsands region, and won the 2024 Canadian Hillman Prize — one of journalism’s highest honours.

His 2015 documentary, Unnatural Enemies, tackled Alberta’s controversial attempts at wolf management, and won the Genesis Award from the American Humane Society in 2016. He has also directed and produced more than 50 episodes of documentary television for major platforms. His feature film, Tough Guy: The Bob Probert Story (2019), hit U.S. theatres, topped iTunes charts in Canada and earned strong revenue in the video-on-demand market, a rarity for independent Canadian documentaries.

“A LOT OF THE STORIES THAT I TELL ARE BASED ON CALGARIANS, AND A LOT OF THE CREW I HIRE ARE BASED OUT OF CALGARY.”

Day’s international recognition has consistently shed light on important issues, all while showcasing the strength of Calgary’s film industry. As the owner of Calgary-based NightSchool Films and a partner at Two Canoes Media, Day also creates lucrative video campaigns for major brands including McDonald’s

and DoorDash, fostering a mutually beneficial relationship with Calgary’s film industry.

“There’s a lot of opportunity here, not just in traditional filmmaking, but also in corporate and branded content, which has helped me build a sustainable career,” he says. —Alicia L’Archevêque

NIKI (DUNNE) DOENZ

PARTNER, DIRECTOR AND PORTFOLIO MANAGER, SANDSTONE ASSET MANAGEMENT

WHY SHE ’ S A TOP 40

Niki Doenz helps Calgary families build their artistic, athletic and financial legacies for generations to come.

As an expert in wealth management, Niki Doenz believes the real value of money is its potential to help build the future you want to create. That perspective makes sense for a woman whose career is about helping families build generational wealth, and who uses her personal time to invest in, volunteer with, and launch community organizations for the arts and rodeo.

As partner, director and portfolio manager of Calgary-based Sandstone Asset Management, Doenz contributes to the firm’s global investment strategy. In 2021, Doenz became Sandstone’s youngest equity partner. Since then, she has helped her partners grow the firm’s assets under management by 84 per cent and has also led the expansion of Sandstone’s financial planning practice. Doenz also promotes Calgary’s startup ecosystem and sits on the Thin Air Limited Partner Advisory Committee for Thin Air Labs.

“Every investment that we look at, it’s not just what can happen over the next three or six months,” says Doenz. “It’s what that company can bring to the table for returns for the long term, and also what they're doing in the world.”

She’s building foundations for the future of athletics and arts, too. Doenz served as a board member for the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra from 2019 to 2024, and recently joined the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra Foundation Board of Trustees.

In 2021, she started the Junior Rodeo Series to share her love for western heritage. Held at the Millarville Racing and Agriculture Society (MRAS) indoor arena, more than 85 kids aged two to 16 have participated, with Doenz and

“W ORKING TOGETHER T HROUGH INTERACTIONS W ITH P EOPLE CAN HELP EACH O F U S B ECOME BETTER V ERSIONS OF OURSELVES.”

other community members donating approximately 250 volunteer hours annually. She has also been an active member of MRAS’s Equine Committee since 2023.

“Bottom line, I want a city that my kids will choose to call home, someplace that they can aspire to live, work and thrive, where everything is here for them.” —Tsering Asha

KAREN DOMMETT

MAJOR SPORTS EVENT EXECUTIVE

WHY SHE ’ S A TOP 40

Karen Dommett knows sport has the power to effect positive societal change. As a leader in large-scale sporting events, she fosters inclusive practices across marketing, sponsorship, funding and media. She ensures that transportation, accommodation and all services work for underrepresented communities, specifically people with disabilities.

When she was growing up in rural Saskatchewan, Dommett says children of all abilities participated in the same classrooms and activities, because there weren’t resources for separate programming. These experiences instilled in her a comfort with and awareness of disability inclusion.

Ever since, she has sought roles that advocate for inclusion. Among other positions, she has served as a boxing coach for youth with autism with the Autism Aspergers Friendship Society of Calgary, and as the director of the Calgary Adapted Hub, where she increased access to sports and recreation for children and youth with disabilities.

Her leadership trajectory led to her role as general manager of the 2024 Special Olympics Canada Winter Games in Calgary.

“I felt called to take this on, knowing that the athletes with intellectual disabilities would become our true teachers in changing perceptions of persons with disabilities and promoting true inclusion,” says Dommett.

For the games, which hosted a recordbreaking 1,200 athletes, Dommett recruited and trained more than 1,600 volunteers in disability inclusion. She also established a $50,000 legacy contribution to Goodwill’s Employer

“IT’S MY CORE BELIEF THAT SPORT HAS THE OPPORTUNITY TO INFLUENCE THE TYPE OF SOCIETY WE ALL DESERVE.”

Inclusion Accelerator to support ongoing employment opportunities for persons with disabilities. In March, she served as team manager for Special Olympics Team Canada at the 2025 World Winter Games in Turin, Italy.

Her next marquee event is as the executive director of the 2026 Grey Cup in Calgary,

where she’ll solidify the city’s reputation as the ultimate inclusive host.

“When we host events that show true accessibility and inclusion with intention, we change mindsets and leave a social legacy that stays with people well beyond the field of play,” says Dommett. —Danyael Halprin

Karen Dommett is raising Calgary’s profile in Canadian sports as an inclusive host city for athletes with disabilities.

CHIEF GROWTH OFFICER, THE51 AND MOVEMENT51

COURTNEY DRAGANI 36

WHY SHE ’ S A TOP 40

According to Courtney Dragani, an investor is worth more than their dollar. Their time, expertise and access to resources are just as valuable to the successful growth of an organization.

Dragani is the chief growth officer for The51, a venture firm founded in 2019 that is determined to close the gender investing gap. Dragani helps investors change the world through the investment choices they make, including by funding early stage, high-growth, women-led startups.

Under her direction, The51 now has more than 200 individual investors and has deployed more than $20 million in capital into womenled ventures across Canada.

Dragani specifically focuses on alternative assets like the arts, real estate and sports, domains in which people might not typically be able to invest in public markets, but that they are passionate about supporting.

“What we’re really trying to do is demonstrate that Calgary is an epicentre for folks to come in and invest their capital into genderaware, but very high-performing opportunities,” says Dragani.

This alternative, community-led investment strategy is apparent in The51’s support of Wild FC, Calgary’s first women’s professional soccer team. In 2024, Dragani led The51 to invite 41 investors to support the club, raising a cool $925,000 of pooled capital investment.

With Movement51, an independent nonprofit organization that works in partnership with The51, Dragani develops and delivers educational programs for new investors and entrepreneurs. Most notably, she co-created

“INVESTING IN WOMEN IS NOT CHARITY. IT'S NOT PHILANTHROPY. IT'S A REALLY COMPELLING ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY.”

the Feminist Financial Investing Lab, a fiveweek program launched in 2021 in partnership with the Haskayne School of Business. To date, eight cohorts have gone through the Lab, including more than 260 emerging investors who have subsequently invested more than $13.1 million in early stage capital.

“I think Calgary has such an incredible entrepreneurial background and backbone and spirit to it,” says Dragani. “But, for people to continue to enjoy the city as consumers, they need to invest in it.” —Tsering Asha

By funding women-led ventures, Courtney Dragani is putting Calgary on the map for gender-aware, high-growth investing.

A RECIPE FOR SUCCESS

Avenue’s Top 40 Under 40 alums Connie DeSousa and John Jackson reflect on health and wellness, mentorship and their love for Calgary.

When chefs Connie DeSousa and John Jackson were named part of Avenue’s Top 40 Under 40 Class of 2012, Jackson described it as one of the best moments of his life. The duo made the list thanks, in part, to the success of their first Calgary restaurant, Charcut. The restaurant opened in 2010 and, in that same year, was awarded sixth place in enRoute magazine’s Best New Restaurants in Canada.

Both DeSousa and Jackson still view the Top 40 recognition as a gratifying moment in their careers, but it was nowhere near their mountain top. In fact, the pair continues to grow and invest in the city they love. DeSousa and Jackson have opened a second Charcut location, charbar restaurant, breakfast spot Chix Diner, three Connie and John’s Pizza locations and established Char Hospitality Group, the catering arm connected to the restaurants.

In perfect harmony

When DeSousa and Jackson were recognized as Top 40s, they were working

hard, and they still are, just differently. A decade ago, work days meant seriously long hours at the restaurant, and they were always the first ones in and the last ones out. But along the way, they realized something had to change.

“Once I figured out a healthy version of me, incorporating things that I love to do into my life, including health and fitness, and having more energy, I ended up just being better at the job, better at mentoring and a better co-chef with Connie,” explains Jackson.

Today, the two ensure they find quality time for all of their priorities, including family, health and well-being, just as much as entrepreneurship and culinary work. And often they overlap. You can find DeSousa and Jackson recharging in the sauna while hosting their podcast, Chillin’ With Chefs, training for the New York Marathon while chatting about their next business ventures or making sausages in their newly designed butcher kitchen at Charcut University District.

“It would have been impossible for us to grow our businesses if we didn't think the way we do now,” explains DeSousa. “This kind of thinking allows us to be able to pop into different places multiple times a day.”

A love for Calgary

Mentorship is at the heart of DeSousa and Jackson’s work, and their team of employees has not only grown in size but in skill, too. Opening new restaurants continues to offer new learning experiences to their staff, whether that be opportunities to manage or even become stakeholders.

Beyond their internal team, DeSousa and Jackson make a real impact in the Calgary community, too. They’ve created the Char Hospitality Fund, which supports mental health needs within the industry and fights food insecurity in Calgary.

There’s no doubt DeSousa and Jackson’s culinary additions are helping put Calgary on the map, but the duo explains it’s not just about one restaurant or a set of owners — Calgary is a thriving hub of brilliant chefs who work collaboratively. It’s part of why they love Calgary as much as they do, and why they have many more plans for what they’ll do here next.

To learn more, visit charcut.com.

BROCK GEIGER

PROFESSIONAL MUSICIAN; OWNER, STUDIO B

WHY HE ’ S A TOP 40

For more than 15 years, award-winning artist Brock Geiger has put Calgary’s music scene on the map in TV and film while mentoring and working with local artists.

Brock Geiger started playing in Pink Floyd cover bands when he was 13. Today, he is credited on more than 50 commercially released records. By his 20s, he had worked with acclaimed local acts like Raleigh, Michael Bernard Fitzgerald, The Dudes and Reuben and the Dark. And, with Reuben and the Dark, he co-wrote songs featured on hit shows like Grey’s Anatomy and Game of Thrones

In 2023, he was the sound designer for the award-winning short film, Cut Knife Creek, produced by Making Treaty 7 Cultural Society and Tsúut’inà Gunáhà Násʔághà, a languagepreservation society. The film, an educational tool furthering the language society’s work, has screened and won awards at more than 25 film festivals across six countries.

After 15 years as a professional musician, Geiger released his debut solo full-length album, Some Nights, this year. One of its songs, “After Later,” was featured in a Rolling Stone “Songs You Need to Know” article. The music video for the pre-album-release single, “Steps Taken,” won the Alberta Media Production Industries Association 2024 award for Best Music Video.

“Sonically, [Some Nights] is a real expression of the diversity I’m interested in as a producer,” says Geiger.

Ultimately, Geiger is embedded in Calgary’s music scene because of his passion for musicrelated community engagement and exploring sound in many roles: musician, songwriter, sound designer and producer.

In 2019, he founded Studio B. He works with QuickDraw Animation Society, mentor-

“A NEW IDEA OR A NEW PERSPECTIVE CAN REALLY PUT THINGS ON ITS HEAD, OFTENTIMES FOR THE BETTER.”

ing emerging filmmakers and providing them access to space at Studio B. He is the manager of The Boutique event space at NVRLND., a non-profit collaborative art space, and serves as a guest faculty member at the Yukon Summer Music Camp and the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.

“It’s a break from needing to achieve a product or a result and more just spending time with people who are truly curious about engaging with music,” says Geiger. —Riley Fonger

JACK GOODWIN

CO-FOUNDER, VACANT LOTS FARM CLUB

WHY HE ’ S A TOP 40

For more than a decade, Jack Goodwin has been a driving force in the fight against food insecurity through urban farming.

Jack Goodwin remembers planting hundreds of trees with his classmates in Bowmont Park (part of which is now Dale Hodges Park) during an elementary school project. A year later, all of those trees were dead.

“I remember thinking, ‘I really thought that we would understand how to plant trees by now,’” says Goodwin.

That moment sent Goodwin on a journey. After completing a degree in chemistry at the University of Calgary in 2009, he discovered the worlds of urban agriculture and permaculture, which is the development of self-sustaining agricultural ecosystems.

“Growing up in Calgary, [I understood] how much space we have. There were a lot of people doing backyard urban farming at the time, but I looked around and I didn’t see anything bigger,” says Goodwin.

In 2013, Goodwin met the founder of Grow Calgary, and they collaborated on developing a nine-acre plot of land into an urban farm for the Calgary Food Bank.

Since then, Goodwin has helped found Land of Dreams, a farm focused on providing services for refugees and newcomers, and worked on the City of Calgary’s first outdoor urban agriculture pilot, Highfield Regenerative Farm, to create and refine bylaws surrounding urban agriculture.

To date, he has helped create more than 50 acres of farmable land within city limits.

His latest venture, Vacant Lots Farm Club, is a non-profit turning underutilized land into community farms. Members grow and harvest fruits, vegetables and flowers. Everything pro-

“WOULDN’T

duced is shared among the members, as well as with local food charities.

The club was recently awarded a vacant fiveacre piece of land (a future school site in Country Hills Village), marking the first time that a Calgary school board opened one of these sites for community activation. Goodwin plans to

use this farm for therapeutic horticulture — healing the body, either physically or mentally, through working with the land and soil.

“There's no better feeling than making people feel comfortable through food and through growing that community,” says Goodwin. —Chris Landry

PHOTO BY STEVE COLLINS

APRIL HICKE

FOUNDER AND CEO, TOAST

WHY SHE ’ S A TOP 40

Less than five years after co-launching her tech recruitment firm, Toast, April Hicke is helping women secure careers in tech and millions in salary increases.

In 2021, April Hicke was hiring for tech roles for her employer when she noticed that women weren’t applying. So, one year later, she co-founded Toast, a company dedicated to helping women secure tech jobs such as software developer or product manager.

“We need people with different perspectives,” Hicke says. “We can’t put people in a box or write them off before fully understanding what they bring to the table.”

Since its founding in 2022, Toast has amassed a candidate pool of more than 20,000 members (women who are seeking jobs in tech or upskilling) and a 34 per cent hire rate. Toast now works with more than 130 companies across North America.

Although women made up nearly half of Canada’s workforce in 2023, they accounted for only 24 per cent of the country’s tech industry.

Toast has helped women secure more than $10 million in cumulative salary increases through job placements and raise negotiations. The company is projected to surpass $2.5 million in revenue in 2025.

Toast also runs programs like Champions, a nine-month mentorship pairing women with male tech leaders to foster guidance and growth, and Toast Dash, a biannual hackathon event where women launch a climate-focused business idea in one week. The annual Toast Summit at Platform Calgary is a day dedicated to networking, learning and celebrating women in the tech industry.

Hicke’s journey reaching this milestone is nothing short of extraordinary.

Dropping out of high school, experiencing

“THE BEST ADVICE I CAN GIVE WOMEN IS TO TRUST YOUR GUT.”

teenage homelessness at 15 and growing up in a family affected by alcohol (she is now 10 years sober) is what drives Hicke’s commitment to supporting others. Outside of Toast, she sponsors more than 20 women in alcohol addiction recovery, and frequently shares her

story at treatment centres and shelters across Alberta and B.C. to break stigmas around addiction and recovery.

“Your beginnings do not need to define your ends, period,” Hicke says. —Riley Fonger

JASMINE ING

FOUNDER, CALGARY RAINBOW FAMILIES

WHY SHE ’ S A TOP 40

For more than 20 years, Jasmine Ing has ardently supported Calgary’s queer community by creating safe spaces, promoting 2SLGBTQIA+ visibility and fostering connection in the community.

Sparking change often starts with one person who is willing to take initiative — like Jasmine Ing, who has been a passionate 2SLGBTQIA+ community organizer for more than 20 years.

In 2004, a time when high school gaystraight alliances met surreptitiously to protect young people from what was often a hostile social environment, Ing planned a cross-Calgary high school “Prance” (a portmanteau of “Pride dance”) to celebrate her and her peers’ graduation year.

“It felt like we didn’t have a lot of choices,” says Ing, who at the time volunteered for the Gay and Lesbian Community Services Association (now Calgary Outlink). She adds that the choice was either to be invisible and erased or to advocate for visibility.

In addition to her extensive volunteer work (including co-chairing Queers on Campus at UCalgary and time spent as a board member for Calgary Outlink), Ing performed with One Voice Chorus — Calgary’s mixed-voice 2SLGBTQIA+ choir — for more than 10 years, and was one third of the queer feminist ukulele comedy trio, The Wrong Kind of Girls. Ing was also one of the driving forces behind the renaming of the Lois Szabo Commons, a Beltline park named to commemorate the founder of Calgary’s first gay club, Club Carousel.

After Ing and her wife had their first child in 2022, it quickly became clear to them that there was a gap to be filled in the 2SLGBTQIA+ community: a safe space where queer families could connect, feel seen and be around family

“I REALLY LOVE IT HERE, AND I WANT THIS PLACE TO BE GOOD FOR ME, GOOD FOR MY FRIENDS AND GOOD FOR THE PEOPLE I DON'T KNOW.”

structures similar to their own. In 2023, Ing founded Calgary Rainbow Families, a social group for 2SLGBTQIA+ parents and their children. The group hosts social activities with about 10 families each month.

“Right now, [Rainbow Families] is really important for us as adults, and it will be important for our kids,” says Ing, who recently had her second child. “Every family is different, and it’s important to have space for all families.” —Sarah Comber

SAFIQA KARA

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, GENERATIONS CALGARY

WHY SHE ’ S A TOP 40

Safiqa Kara is redefining aging in Calgary with engaging, active and communityoriented multi-generational care.

Although Safiqa Kara is relatively young, she spends a lot of time thinking about aging. A nurse by training, Kara unintentionally started her career in long-term care more than 15 years ago. An infectiously friendly people person, she was surprised by how much she enjoyed connecting with elderly residents.

“I was 23 working with 90-year-olds,” Kara says. “I fell in love with the fact they had lived these incredible lives and I got to be part of that at the end.”

Around that same time, the Aga Khan started an initiative among Ismaili Muslims to develop multi-generational community and housing developments, dubbed Generations. Kara joined Generations Calgary in 2019 as director of care (and its first employee) and ran with that vision. She developed a hybrid facility integrating senior care with a community centre filled with culturally responsive programming. Today, Generations Calgary is the first fully integrated seniors’ housing and community centre in Canada, and Kara has the role of executive director.

Kara oversees the facility’s 120 care beds and 40 independent-living apartments that mostly, but not exclusively, house South Asian residents, as well as accommodate 250 staff members and more than 1,200 weekly visitors to the community hub. Under Kara’s leadership, Generations has established partnerships with three AI startups to improve documentation and fall prevention. Kara also completed an MBA in global health in 2023.

As big as Kara’s vision is, she hasn’t stopped thinking about her residents on a micro level.

“I TRULY BELIEVE WE ARE BROUGHT INTO THIS WORLD TO LEAVE IT IN A BETTER PLACE, AND, WHATEVER PATH YOU CHOOSE, THERE'S REALLY AN OPPORTUNITY TO SERVE AND GIVE BACK TO THE COMMUNITY.”

Her primary goal is ensuring each resident’s right to age with dignity and sense of purpose as they enter the final years of their lives.

“We have an average 500 days to make an impact on these people’s lives from the time they move in here,” Kara says. “We have a small window of opportunity to make their last 500 days the best possible.” —Elizabeth ChorneyBooth

JOE KENDAL 34 AGE

ORTHOPEDIC ONCOLOGY SURGEON; CLINICAL ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY

WHY HE ’ S A TOP 40

Joe Kendal launched the SMarT Bone Program, making Calgary a globally recognized hub for cancer treatment, innovation and research.

Every advanced bone cancer patient that Joe Kendal helps is a unique medical puzzle. Yet, nearly all of them face the same challenges navigating the health-care system.

“These patients are relatively orphaned within our care pathways in the sense that there's no real quarterback to manage their care,” Kendal says.

Kendal, an orthopedic oncology surgeon at Foothills Medical Centre and Alberta Children’s Hospital, specializes in metastatic bone disease (MBD) — cancer that has spread to the skeleton — and sarcoma, the rare cancer Terry Fox had. He has pioneered minimally invasive surgical techniques and introduced to Calgary 3D-printed implants and surgical guides that reduce cost and improve precision.

His MBD patients often fall between cancer specialties, leaving them without co-ordinated support or timely treatment.

“There's a lot of silent struggles for cancer patients,” Kendal says. “Waiting for test results and a definitive plan can be agonizing for people.”

To change that, in 2023, Kendal co-founded the SMarT Bone Program, Southern Alberta’s first MBD clinic-and-research hub to bring together surgeons, cancer specialists, engineers and kinesiologists. The program aims to help identify patients earlier, improve their surgical outcomes and support their recovery.

Kendal’s team has built a real-time database of more than 590 patients and survivors and is testing smartphone and wearable tools that track mobility and pain between visits, yielding insights that could potentially guide new treat-

ments for MBD.

“I WANT TO TRY TO MAKE CALGARY A CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE FOR MANAGING METASTATIC BONE DISEASE. I THINK WE'RE ON OUR WAY.”

The streamlined approach to care the initiative has created will be under one roof soon. Kendal and his team are currently launching Alberta’s first dedicated MBD clinic at the Arthur J.E. Child Comprehensive Cancer Centre.

As a clinical assistant professor at UCalgary

(his alma mater), Kendal also mentors the next generation of doctors and researchers. The lab program he leads studies innovations that can quickly be applied in the field, including collaborating with AI experts to educate patients and using immunotherapy to treat bone lesions. —Sean P. Young

ASHLEY KING

ARTISTIC ASSOCIATE, INSIDE OUT THEATRE

WHY SHE ’ S A TOP 40

Ashley King is a blind actor and playwright advocating for accessibility in theatre.

After a night out in Bali in 2011, then 19-year-old Ashley King awoke in darkness, struggling to breathe. She had methanol poisoning, likely from a laced drink.

Doctors saved her life, but she was left with just two per cent of her vision. King, who had always imagined a career as an actor, realized she needed to reimagine what life would — literally — look like.

“I grew up acting, and I thought I would be an actor,” says King. “But I couldn’t even cross the street on my own.”

As King came to terms with losing her vision, she found purpose in her passion for storytelling and decided to pursue journalism at Mount Royal University. In 2017, King found her way back into the acting world. That year, she wrote a story about Inside Out Theatre, a deaf, disability and mad theatre company, and its then-grassroots Good Host program. King felt an immediate connection. She began working with Inside Out, and, in 2018, was hired as the company’s artistic associate. In her role, King oversees the Good Host program, making theatre accessible to all through audiodescribed and relaxed performances and ASL interpretation. Through King’s efforts, the program is now nationally recognized, hosting over 50 accessible events each year.

King also expanded Good Host’s audio description program, training and mentoring 22 audio describers across Alberta, ensuring consistent audio description at arts events.

In September 2024, King debuted her first play, Static: A Party Girl’s Memoir. Written and performed by King, and co-produced with Inside Out Theatre and Chromatic Theatre, it tells the story of King losing her vision. Along with Good Host accessibility mea-

“I LOVE BEING ABLE TO SHARE THEATRE WITH PEOPLE WHO NEVER THOUGHT THEATRE WAS FOR THEM.”

sures, Static held bilingual performances and a “Brown Out” night for Latinx audiences, embracing King's Mexican heritage. After Static’s nearly sold-out run, King turned it into a podcast, which topped Apple Podcast charts in Canada and reached over 24,000 downloads.

“I’m doing exactly what I want to be doing, and, even more so, I’m helping people,” she says. —Catrina Bowles

DAVID LANGELIER 37 AGE

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY; MEDICAL LEAD, ALBERTA CANCER PHYSIATRY PROGRAM

WHY HE ’ S A TOP 40

David Langelier co-founded a first-of-its-kind cancer physiatry program that has become a national model for cancer-rehabilitation care.

Albertans who are dealing with side effects from cancer treatment are finding help through an innovative program, thanks to David Langelier.

Langelier specializes in cancer physiatry, an emerging medical specialty focused on managing the physical, mental and functional consequences of cancer treatment.

“We typically help people become more independent, and that’s pretty profound,” says Langelier. When he was in medical school in Calgary, a few mentors suggested he look into physiatry. He instantly loved it.

After his residency in Calgary, Langelier moved to Toronto for specialized training with cancer patients, becoming only the third cancer physiatrist in Canada. In 2023, after returning to his hometown, he co-founded the Alberta Cancer Physiatry Program.

Langelier helps patients manage problems like pain, fatigue and nerve damage caused by cancer-treatment side-effects. He diagnoses, prescribes treatments (like injections for pain and topical treatments) and works with physiotherapists to come up with a care plan.

“Some patients believe these are just expected consequences of treatment and they should just be thankful to be alive,” says Langelier. “That’s not true. They should be thriving.”

The Alberta Cancer Physiatry Program has grown from one to three physicians, operates across all Calgary hospitals, and offers virtual care services throughout Alberta. It is Western Canada’s largest inpatient cancer-rehabilitation program, and also trains specialists in cancer physiatry.

“WHAT WE'VE CREATED HERE IS REALLY SPECIAL.”

Langelier says he is often deeply affected by his patients, many of whom are young adults with metastatic cancer.

Cancer physiatry is in its early days. So, Langelier is working to build the evidence base for this specialty through research and

enrolling patients across the country in one of the world’s first trials of exercise and rehabilitation in patients with metastatic breast and colorectal cancer. “It sounds corny, but I just want to leave the world a better place,” he says.

—Christina Frangou

JASE LEE

FOUNDER AND CEO, RYUKO AND VISIONARY CATERING

WHY HE ’ S A TOP 40

By recognizing the potential in others, Jase Lee has grown his family’s small café into a multi-million-dollar group of businesses.

Jase Lee likes to compare himself to Professor X from X-Men — he has the keen ability to recognize and encourage the skills of others. Through this knack for bringing talented people together, Lee has built a small empire of businesses, including the Ryuko Japanese restaurants and Visionary Catering. He is also working to develop Chequemate (an AI-powered restaurant industry efficiency platform) and Merakids Child-care Centre, a nutritionfocused child care service.

“I have a skill to reach people’s talents,” he says. “I can see people and put them together like a puzzle."

Lee’s family ran a small café, but, when he saw his mother struggling to keep it afloat after two decades of work, he left his actuary career and stepped in. He saw that larger-scale orders could be the business’s saving grace. In 2014, he morphed the small shop into the full-service Visionary Catering.

Lee focused on high-quality food, responsiveness and flexibility, and today Visionary Catering serves more than 800 corporate and government clients. Despite its current success, there were challenges along the way. During the pandemic, catering gigs screeched to a halt, but Lee saw an opportunity to expand his business ventures and opened Ryuko in 2020, an award-winning Japanese restaurant with a modern twist.

Since then, Lee has grown Ryuko from one to three Calgary locations. His experience in the restaurant industry also inspired him to create Chequemate, a hospitality-focused platform that's currently in development.

“PEOPLE MIGHT THINK WE'RE GROWING AGGRESSIVELY, BUT I’M SURROUNDED BY GREAT TALENT.”

Chequemate’s goal is to use AI to simplify mobile ordering, payments and restaurant marketing. Beyond hospitality, Lee also plans to launch Merakids, a non-profit child-care service focusing on high-quality nutrition, inclusivity and creativity.

These ventures all stem from Lee seeing opportunities to create roles for his staff, and taking them.

“When I see talented people, I want to put them in the right position and give them the right support,” Lee says. “The reason I want to grow so quickly is for the team.”—Elizabeth Chorney-Booth

NOTE: This story in print incorrectly stated Lee is 35. It has been updated to his correct age of 39.

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DALMY MANAN AND RAJ MANAN

VICE-PRESIDENT, CLIENT RELATIONS (DALMY); PRESIDENT AND CO-CEO (RAJ), ACCOMSURE

WHY THEY ’ RE TOP 40S

In just seven years, Dalmy and Raj Manan have helped thousands of Canadian families who’ve filed an insurance claim because of incidents like natural disasters find temporary housing.

Like death and taxes, insurance is inevitable. For Raj and Dalmy Manan, so is their deep care for people. At the time of the Fort McMurray fire in 2016, the Calgary couple both worked in the insurance sector and saw the added stress people experienced from suddenly being displaced and scrambling for temporary accommodation. They realized that the damages caused by a disaster included the incredible worry of not having a place to stay, and embarked on a journey to fulfil the underserved, but critical niche of temporary accommodation.

In 2018, the Manans co-founded Accomsure, Canada’s first full-service additional living expense-management company. After an insurance claim is made, Accomsure does the work of sourcing temporary accommodations for clients and covers the cost so they don’t have to wait to be reimbursed two things that cause added stress when your home is already damaged. The organization offers tailored solutions to meet clients’ needs, whether it’s a pet-friendly hotel room after a water pipe bursts in the middle of winter, or a long-term rental for a family after losing their home to a fire.

“We’re like the translators between insureds [the individuals covered by an insurance policy] that are displaced and really stressed out, and overworked adjusters,” says Dalmy. “It’s a unique solution that’s the first of its kind in Canada.”

To help so many people so quickly, the company has developed a network of landlords,

“I ALWAYS WANTED TO BUILD A BUSINESS, BUT PEOPLE AROUND ME SAID IT WAS TOO RISKY. I STILL MANAGED TO BREAK OUT AND DO IT — AND IT’S WORKING.” RAJ MANAN

property managers, hotels and other suppliers across the country.

The couple’s entrepreneurial vision is evident in their company’s successes. Since Accomsure launched, it has become one of the fastest-growing service providers in Canada’s insurance industry, growing from two to 41

employees and helping thousands of Canadian families in the process. Next up, the Manans are planning to expand Accomsure into the United States.

“It’s nice to have an opportunity to help more people,” Raj says. “And to make a living and a business out of it.” —Ximena González

ALEX HAWKE MANITOPYES

INDIGENOUS FASHION DESIGNER

WHY THEY ’ RE A TOP 40

Alex Hawke Manitopyes’s luxury fashion brand, Sacrd Thndr, fuses traditional Indigenous artistry with modern design.

Alex Hawke Manitopyes is creating a lot of buzz on the international fashion scene with their label, Sacrd Thndr. As a non-binary and transmasc Indigenous fashion designer, Manitopyes’s identity greatly informs their work.

Manitopyes, a Plains Cree Anishinaabe from Muskowekwan First Nation in Saskatchewan, who was born and raised in Calgary, brings Indigenous and Two-Spirit representation to spaces where these identities are often overlooked.

Their designs have featured at New York, Milan, Paris and Los Angeles fashion weeks and at Native Fashion Week Santa Fe. In 2024, Vogue showcased their graphic bolo tie that references the motifs found in a traditional Cree star-quilt blanket.

Manitopyes excels at manifesting, creating a recognized high-fashion brand in two years. Since founding Sacrd Thndr in 2023, they have designed and sold more than 1,500 handcrafted earrings and accessories, each blending cultural symbolism with modern aesthetics.

Manitopyes oversees everything from concept to production to ensure each bold, intricate design reflects both artistry and meaning. More than a fashion label, Sacrd Thndr transcends adornment — it celebrates storytelling and speaks of resilience, identity and innovation.

“I am reshaping Calgary’s fashion industry and positioning the city as a place where cultural heritage and innovation intersect,” says Manitopyes.

Manitopyes also speaks about Indigenous identity in fashion and the importance of Two-

“I ADVOCATE FOR INDIGENOUS AND TWO-SPIRIT REPRESENTATION IN FASHION, CHALLENGING INDUSTRY NORMS AND CREATING SPACE FOR MORE DIVERSE VOICES.”

Spirit representation in creative industries. On National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in 2023, they spoke on an Aritzia panel to discuss Indigenous entrepreneurship, creativity and the future of Indigenous fashion. They also regularly collaborate with Indigenous entrepreneurs and creatives, ensuring that traditional knowledge and craftsmanship are honoured and respected.

“Sacrd Thndr’s impact extends beyond fashion,” says Manitopyes. “I use my platform to uplift Indigenous artists, advocate for gender inclusivity and educate others on the importance of cultural representation in luxury fashion.” —Danyael Halprin

NOTE: This story incorrectly stated Manitopyes is 35 in the print issue. It has been updated to their correct age of 39

MARIA MARIANAYAGAM

CHILDREN’S BOOK AUTHOR

WHY SHE ’ S A TOP 40

As the author of eight published children’s books featuring diverse voices, Maria Marianayagam entertains, educates and empowers, while making STEM accessible to young readers.

Maria Marianayagam is rewriting the storyscape of children’s literature one book at a time by giving main-character energy to underrepresented voices, specifically girls in science, technology, enegineering and math (STEM).

After graduating from the University of Calgary’s Schulich School of Engineering in 2009, Marianayagam, a Tamil Sri Lankan-Canadian, joined the oil and gas industry as an engineer in training. What she noticed in both spaces was an under-representation of women and people of colour. This glaring absence ignited her storytelling impulse. In 2019, after 10 years working as an engineer in the energy industry, she left to become a full-time author.

As a mother of three girls, Marianayagam felt it was a calling rooted in passion and purpose.

“Writing for children is both a creative pursuit and a profound responsibility, as these books help shape the values, confidence and world view of future leaders,” she says.

Today, Marianayagam is a nationally recognized voice in children’s literature. By the end of 2025, she will have published eight titles in two years, with three additional contracted titles to follow in 2026 and 2027, all by major publishing houses. Many of her books are also published in the U.S. and the U.K., with global distribution.

She still finds time to volunteer as the communications officer of the Alberta Women’s Science Network, where she helps raise the profile of STEM organizations across the

province.

“I WRITE THE BOOKS THAT I WISH I HAD GROWING UP, AND I WRITE THE BOOKS THAT I WISH MY KIDS HAD RIGHT NOW.”

Her debut picture book, The Amazing Power Of Girls, has been endorsed by leading STEM organizations and was named a Canadian Children’s Book Centre Best Book for Kids, and her middle-grade book, No Purchase Necessary, received star reviews from Kirkus, School

Library Journal, Booklist and BookPage.

But, for Marianayagam, the impact of her books is the reward: “I measure success by the children who see themselves for the first time in my books or by young girls who now believe they can be scientists or engineers.”

—Danyael Halprin

LEAH MAYO

PARKER RESEARCH CHAIR IN PSYCHEDELICS AND ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY

WHY SHE ’ S A TOP 40

Leah Mayo’s groundbreaking work developing therapeutic applications of psychedelics and cannabis-related drugs as the first research chair in psychedelics in Canada is advancing mental health care.

Born and raised on the L’Anse Reservation of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community in rural Michigan, Leah Mayo was the first of her extended family to attend university.

“Our community has a long history of trauma, both systemic and interpersonal, because of where we're located,” says Mayo, adding that there are many communities like hers that are either remote or disproportionately affected by trauma and substance use disorders.

Fascinated by how drugs impact human behaviour, Mayo studied neuroscience. She moved to Calgary in 2022 from Sweden, after holding a post-doctoral position at the Center for Social and Affective Neuroscience at Linköping University.

At UCalgary, Mayo is the inaugural Parker Research Chair in Psychedelics. She directs the Psychedelic and Cannabinoid Therapeutics (PaCT) lab, which seeks to improve the treatment of addictions and mental health disorders. In 2023, Mayo received a $1 million grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) to fund a large clinical trial exploring the efficacy of psilocybin in helping reduce alcohol consumption in individuals with alcohol-use disorders.

Her lab was also awarded a CIHR grant to examine use of psilocybin for post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from intimate-partner violence. The treatments combine with psychological therapy, and the research explores whether psilocybin enhances potential neuroplasticity to amplify the effects of the therapy.

“PSYCHEDELIC USE IN SOME INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES HAS BEEN IMPACTED BY COLONIZATION AND A SPECTRUM OF CULTURAL MISGIVINGS THAT RANGE FROM SIMPLE MISUNDERSTANDINGS TO SYSTEMIC EXPLOITATION.”

Mayo also leads the development of a national, Indigenous-led network for exploring and advancing psychedelic-based therapies in Indigenous contexts. She notes that key concerns for communities involved in the project include accessibility to holistic health care with a focus on trauma and addiction recovery.

“We have this [mentality] that this is a good drug and this is a bad drug, because this one we prescribe as a medication, but this one people take for fun and they shouldn’t. I was always interested in that duality, because they’re just things that act on receptors in our body,” says Mayo. —Sarah Comber

FOUNDER AND CEO, DEVON + LANG

TYLER MCCOMBS 36 AGE

WHY HE ’ S A TOP 40

Tyler McCombs turned a wardrobe malfunction into a successful underwear business that gives back to local charities.

Tyler McCombs had the most unlikely inspiration for his future business. It happened when he was on a romantic Hawaii getaway with his wife and they were on a sunset stroll on the beach. Suddenly, his boxers started ripping and chafing.

Instead of panicking, McCombs used that wardrobe malfunction as inspiration to launch Devon + Lang, a company that makes “lifechanging underwear.”

“We say ‘life-changing’ in a few different ways,” explains McCombs. “We want to not just change the lives of people wearing our underwear, but change the lives of people in our community, as well.”

Since launching in 2019, the company has grown from one employee to 10, and is projected to earn $3 million in revenue this year.

Devon + Lang’s men’s and women’s modal underwear fits a wide range of body types and comes in fun, colourful prints (including some designed by Canadian artists) ranging from bacon and eggs to dinosaurs. McCombs’s patented men’s design emphasizes comfort and is anti-chafing, of course.

But, creating supportive underwear isn’t the only way Devon + Lang is leaving its mark on the world. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the company made cloth face masks and donated more than $30,000 from the profits to local charities.

McCombs also donates new underwear to those in need. To date, Devon + Lang has donated 63,000 pairs of underwear to organizations like The Alex, The Mustard Seed and the Calgary Drop-In Centre. The company aims to donate 500,000 pairs to those in need by 2032.

“I LOVE BEING ABLE TO TAKE AN IDEA AND MAKE IT REAL.”

“The more we can grow, the bigger impact we can have, the more we can give back,” McCombs says. “I want to be a brand that people look at and go, ‘Look what this company is and look at where it started: right here in Calgary.’”

—Alana Willerton

ADAM MUZYCHUK

OPHTHALMOLOGIST, GIMBEL EYE CENTRE; ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY

WHY HE ’ S A TOP 40

Adam Muzychuk is a trailblazing eye surgeon positioning Calgary as a global leader in ophthalmology.

In 2024, Adam Muzychuk implanted a lens that had never been used commercially anywhere in the world into the eye of a Calgary patient.

Since then, this lens — the enVista Envy intraocular lens made by Bausch + Lomb — has been used in more than 10,000 surgeries worldwide. “It's a tremendously exciting time. It's also a challenging time to be a surgeon in that technologies are coming out so fast,” Muzychuk says.

That’s just one of the ways that Muzychuk, an ophthalmologic surgeon at the Gimbel Eye Centre, is driving innovation in ophthalmology and making sure Calgarians have access to the latest technology.

Muzychuk was born and raised in Winnipeg. Just two weeks into medical school, he decided to make Calgary his home.

“It’s a very welcoming city,” he says. “That allows people to lay down roots and become part of the community very quickly.”

He was drawn to eye surgery because of the dramatic change it makes in patients’ lives. After opening his practice, he became interested in new technologies and machine learning — things that were beginning to transform the field — and started to participate in research.

In 2021, he led the key clinical trial of the then-unnamed enVista Envy lens, part of a new generation of lenses that correct vision at near, medium and far distances with reduced side-effects compared to previous lenses that did the same thing. This led to Health Canada’s 2024 approval of the lens.

This spring, he implanted Canada’s first TECNIS Odyssey lens, another new intraocular lens, into a Calgary patient.

“I'M SOMEONE WHO THINKS ABOUT THE DETAILS AND WORKS REALLY HARD AT GETTING LITTLE THINGS RIGHT.”

Muzychuk performs more than 1,000 procedures a year, teaches in UCalgary’s ophthalmology program, and works with industry partners to launch new technologies.

He does all this while being strict about his work hours.

“I built my schedule into something that was sustainable, because it would be really hard if I was away all the time,” he says. —Christina Frangou

ANA NIKOLIC

NEUROPATHOLOGIST, ALBERTA PRECISION LABORATORIES; ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY

WHY SHE ’ S A TOP 40

Ana Nikolic is advancing the understanding of glioblastoma, a common form of brain cancer in desperate need of new treatments.

As a kid, Ana Nikolic asked her father to buy her video games. Instead, he gave her a book on coding and told her to build her own.

That advice set her on the path to where she is now — a researcher and physician who uses computational techniques to find clues about glioblastoma, the most common form of brain cancer in adults.

“I like solving puzzles,” Nikolic says.

Nikolic moved to Canada from Serbia in the 1990s with her family and won major awards for her coding skills while still in high school.

She went on to medical school and became a neuropathologist.

Today, she analyzes brain tissue samples from patients to diagnose neurological conditions and help guide treatment.

She runs a research lab at UCalgary’s Arnie Charbonneau Cancer Institute, where she focuses on glioblastoma. Over the last decade, treatments and outcomes for glioblastoma patients haven’t improved. Most patients still die within a year of diagnosis. Nikolic and her team look at how glioblastoma cells change, evade treatment and lead to recurrence.

She has amassed a remarkable publication record: 21 peer-reviewed publications, including three in high-impact journals where she was the lead author. She is one of the first people worldwide to use a method called single-cell ATAC-seq to study glioblastoma cells, and she co-discovered a unique structure called TULIP in a rare pediatric brain tumour.

For these efforts, she received a prestigious early career award from The Marathon of Hope Cancer Centres Network in 2022.

Her work adds to the understanding of how

“THIS FIELD IS A COOL PLACE TO BE, BUT ALSO HARD TO KEEP UP WITH. IT'S EXPANDING BY THE MINUTE.”

glioblastoma cells change in time and space — findings that may help develop new therapies for this brutal disease.

These cells are so sneaky, she says. “It makes me more motivated.” —Christina Frangou

MEAGHAN NOLAN

CO-FOUNDER AND COO, MIKATA HEALTH

WHY SHE ’ S A TOP 40

Since 2018, Meaghan Nolan’s automated, AI-powered health-tech company has helped health-care professionals provide better, faster care to more than five million Canadians.

Meaghan Nolan thought she was on the path to becoming a doctor. The born-and-raised Calgarian completed a bachelor’s degree in health sciences and a master’s in health and exercise physiology at UCalgary before realizing she was much too squeamish for the role. This led her to discover her true passion: health technology.

In 2018, her passion for medicine and health tech came to fruition when she launched Mikata Health, a health-care technology company, with her partner in life and work, Kyle Nishiyama.

“We’re partners and partners, as I like to say,” says Nolan.

Mikata Health tackles a pressing problem in health care: doctors and clinic staff spend an overwhelming amount of their day on administrative tasks like paperwork, scheduling and patient documentation, limiting the time they have to provide fully attentive care to patients.

Designed with first-hand insight from health-care professionals, Mikata Health automates and streamlines tedious administrative processes, giving health-care teams more time for what truly matters: patient care.

Nolan oversees Mikata’s operations and product development. Its offerings are robust. The comprehensive digital platform includes patient messaging, digital forms and a flagship AI tool, Mika AI Scribe, which integrates with the software and systems that health-care professionals already use.

Mika AI Scribe uses AI to transcribe doctorpatient conversations and automatically draft clinical notes, significantly cutting paperwork

“MIKATA HAS BECOME ALL ABOUT HOW WE CAN CREATE TRULY INTUITIVE TECHNOLOGY THAT GIVES TIME BACK TO DOCTORS AND THEIR TEAMS SO THAT THEY CAN FOCUS ON THEIR PATIENTS.”

time. Early data shows it can decrease the time spent on medical charting after appointments by up to 69 per cent, reducing physician burnout, increasing capacity and enhancing patient care.

Since 2018, Mikata Health has served more than five million Canadian patients. This

year, it was one of only nine companies in the country selected for Canada Health Infoway’s inaugural national AI Scribe program to equip thousands of doctors with AI tools.

“We want to help clinics operate differently so they can focus more on taking care of their patients,” says Nolan. —Viancy Salubre

FOR FOUNDERS WHO HAVE OUTGROWN GOING IT ALONE

Entrepreneurs’ Organization helps business owners find a community to propel their personal and professional growth.

It can be lonely at the top, just ask Shawn Freeman. In 2014, Freeman had scaled his then-company, TWT Group Inc. (a Calgarybased IT service provider), to beyond $1 million annual revenue after only three years of growth. But what came next is seldom talked about loudly and proudly by business owners.

It’s no secret that entrepreneurship can be hard. Behind the hustle lies internal struggles, isolation and challenges many face alone, but Freeman didn’t want to go at it alone; in fact, he didn’t know how to. During the 2014 height of TWT, he hit a plateau, unsure of what next steps to take.

“I ran into the problem of what to do next. Things like, how do I hire at this stage? How do I get more clients?” says Freeman. “I didn't think anybody would have a solution. I was stuck, I didn’t know what to do.”

Then, Freeman joined Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) Calgary, and he quickly learned that he’s never really alone in the struggles he faces as an entrepreneur. “I put my uncertainty out to the organization for feedback, and when I did, I gained some really interesting perspectives,” he says. “Members didn’t have the exact same situation, but they had similar experiences. With those perspectives, and their guidance, I was able to shift my approach to solving the problem. It was really helpful.”

Freeman scaled his company to nearly $4 million USD annual revenue and expanded his team to 23 employees by 2020, at which time he decided to sell TWT with the advice and support of fellow EO member David Tadman and his company Stawowski McGill. Freeman has since become the volunteer president of EO’s Calgary chapter.

THE NEXT LEVEL WITH EO

With a global network spanning more than 80 countries and over 220 chapters, EO is a meeting of the minds of 18,800-plus ambitious entrepreneurs looking to take their business to the next level. It’s where entrepreneurs come to connect, learn and grow

together. It’s where founders get to bounce ideas off one another, ask for advice, drop the mask and talk about real challenges.

The Calgary chapter is divided into various forums, comprising eight entrepreneurs from non-competitive companies who get together monthly. With forum-exclusive meet-ups, retreats and experiences, Freeman says members get really close to one another — they help each other find the answers to questions like, ‘What is your main focus for the end of the year? How is your business going to get better? How can you become a better leader?’

“When you become a better leader, your business will be better, and I think that’s really the goal. When leaders thrive so does their business as a side effect,” affirms Freeman.

Freeman himself has experienced personal growth through EO. It’s his decade of experience with other founders that has helped make him a better leader, a stronger family man and a business visionary by shaping his mindset for more strategic thinking.

After selling TWT in 2020, Freeman helped start a new IT company called Always Beyond in 2024, quickly scaling it to $2.5 million annually. It’s conversations with fellow IT entrepreneurs that have helped Freeman shift away from traditional IT practices and stay up to date with the changing landscape, such as helping companies strategically implement AI automations.

“The peers and the friendships that I've built through EO have been instrumental to advancing my companies. EO members offer

Shawn Freeman

“When you become a better leader, your business will be better, and I think that’s really the goal. When leaders thrive so does their business as a side effect.” —Shawn Freeman

real feedback, which provides meaningful relationships and the opportunity to have critical conversations,” says Freeman.

TOGETHER IS BETTER

Today’s entrepreneur juggles constant change, tech disruption and the intense pressure to always grow. EO isn’t just a nice-to-have — it’s a lifeline and accelerator for the modern founder. The business landscape is ever-changing, and having support to lean on is critical for success.

Take the recent U.S.-Canada tariffs announcement, for example. Freeman says EO members came to support each other through the threats of the tariffs, together. “The tariffs were a really big

issue, along with the general uncertainty of the world right now. How do we respond to that? To navigate that together is definitely easier,” he says. “We found solutions to that problem together, instead of everybody trying to solve it on their own.”

For the right founder, EO can propel both the entrepreneur and the business to new heights.

Shawn Freeman and his EO forum group on their latest retreat in Lake Louise. Left to right, Freeman, Jamie Palmer, Arif Kanji, Chris Jones and Billy Friley.

DAYO OGUNYEMI

LEGAL COUNSEL, ALBERTA ENERGY REGULATOR

WHY HE ’ S A TOP 40

Dayo Ogunyemi helps steer Alberta’s energy industry toward a greener future while fostering diversity in the legal profession across Canada.

Growing up in Nigeria, Dayo Ogunyemi saw first-hand the destruction the oil and gas industry can create. Since then, he has committed himself to ensuring responsible resource development on two continents.

More than 10 years into his career as a lawyer and working at the time with Bennett Jones in Calgary, Ogunyemi faced a seemingly difficult decision: keep going down the corporate road or forgo the substantially bigger paycheques to devote himself to public service.

“For me, it was about ensuring that I could make a more meaningful impact,” says Ogunyemi about choosing to take a job with the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) in 2024.

As legal counsel for AER, the provincial agency responsible for regulating the development of energy resources in Alberta, Ogunyemi provides legal advice on land, water and climate issues. He helps develop new policies, works with regulatory teams to ensure energy companies comply with environmental legislation and helps provide legal actions when they don’t.

“What I value so much about my role at the AER is the impact, helping shape decisions that balance responsible business development with environmental protection and community interest,” says Ogunyemi.

Beyond his day job, Ogunyemi is the president of the Alberta chapter of Global Lawyers of Canada, a national association dedicated to fostering a diverse and competitive legal market in Canada. While it is not possible to confirm, Ogunyemi says it is most likely the largest organization of internationally trained lawyers (ITLs) in Canada. He co-created the

“IT’S AMAZING TO WITNESS A MORE DIVERSE, BRILLIANT LEGAL COMMUNITY TAKE SHAPE IN CANADA. KNOWING THAT I WAS ABLE TO HELP BUILD MORE INCLUSIVE INSTITUTIONS IS EXTREMELY REWARDING.”

first-ever national ITL conference in Calgary last April. The event was Canada’s largest-ever gathering of internationally trained lawyers.

He is also co-founder and director of the African Scholars Initiative (ASI), a non-profit devoted to mentoring emerging students of African descent who want to pursue graduate studies in Canada.

Through his church, Ogunyemi offers free music lessons to youth in the community. An almost entirely self-taught musician, Ogunyemi now plays 17 instruments.

“Music is something that I’m really passionate about. It helps to bring people together, it’s a language we all can speak, that we all share.”

—Fabian Mayer

SERENA L. ORR

CLINICIAN-SCIENTIST, PEDIATRIC NEUROLOGY, ALBERTA CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL

WHY SHE ’ S A TOP 40

Serena Orr is changing the way health-care providers view and treat headache disorders.

Serena Orr has always rooted for the underdog — it’s why she specializes in headache disorders, a field often overlooked due to its stigma. Headaches and their impact on people’s lives are often dismissed, but they are among the top three most common and disabling disorders worldwide.

As a pediatric neurologist, Orr studies headache disorders in children and youth. She believes her patients' pain, fights stigma, educates providers and combines her research with her clinical work to implement change.

“When you see youth coming in and the massive impact [headaches have] on their life, it really highlights how much work we still need to do to make things better,” says Orr.

In 2019, she helped establish the world-class Pediatric Headache Program at the Alberta Children’s Hospital. The clinic has a range of health-care providers, including a direct line to psychiatry, and offers services not typically available through primary care — especially for pediatric patients — such as nerve blocks, Botox treatments and other interventional approaches. Add to that, Orr has received more than $1 million in research grants, including two highly competitive Canadian Institutes of Health Research grants.

Her work has raised awareness of the relationship between trauma and migraine in kids and the importance of trauma-informed care.

She’s published studies showing that kids with migraines have double the chance of having an anxiety or depressive disorder, and this research effectively changed clinical practice to include recommending screening every child with migraines for anxiety and depression. She’s also led multiple protocol changes on

“I'M PROUD OF MYSELF FOR PUTTING MY EFFORT AND ENERGY INTO AN AREA OF HIGH NEED.”

how to treat patients coming into the emergency department with migraines, and studies have since shown these changes have led to patients receiving fewer opioids, improving health outcomes and reducing hospital visits.

“I hope that as we do more research and learn more about this disease, it helps reduce stigma and improve access to care,” she says.

Olivia Piché

ASEEM PANDEY AND SHAHRUKH SHAMIM

CTO & CO-FOUNDER (PANDEY); CEO & CO-FOUNDER (SHAMIM),

WHY THEY ’ RE TOP 40S

Aseem Pandey and Shahrukh Shamim have created a concrete solution that lowers carbon emissions in two of Calgary’s highest-polluting industries.

Few people think about the environmental impact of cement as much as Aseem Pandey and Shahrukh Shamim do. “It’s something you use daily without realizing its carbon footprint,” says Pandey. “It doesn’t look like oil and gas — where you can see the smoke coming out when you burn it in your car — so it’s not talked about.”

But every tonne of Portland cement (the most common kind used globally) creates 0.8 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂), and cement manufacturing makes up more than seven per cent of CO₂ emissions worldwide.

If the cement industry were a country, it would be the world's third- or fourth-largest emitter of CO₂.

Back in 2019, Pandey and Shamim were at the University of Calgary working in nanotechnology: Pandey focused on energy systems and Shamim on tailings (waste byproducts from the mining industry). After graduating from the university’s GreenSTEM fellowship program, they launched Envicore Inc., a cleantech company that reduces emissions in both the mining and construction industries — killing two birds with one low-carbon stone.

Envicore transforms landfill-destined materials like mine tailings and demolition waste ashes into a viable cement material that produces only 0.08 to 0.09 tonnes of CO₂ for every Envicore tonne. Called a “supplementary cementitious material,” it can replace up to 35 per cent of traditional Portland cement.

“We’re bringing down the emission footprint considerably,” Shamim explains. International industry titans have taken notice — Envicore has completed successful pilot

“CALGARY IS BECOMING A POWERHOUSE OF INNOVATION, THERE IS NO DOUBT ABOUT IT.” SHAHRUKH SHAMIM

trials in Thailand and is currently running one with Heidelberg Materials in Belgium — but it’s focus remains close to home (including a 600-tonne-per-day Envicore demonstration plant is underway in British Columbia).

“It’s incredibly important for us to put Calgary, and Alberta in general, on the cleantech

map,” says Shamim.

The co-founders acknowledge that Calgary’s oil, gas and construction industries are known for being active polluters, and say now is the time for the province to cement itself as an active contributor to sustainable solutions, too.

—Alyssa Hirose

ENVICORE INC.

FELIPE ALBERTO PAREDES-CANEVARI

WHY HE ’ S A TOP 40

In addition to being a respected litigator, Felipe Alberto Paredes-Canevari is also a globally recognized Peruvian musician.

While Felipe Alberto ParedesCanevari doesn’t exactly live a double life, there are two distinctive sides to his career.

Most of the time, he’s a busy litigator and partner at his mid-sized, full-service law firm, Reliance Legal Group LLP.

At other times, however, he becomes Felipe Alberto, a soulful singer and guitarist specializing in Música Criolla, a traditional style of Peruvian music, and other Latin American music.

“I’m always doing both, but sometimes, depending on the seasons of my life, I’m doing more of one or more of the other,” he says.

Paredes-Canevari has always been academically inclined, and law school seemed like a natural progression for him professionally. He developed a love for Peruvian music as a child during family trips to his father’s native Peru, where he would hear his father’s friends playing traditional music.

After law school, Paredes-Canevari recorded two albums and what became a viral music video with tens of thousands of views, catching the attention of Peruvian music producer Oscar Pasache, who immediately invited him to perform in New York City. That 2015 performance led to more performance opportunities for Paredes-Canevari in the U.S., Latin America and on Peruvian television, while he continued to perform at Calgary festivals like Fiestaval Latin Music Festival.

Cultural exchange drives Paredes-Canevari, both in his artistic work and as a lawyer proudly representing newcomers to Canada from around the world. Since he joined Reli-

“A LOT OF THE STORIES I TELL A RE BASED ON CALGARIANS, AND A LOT OF THE CREW I HIRE ARE B ASED OUT OF CALGARY.”

ance, Paredes-Canevari has become the owner of his firm and has doubled the staff size while personally mentoring law students.

For Paredes-Canevari, promoting the authentic, ancestral art form of Música Criolla is just as important.

“The greatest answer to who I am is found in my own history; in my roots and in the traditions and values handed down to me from previous generations,” he says. —Elizabeth Chorney-Booth

FOUNDER AND MARKETING MANAGER, THE TISTO FACTORY

ANNA POSIKERA 36 AGE

WHY SHE ’ S A TOP 40

After arriving in Canada from war-torn Ukraine, Anna Posikera launched a gourmet perogy company, and landed its products on major grocery store shelves.

in 2022, after fleeing the war in Ukraine with her husband and two children, Anna Posikera felt like she had lost everything. She arrived in Calgary through the Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel (CUAET) program with little English knowledge and no community connections.

But Calgarians welcomed Posikera’s family right away. At a potluck one day, some guests noticed the eye-catching perogies Posikera had developed for her children’s picky palates, and encouraged her to sell them.

So, Posikera turned her pain into purpose. She and her husband sold their car and used the funds to rent commercial kitchen space.

In 2023, they launched The Tisto Factory, a brand of colourful, artisanal perogies with natural vegetable-based colouring (like carrots, beets and spinach) and gourmet fillings — no artificial dyes or flavours included.

Initially, Posikera only sold at markets and online. Today, The Tisto Factory is an awardwinning company with 12 varieties of perogies stocked on the shelves of Calgary Co-op and Sobeys.

“When you’re meeting with [customers] and telling them your stories, at that moment you realize you are not alone,” says Posikera. “A lot of people share the same story, and it gave us the power to move on.”

Tisto (which is Ukrainian for “dough”) is much more than a business for Posikera. While the company has doubled its sales revenue in the past year alone — a testament to Posikera’s marketing chops to be sure — she still attends all the local markets, meeting with customers

“DO SOMETHING GOOD WITHOUT EXPECTING ANYTHING IN RETURN — NOT EVEN GRATITUDE — AND YOU WILL SEE MIRACLES BEGIN TO UNFOLD IN YOUR OWN LIFE.”

face-to-face and sharing her journey.

Her experience as a newcomer who felt the generosity of Calgarians has led her to deeply root herself in the community. The Tisto Factory employs other Ukrainians fleeing from the war, giving them a chance to rebuild their lives in Canada.

“We want to [hire fellow Ukrainians] to help change their lives as my life was changed,” says Posikera. —Chris Landry

CHRISTOPHER LEE PRIMEAU

CEO, IMPACT SOCIETY

WHY HE ’ S A TOP 40

Christopher Lee Primeau has helped thousands of youth at risk of mental health crises, addiction and violence through programs that promote resilience and self-esteem.

In 2020, when Christopher Lee Primeau became the CEO of Impact Society, a youth-development organization founded in 1994, he led an organizational restructuring to position the local non-profit for scalable national growth. Primeau strengthened and formed new partnerships for Impact, and ultimately increased its annual reach from 1,800 youth served to more than 18,000 — including at-risk and homeless youth — through early intervention programs focused on preventing mental health crises.

Impact’s flagship initiative, Heroes, is delivered in junior high classrooms and after-school programs. The 20-hour, traumainformed program helps youth aged 11 to 16 build confidence, empathy and self-esteem. Students participate in workshops on identity, goal setting and healthy relationships and complete journaling exercises. According to Primeau, Heroes has significantly improved the lives of more than 250,000 youth in Canada and around the world.

“It’s really an identity-development journey,” says Primeau. “We’re helping them understand they’re not defined by their fears, trauma or labels, but by their strengths.”

A recent Impact Society study found that students who completed the Heroes program reported a 45 per cent increase in long-term resilience, with improvements in mental health, school engagement and social connection.

Primeau led the launch of three new program streams: Heroes @ Home (supporting families), Reconciliation Through Education (an Indigenous Studies course co-designed

“MY PURPOSE HERE ON THIS EARTH IS TO HELP YOUNG PEOPLE UNLOCK THEIR PURPOSE AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE.”

with Indigenous educators and leaders), and a youth hockey program with the Ladd Foundation for U11 athletes and their parents and coaches. He established partnerships with Queen’s University, UCalgary's Werklund School of Education, and Alberta’s Ministry of Mental Health and Addiction to ensure programs are evidence-based and culturally informed.

Last year, Impact partnered with more than

150 schools and supported more than 500 educators across Canada. It is currently expanding with mental health first-aid and formal referral networks to counselling and intervention services.

Primeau’s goal is to engage a million young people across Canada by 2030.

“What if we got there before recovery was even needed?” Primeau says. “That’s what resilience is.” —Viancy Salubre

KATIE SAMOIL

REGISTERED NURSE

WHY SHE ’ S A TOP 40

Katie Samoil uses her clinical-care experience as an emergency department nurse to take aerospace physiology and medical education to new heights.

To think of astronauts and critical patients as similar populations with comparable needs may seem a little out of this world, but Katie Samoil knows the two have a lot in common.

Samoil is a registered nurse in the emergency department at the Foothills Medical Centre. She teaches advanced critical-care nursing at Mount Royal University and facilitates masscasualty simulations across North America.

She is also an internationally recognized aerospace physiology expert, studying the impacts of space flight on the body and exploring the intersection of clinical care and astronaut physiology. Both include working in highfunctioning team environments often under intense pressure. There are also physiological similarities between patients on extensive bedrest and astronauts returning from a mission.

Samoil’s research in aerospace first took flight when she attended the International Space University in France in 2013 in the department of human performance in space. Since then, she has helped design curricula for astronaut training and become an associate fellow of the Aerospace Medical Association — one of the largest, most-representative professional organizations in aerospace medicine and human performance — and one of only two Canadians on the Aerospace Medical Association Scientific Program Committee. Samoil is also working on a PhD at Simon Fraser’s Aerospace Physiology Lab, exploring astronaut physiology. She does all of this while still continuing to practice as a registered nurse.

39 AGE

“CLINICAL CARE ENRICHES ME IN EVERYTHING THAT I DO. IT ENRICHES ME WHEN I WALK DOWN THE STREET, AND IT KEEPS ME GROUNDED IN MY COMMUNITY.”

Samoil’s background in nursing is unique to the aerospace industry and, as she shares her knowledge across departments and associations, she enriches the work being done to improve both fields of care. Samoil says the key to her success is her lifelong commitment to collaboration.

“I first wrote a mission statement when I was 19; it was to be a collaborator and to elevate community through strong collaboration,” she says. “I still stand by that.” —Olivia Piché

NICK’S PANINIS REDEFINE FAST FOOD

HOLY GRILL LEVEL 3

ALEXANDRA DAIGNAULT SANGSTER 32

FOUNDER AND CEO, SARJESA INC.

WHY SHE ’ S A TOP 40

In less than a decade, Alexandra Daignault Sangster turned a university project into an expanding ethical manufacturing business and social enterprise that empowers and employs women.

In 2017, Alexandra Daignault Sangster had no idea that Sarjesa, a class project she developed at Mount Royal University, would turn into a fully fledged tea-making enterprise.

Today, Sarjesa Inc. operates a 4,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in south Calgary, equipped with nine tea bag machines. In addition to Sarjesa, the tea brand, the facility manufactures for client brands and sells to independent retailers and customers across North America, all while supporting disadvantaged women.

In 2023, Sarjesa developed and started implementing a sourcing framework that measures — through supplier surveys and interviews — whether women at the farm level are participating in and benefiting from ingredient purchases. The framework guides Sarjesa’s long-term partnerships with ethical producers, and directly impacts how Sarjesa formulates, packages and manufactures every product in its facility.

“It didn’t even occur to me to start a business that wouldn’t be impacting the women and the communities that we work with, just because it’s been so ingrained in me that you take care of others,” says Sangster.

Sarjesa is run by a majority-women team from diverse backgrounds, and Sangster says the company’s team reflects its lived values. Sarjesa partners with local farmers and all Sarjesa tea blends have at least one component that is either Alberta-grown or sourced elsewhere in Canada.

In 2024, Sangster acquired Buzzd Nutri-

“CALGARY'S REALLY FERTILE SOIL — LOTS OF BUSINESSES, LOTS OF SCRAPPY PEOPLE AND PEOPLE WHO REALLY WANT TO BE PROUD OF LIVING [HERE].”

tion, a brand of dairy-free coffee creamers. She has transformed the company by developing new formulas and earning key food safety and natural health product certifications that meet Canadian and U.S. regulations. As her business scales, Sangster insists that the choice shouldn’t

be between good business and doing good.

“We can grow things other than canola; we can build our own food systems,” she says. “It doesn’t mean we have to do it all, but there are specific things that we can do really, really well.” —Alicia L’Archevêque

PHOTO BY STEVE COLLINS

CHARLIE TRAFFORD

FORMER PROFESSIONAL SOCCER PLAYER; CO-FOUNDER AND CO-CEO, TRAFFORD FARMS

WHY HE ’ S A TOP 40

Charlie Trafford is expanding the game of soccer in Calgary while running an agricultural business focused on growing local, sustainable food.

Despite a 12-year pro soccer career — including three consecutive appearances with the Canadian national team — Charlie Trafford’s journey wasn’t easy. A late bloomer who also bounced back from a major knee surgery, Trafford credits his career to one thing: resilience.

“I came across hundreds of players with more talent and skill than me. But I never quit,” says Trafford.

In 2022, Trafford left Europe, where he was playing professionally, to join Cavalry FC, Calgary’s professional men’s soccer club. As co-captain, he led the team to finish first in the league during the regular season in 2023 and secured the club’s first Canadian Professional League (CPL) championship win in 2024.

In 2025, he helped Cavalry FC win a match against Mexican team Pumas UNAM, the first time a CPL team has won a game in the international Concacaf Champions Cup. After three impactful seasons, he retired on March 25, 2025, but still remains actively involved in the sport. He’s part of the ownership group of Calgary Wild FC, Calgary’s first professional women’s soccer club, and co-founder of Carefest, an annual charity soccer match that helps support KidSport Alberta.

Off the pitch, Trafford co-founded Trafford Farms with his sister, Sya, in 2023, with the goal of supplying high-quality, nutritious food to the community. Launched from a converted shipping container to grow specialty mushrooms, the company has since expanded into a 60,000-square-foot facility. In 2024, Trafford Farms acquired Deepwater Farms, which

“THERE’S LIFE AFTER SPORT, YOU JUST NEED TO KEEP THAT SAME MENTALITY AND RESILIENCE.”

produces greens, expanding its vision for local and sustainable agriculture.

Today, Trafford Farms supplies nearly 100 restaurants and 100 grocery stores across Alberta, is projected to surpass $1 million in sales, and has signed a letter of intent with

Sobeys for Western Canadian distribution.

“We want to try to help change the food system in Canada,” says Trafford. “I think it's going to become harder to protect ourselves and have food security. We need to be able to produce locally.” —Riley Fonger

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EMILY VARGA

PARTNER AND CO-FOUNDER, VML FAMILY LAW; AUTHOR

WHY SHE ’ S A TOP 40

Emily Varga is a busy family lawyer and the internationally bestselling author of a groundbreaking young-adult novel.

if anything proves that Emily Varga can and will have it all, it’s that she wrote a book after having her first child, while working as a lawyer and navigating her father’s terminal illness.

“I was racing to the finish line while he was in treatment, and he unfortunately passed away. But his last words to me were, ‘Write your bestseller.’”

And she’s still excelling in her roles as a family lawyer and bestselling author.

While working at a boutique firm in Calgary, Varga and co-worker Holly McCord Lonseth bonded over their shared ethos of childfocused family law. In 2023, they co-founded VML Family Law, one of the few all-female law firms in the city.

“People are coming to you at the lowest moments of their life, and, a lot of the time, the best interests of the children can be forgotten,” Varga explains. “We are always considering positive impacts on the families while we help them carve a path forward.”

Her experience in law was what led to the idea behind her first traditionally published novel, For She is Wrath, a retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo set in a fantasy world inspired by Pakistani history. Although her father had already passed when Varga started writing this particular novel, she initially started writing fantasy stories because he was a fan of the genre.

For She is Wrath became an international bestseller, was shortlisted for awards including the Waterstones Children's Book Prize and the Peter's Book Prize, and has helped raise the profile of the Calgary writing scene since its 2024 publication.

“IT’S SO IMPORTANT TO FOLLOW YOUR DREAMS, BECAUSE YOUR CHILDREN AND COMMUNITY WILL SEE YOU AND KNOW THAT IT’S POSSIBLE FOR THEM, TOO.”

But, for Varga, the greatest victory is the impact on readers of seeing Pakistani characters in a fantasy novel.

“Growing up, books never featured people who look like me on the cover,” says Varga.

“People need to see themselves in leadership positions and saving the world, because, when they feel empowered to enrich their communities and make positive changes, then everyone benefits.”—Kendall Bistretzan

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JESSICA VILLENEUVE 39 AGE

FOUNDER AND CEO, SAME STARS WELLNESS

WHY SHE ’ S A TOP 40

Jessica Villeneuve has expanded access to safe, inclusive massage therapy to thousands of Calgarians with disabilities and illnesses through the Same Stars Wellness clinic.

For Jessica Villeneuve, massage therapy isn’t a luxury reserved for those with a good benefits package — it’s health care. In 2018, she founded Same Stars Wellness to deliver evidence-informed treatment to adult and pediatric patients with disabilities, serious illness or trauma, and to those in endof-life care.

“We’re not a spa,” Villeneuve says. “We treat people with cancer, cerebral palsy and neurological disorders. And we build treatment plans around their actual lives.”

Villeneuve started Same Stars Wellness as a mobile clinic and as its sole therapist. Today, she has a staff of 15 who have provided massage and acupuncture treatments to more than 31,000 patients in Calgary, including more than 15,000 treatments for patients living with disabilities and more than 2,500 treatments for patients navigating cancer care.

In 2023, she opened an accessible brickand-mortar clinic in Bridgeland.

Although Villeneuve trained to become a Registered Massage Therapist and Certified Pediatric Massage Therapist in B.C. and Ontario, where massage is a regulated health profession, this structure doesn’t exist in Alberta.

“Anyone here can call themselves a massage therapist. There are no standardized requirements. That puts people at risk,” she says.

In addition to advocating for licensing reform, she shares her expertise through Same Stars Academy, which has trained more than 500 massage therapists in Alberta in oncology, neurological care and palliative treatment.

Changing the way massage is delivered in

“I BUILT SAME STARS TO BE THE CLINIC I NEEDED, AND THE ONE OUR COMMUNITY COULDN’T FIND.”

Calgary comes from Villeneuve’s mission to help her patients get the care they deserve and from her own lived experience.

She suffers from chronic migraines, often experiencing more than 20 episodes a month. The severity of her neurological condition can cause vision loss, speech disruptions and pain

so intense she sometimes has to work from a hospital bed.

“My head being a lemon makes me a better therapist,” says Villeneuve. “I’ve lived this. I know what it’s like to be dismissed. And I never want someone to feel that way on my watch.”

Alicia L’Archevêque

LISETTE XAVIER

TV HOST; MUSICIAN; ENTERTAINER

WHY SHE ’ S A TOP 40

Lisette Xavier is one of CBC Kids’ most-watched TV hosts, creating uplifting and inclusive content for young audiences nationwide.

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 Humani-

“WE ALL CARRY BURDENS IN LIFE, BUT THE BEAUTIFUL THING ABOUT ART IS THAT IT GIVES US A MOMENT TO LET GO.”

tarian 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.” —Alicia L’Archevêque

2025 by the Numbers

JUDGES

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

(Top 40, 2018) is a venture partner with IA Capital. She is a serial founder and awardwinning 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

(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.

Where Calgary Comes Together

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

(Top 40, 2023) is the cofounder 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

(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 nonprofit 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

(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

(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

(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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THE LONELY CITY

Despite being named the friendliest city in the world by Condé Nast Traveller, Calgary can be a lonely place to be. And that’s a serious public health concern.

WORDS BY COLLEEN SETO ILLUSTRATIONS BY JARETT SITTER

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 na-

tional 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.”

T

HE MORTALITY IMPACT OF BEING

LONELY IS SIMILAR TO SMOKING UP TO 15 CIGARETTES A DAY.

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

“T HE HEALTH IMPACTS OF LONELINESS ARE B ELIEVED TO BE ON PAR WITH THE IMPACTS OF H IGH BLOOD PRESSURE, LACK OF EXERCISE, O BESITY OR SMOKING .”

David Kirby

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 higherincome 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.”

“W E'RE IN THE MOST DIGITALLY INTERCONNECTED SOCIETY WE'VE EVER BEEN IN, AND YET WE SEE RATES OF LONELINESS GOING UP.”

T homas Ambrozaitis

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,

• 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.

“ACKNOWLEDGING THAT YOU ARE LONELY AND NORMALIZING THAT IT HAPPENS IS PART OF THE H UMAN CONDITION.”

Sarah Rosenfeld

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.

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.

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BUSINESSES GIVING BACK

In good times and challenging times, Calgarians can lean on each other, and it’s because we’re a city full of givers. Calgary’s foundation rests heavily on giving back to the community — supporting one another is just what we do. Whether through scholarships, community programs or resources, Calgarians continue to uplift everyone who calls this city home.

Now, more than ever — with rising costs, high rates of food insecurity and complex social issues — helping others is vital for a stronger, healthier community. Luckily, many businesses, organizations and individuals continue to answer the call.

Read on to learn about some of the groups giving back, ensuring Calgarians continue to have the support they need to thrive.

85 Years of Impact: Building a Brighter Calgary Together

For more than eight decades, United Way of Calgary and Area has united the community to give back.

When longtime Calgary donor Sharon Siebens made a landmark $10 million commitment to United Way of Calgary and Area’s Planet Youth Calgary initiative, she wasn’t looking for recognition. She wanted to spark change.

“I’ve seen firsthand the difference we can make when we come together as a community,” says Siebens. “When we work together, we can accomplish so much more than we can alone.”

Her gift marked the largest in United Way’s history and is fueling its boldest initiative yet — Planet Youth Calgary, a proven prevention model aimed at reducing substance use among young people and creating healthier environments for them to grow up in.

For United Way president and CEO Karen Young, Siebens’s leadership is a

powerful example of what can happen when community and generosity come together.

“When I see community leaders like Sharon step forward, I’m reminded of the incredible capacity our city has to create lasting change when we work together,” she says.

This historic commitment shows what’s possible when Calgarians unite around urgent needs — something the organization has been doing for 85 years.

A legacy rooted in community Since 1940, United Way has invested more than $1.4 billion locally, connecting people to critical mental health supports, helping families achieve stability and strengthening safe, healthy relationships. Today, with one in four Calgarians struggling to meet their basic needs, that role has never been more vital.

Initiatives like Community Hubs and All In for Youth (AIFY) have played a pivotal role in strengthening the city. Community Hubs are welcoming neighbourhood spaces created by the community, for the community. They have been used by more than half a million Calgarians since 2017. For a newcomer family, their local hub can become more than a place to learn English — it can be a place where they make friends, build confidence and feel at home in Calgary. Through tutoring, mentorship and financial support, AIFY has boosted Calgary’s high school completion rates by helping students overcome barriers to graduation. One student described the program as, “a reason I believed I could finish school when I thought about giving up.”

Planet Youth Calgary, United Way’s biggest initiative yet, anchors its emerging Children and Youth strategy, creating an integrated pathway of supports and services to guide children from their earliest years into adulthood. This work is made possible through strong partnerships with agencies like YMCA Calgary, Trellis Society and Miskanawah Community Services Association.

“Through Planet Youth, we’re helping to build healthier, more resilient communities where children have the resources, connections and support they need to thrive,” affirms Siebens. “In this way, the

work isn’t just about today — it’s about shaping a stronger Calgary for years to come.”

Each of these initiatives shares a common thread: collaboration. What sets United Way apart is its ability to convene partners — a strength that matters more than ever as Calgary faces increasingly complex social issues. By uniting donors, agencies, government and businesses, United Way creates lasting solutions that no one could achieve alone.

Women leading change

As United Way marks its 85th anniversary, it also celebrates the leadership of women who are shaping Calgary’s future. Siebens is one example, building on a lifetime of giving grounded in the belief that community is strongest when everyone steps up when they can.

“Women bring a unique combination of vision, empathy and determination to the work of strengthening communities. Across our city, I see how women build pathways of

hope and opportunity to empower others,” says Siebens. “I hope that by sharing my experiences, other women feel encouraged to contribute in ways that matter to them and help shape a stronger, healthier Calgary for everyone.”

A look to the future

For Young, the past eight decades are only the beginning. “Looking ahead, I see United Way leaning even more into innovation and collaboration,” she says. “We need to keep listening and adapting, so Calgarians can count on us when life gets hard. That’s how we’ll create real, lasting change for future generations.”

As United Way celebrates its 85th year, its vision is clear: to continue building stronger, more resilient communities where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.

To learn more or to give today, visit calgaryunitedway.org.

Building Healthier Communities

Longtime donor Kathy Prosser demonstrates the profound impact of giving.

For more than 45 years, Discovery House, a Calgary-based charity organization, has been helping families leave domestic violence and rebuild their lives. Funded in part by the government, Discovery House relies on community donors to support approximately one-third of its services.

“Helping families isn’t possible without support from the community, and Calgarians are generous,” says Anita Hofer, director of strategy and communications at Discovery House.

It’s thanks to generous Calgarians like Kathy Prosser that Discovery House can offer housing and specialized programs for women and children. Prosser has been giving to Discovery House for 15 years, ensuring that the organization can give back to the community. “It’s a community building community,” she says. “They're doing a job that’s necessary, and it’s strengthening Calgary as a whole.”

With her philanthropic interests focused on youth in particular, Prosser donates to Discovery House because of the organization’s long-term impact on children. “The wrap-around support allows families to grow and stabilize, and for the kids to just be kids,” she says. “It’s a chance

for a healthier community. It’s a chance for kids to grow up and be good parents themselves. It benefits everybody; it’s a full cycle.”

Donors like Prosser trust Discovery House to help families heal, grow and discover their next chapter. It takes a village, and Prosser and other Calgarians are doing their part, supporting organizations like Discovery House, helping create a better Calgary.

Get involved today. Visit discoveryhouse.ca.

ARTOFTHECART

Get ready for home-entertaining season. Build the perfect Alberta bar cart with these products, all locally available.

1 Taber Corn Berbon from Bridgeland Distillery

BY CHRIS LANDRY PHOTO BY JARED SYCH

Made with Taber corn (and Penhold wheat and barley), this whisky has plenty of sweet caramel notes that make it great for cocktails or just sipping on its own.

Available at Willow Park Wines & Spirits, $67 bridgelanddistillery.com

2 Honey Spiced Rhum from Burwood Distillery

Burwood’s Honey Spiced Rhum (the “h” stands for honey) is a true Alberta creation. Distilled and fermented Alberta honey is aged in second-use bourbon barrels. Burwood then adds 12 spices and herbs before finishing the rum with raw honey for a touch of sweetness. $42, burwooddistillery.ca

3 Porter’s Tonic Original Syrup

This tonic syrup elevates the classic G&T with a Canadian-made twist. Porter’s also makes flavours like lemon lavender thyme, hibiscus and grapefruit.

Available at multiple Calgary locations, $16, porterstonic.com

4 Lessig Ferments Cocktail Cherries

These Edmonton-made cocktail

B.C. cherries, a collab with Vine Arts, are infused with gin, cherry bark and aromatics for a uniquely tannic cherry to top off your Old

Fashioned.

Available at Vine Arts, $17 lessigferments.com

5 Parlour Canadian Dry Gin from Eau Claire Distillery

With notes of Alberta-grown saskatoon berries and rose hips, this floral-tinged gin is an all-arounder that makes a perfect gin and tonic. $50, eauclairedistillery.ca

6 Brotzeit End-Grain Cutting Board from ChopValue

This cutting board, sustainably made from recycled chopsticks, looks fantastic and makes a great conversation piece.

$129, chopvalue.com

7 Hazaki Pro Series Kiritsuke Petty 135mm

With a blade forged in Japan and a handle made in Montreal, this knife is sleek and small enough to store on a bar cart, and sharp enough to cut through citrus without losing any of that precious juice.

Available at Knifewear, $190 knifewear.com

8 Wild Life Distillery Aromatic Bitters

Aromatic bitters are a must for any cocktail kit, and these bitters made by Canmore's Wild Life Distillery bring notes of sarsaparilla, clove and lemon to your classic cocktails. $15, wildlifedistillery.ca

9 Ice Cubes from Craft Ice Great ice can make or break a cocktail. Impress with these crystalclear, impurity-free ice cubes in various sizes and shapes to up your beverage game.

Available at Bridgeland Distillery and 5 Vines Mahogany, prices vary icesculpture.ca

10 Mandarino Amaro from Confluence Distilling

Inspired by Italian Aperol, this Calgary-made amaro brings bitter herbal and mandarin notes to pump up any cocktail. $44, confluencedistilling.ca

11 Professional Series Shaken & Stirred Cocktail Set from Fifth & Vermouth

This cocktail set from Calgary’s Fifth & Vermouth comes with everything you need to craft a great cocktail — plus, the shaker, strainers, crystal mixing glass and long bar spoon just look great.

$125, bartools.ca

12 Livingston Bar Cart from Metro Element

With a sleek black stainless-steel frame and black tempered-glass top, this stylish bar cart fits in just about any home to conveniently display your collection of spirits and cocktail accoutrements.

$1,415, metroelement.net

THEPERFECTBATCH

Calgary’s cookie game is strong. Whether you want a dainty confection for a holiday party or a hefty portable sweet treat for when you hit the ski slopes, the city’s bakeries deliver. Here, we share just some of our favourite cookies sourced from around Calgary that will have you asking for s’more.

BY MEREDITH BAILEY PHOTOGRAPHY BY JARED SYCH

BISCETTES COOKIE CO.'S BLUEBERRY PANCAKE SUGAR COOKIE IS ONE OF MANY ROTATING, SEASONAL COOKIE FLAVOURS.

1 Chocolate chip cookie

Sidewalk Citizen Bakery 618 Confluence Way S.E., 403-457-2245 sidewalkcitizenbakery.com, @sidewalkcitizen

2 Ginger snap (gluten-free) The Cookie Jar

128 28 St. S.E., 403-475-2699 the-cookie-jar-6.square.site, @thecookiejarcalgary

3 Petit four shortbread cookie assortment

Doughlicious

4140 6 St. N.E., 403-230-5160 doughlicious.ca, @doughlicious.yyc

1

Your culinary companion

Favourite Spaces

When homeowner Jim Hughes first moved into his Currie Barracks condo, he saw “a plain, stark white box.” Despite its barren starting point, the open-concept main floor offered a promising blank canvas for the ideal living and entertaining space that Hughes wanted. To realize its potential and integrate his own personal flair, Hughes turned to Charlene Threatful, designer and owner of Lush Interiors.

Threatful describes Hughes as a “real renaissance man” and an avid traveller who appreciates the finer things in life. Hughes wanted to integrate his travel artifacts and art pieces into the design, swapping clutter for curated displays. That way, “they can remind one of different times, places and experiences,” Hughes says.

Besides serving as fond memories and personalized conversation pieces, these elements helped shape the design. The striking area carpets are a good example. “The floors were just bare wood, and the rugs were important to help define and delineate spaces,” Hughes says.

Both homeowner and designer agree that one of the main floor’s strongest suits is its open, three-part layout. “You’ve got the kitchen in the centre, and that’s typically where people migrate to when they’re entertaining,” Threatful says.

Hughes adds: “It also can encourage guests to move around and engage.”

To enhance the open-concept feel, Threatful prioritized flow in her design. Bookended window treatments and velvet textures throughout the space added elements of consistency, while running a cork wallpaper through the main floor “created some continuity between the dining room, the kitchen and the living room.” The wallpaper’s charcoal-coloured sheers created a welcome balance that honoured Hughes’s unique sense of style, too. “I wanted it to be masculine, yet tasteful and stylish,” Threatful says.

All in all, the use of cohesive décor, thoughtful design and personalized elements not only creates a seamless flow of this main floor’s spaces, it offers a beautiful and functional reflection of who Hughes is.

A REIMAGINED

THE LIGHTING

Newly installed black-and-goldaccented light fixtures create visual ties throughout the room — a warm contrast from the original design’s bright-chrome overhead lights. Threatful credits these fixtures with providing “an overall ambiance in the space that you didn’t have before.”

THE BULKHEAD

The silver-foil cork wallpaper along the room’s bulkhead — the protruding arch framing the back wall — elevates a builder-grade element into a custom feature.

THE HOMEOWNER’S COLLECTION

WHITE BOX

Hughes's art, area carpets and travel artifacts shine in this space. With framed paintings orbiting the dining room’s credenza and kitchen-side nooks for European plates, Threatful intentionally peppered the whole space throughout with Hughes’s personal belongings.

THE FIREPLACE

As Threatful notes, Hughes craved the feel of a more formal entertaining room. The fireplace that serves as the living room’s centrepiece in place of a TV is a welcoming addition, especially for holiday gatherings, encouraging unplugged togetherness.

BY ALICIA L’ARCHEVÊQUE

PEACE AMONG THE PEAKS

As the lakes freeze and mountainsides become blanketed with fresh snow, Calgarians often head west to the Rockies, where a winter wonderland awaits. But depending on where you go, you can also be met with crowds. Instead, discover quieter corners with lesser-known, but impressive restaurants, cozy, calm stays and serene activities to show why it’s well worth the extra mile to find peace among the peaks.

[ BY OLIVIA PICHÉ ]

WINTER IN JASPER

FROM QUIET TRAILS AND FRESH POWDER, TO GOOD EATS AND HISTORIC HOTELS, YOU’LL FIND WINTER FUN FOR EVERYONE IN THIS UNCROWDED, NATURAL WONDERLAND.

Along the magnificent Icefields Parkway, past the Athabasca Glacier and down the Athabasca River, you’ll find the quaint town of Jasper. Even before the devastating forest fire that ravaged the town in 2024, Jasper was not nearly as busy as Banff or Lake Louise. However, Jasper holds the same appeal for tourists and adventurers, with picturesque, snow-blanketed landscapes, streets full of delicious dining options, the nearby Marmot Basin ski area featuring 3,000 feet of vertical elevation, and a variety of winter activities.

Those looking for a getaway where quiet reprieve meets a good time need look no further.

QUIET AMONG THE TREES

At more than 11,000 square kilometres in size, Jasper National Park is the largest park in the Canadian Rockies and the world’s secondlargest dark-sky preserve. On a clear night, stars shine wherever you are in the park, but, for prime visibility, visit Pyramid Island, Jasper Lake, Old Fort Point or the toe of the Athabasca Glacier.

Climbing is a year-round affair in Jasper. Take on a multi-hour excursion with Rockaboo Mountain Adventures to climb a frozen waterfall — no previous experience needed! Or stay close to town and conquer the new 15-metre ice sculpture in the heart of Jasper.

GOOD EATS

Jasper Brewing Company, Canada’s first national-park brewery and a Jasper staple, opened its doors in 2005. After closing due to damage from the 2024 wildfires, it reopened last spring. Swing by and taste the beloved brewskies for yourself, and order a bite while you’re at it.

Just over a year old, The Maligne Range is one of Jasper's newest restaurants and distillers. The upscale rustic ambiance invites you to savour a drink at the bar or by the fireplace and stay for a while. The menu is inspired by Canadian flavours and includes redefined boozy beverages.

For a taste of history, wander to De’d Dog Bar & Grill, where you’ll find pub classics like a Canadian burger, nachos and poutine. The establishment has been serving pints and bites since 1927.

And for a taste of the variety of great food in Jasper, book the Downtown Foodie Tour and discover gourmet stops within central Jasper.

PHOTO BY JACK FUSCO

JASPER IS RENOWNED FOR ITS DARK-SKY PRESERVE.

A VARIETY OF ACCOMODATION

After a day out exploring the trails, hitting the slopes or relaxing with spa services — whatever a rejuvenating getaway looks like for you — turn in at an accommodation that suits you, too. You’ll find everything from luxury lodges to cozy cabins, historic hotels and humble hostels in Jasper.

Built in 1925, the Astoria Hotel is a local landmark and one of Jasper’s original hotels. Enjoy modern accommodation in a historic environment with its newly renovated rooms. Book the Record Room to indulge in the vintage feel and spin some tunes in your room with the record player and vinyl record selection.

Forty-five minutes from Jasper, you’ll find the newly opened Jasper East Hostel. While outside of town proper, the hostel has a trailhead right outside your door and a brewery only a twominute walk away. It offers single-occupancy rooms, two fully stocked kitchens and a sanctuary space with infrared therapy lights. The upper floor features red-light therapy throughout, including all upper-floor bedrooms, making for a calming and comfortable environment.

FRESH POWDER

Marmot Basin is among the most underrated marvels of Jasper National Park. The ski resort is not as well known as other Alberta and British Columbia slopes, meaning you're more likely to shred some pow without serious wait times. The Knob Quad Chair, completed two years ago, takes skiers and boarders up to 8,261 feet in elevation, providing access to vast terrain above the treeline, complete with exceptional views. A 20-minute hike from the top of the chair, you can summit Marmot Peak.

The Jasper in January winter festival returns in 2026 from January 16 to February 1. Watch for food and beverage activations on the mountain, live music and various promotions on ski packages. The townsite will also offer plenty of après-ski fun.

SKIERS HIT THE SLOPES AT MARMOT BASIN.

SAMPLE LOCAL

MALIGNE RANGE WHISKEY.

UNWIND IN THE MALIGNE ROOM AT ASTORIA HOTEL.

[ BY COLLEEN SETO ]

UPLIFTING FACELIFT

MAJOR RENOVATIONS

It’s been more than a decade since I’ve made the roughly five-hour trek from Calgary to Jasper and stayed at the famed Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge. Relaxing in a newly renovated junior suite, looking out at beautiful Lac Beauvert, I could kick myself for waiting so long.

The junior suites’ refresh is part of the Lodge’s multi-year, multi-million-dollar renovation project that began in 2024. These suites now showcase a mountain-modern aesthetic, blending bold, contemporary interiors with vintage and approachable luxury. The interior’s natural colour palette works with the exterior, which retains the wooden mountain cabin aesthetic.

Along with many others, I waited with bated breath during the 2024 wildfires to hear if the historic resort had escaped unscathed. Thankfully, most of it did, thanks to heroic firefighters and lodge staff who operated sprinkler systems and helped with perimeter protection of the area

Now, the Lodge is back to business and rolling out its transformation. Drawing inspiration from the Lodge’s original mid-century modern architecture and the wilderness of Jasper National Park, the upgrades complement the natural environment, rather than compete with it.

Further along the lake, next to the world-class golf course, sit the larger luxury lakefront suites. These renovated suites were among the buildings damaged by the 2024 wildfires and have since undergone a second remediation. They boast alpine chic and expansive living spaces that feature wood-burning fireplaces. Outside, personal firepits are perfect for unwinding and roasting marshmallows while enjoying panoramic views of the lake.

This year marked the 100th anniver-

sary of the Lodge’s golf course, which underwent massive recovery efforts following the wildfires. The Stanley Thompson-designed course, consistently ranked among Canada’s top golf resorts, opened this past July in time for its centennial celebrations. Though the charred forest remains a stark reminder of nature’s power, the restored golf course stands as an impressive symbol of resilience.

Starting in November, the main lodge’s reception will get a complete makeover, too, with a design inspired by Jasper’s renowned dark-sky preserve and its incredible star-filled night skies. The main lodge’s dining areas will also

Thebest thingabout Fairmont JasperPark Lodgeishow peacefulItis.

be revamped, creating cozy and elegant spaces, with the existing massive stone fireplace adding literal and figurative warmth to the rooms. And all guest rooms will be renewed, including adding air-conditioning to rooms previously without it.

The best thing about Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge is how peaceful it is. I felt like I’d genuinely escaped the stress of daily life and could decompress and soak in the beauty of Jasper for a few days. Go for a hike or a paddle, or just lounge in your room — it all feels good.

1 Old Lodge Rd., Jasper, Alta. jasper-park-lodge.com

TRANSFORM THE HISTORIC FAIRMONT JASPER PARK LODGE .

A REFRESHED JUNIOR SUITE AT FAIRMONT JASPER PARK LODGE.

BY JACQUELINE

HEALING TOGETHER

MOUNTAIN MUSKOX PROVIDES HEALING AND COMFORT FOR THOSE WHO HAVE EXPERIENCED TRAUMA, TRAGEDY OR LOSS IN THE MOUNTAINS.

In 2020, Oakley Werenka was on Mount Sir Donald when he witnessed a fatal accident — a climber in the party ahead lost his footing and fell. In 2021, exactly a year later, Werenka was in a group of three on Mount Hungabee; his friend had completed the second-last rappel and was downclimbing off-rope when he slipped and fell. Werenka had to tell that friend’s parents about his passing

Soon after, Werenka found Mountain Muskox and took part in his first circle gathering. “Being a part of a group of people who have all experienced hardship in that way has helped me a ton,” he says.

The Mountain Muskox program is for anyone who has experienced loss or trauma in the mountains. It offers monthly peer-support group sessions, known as circles, led by professional counsellors. The three-hour circles cover topics ranging from stress management to relationships and grief. Executive director and co-founder Sarah Hueniken started the program after losing a close friend to an avalanche in 2019. It was a conversation with her therapist, Janet McLeod, that sparked the idea. McLeod suggested that Hueniken connect with others who had also experienced trauma in the mountains, and Hueniken found this made a real difference.

From there, she formed a larger group through a one-year pilot program in 2020. That was the start of the Mountain Muskox Bow Valley chapter. Hueniken co-founded the program alongside McLeod as well as Barry Blanchard, Todd Guyn and Kevin Hjertaas, and it continues to grow today.

Mountain Muskox’s Sea to Sky chap-

ter, based in Squamish, started in 2023; its Columbia Valley chapter began in 2024; and, in 2025, Mountain Muskox added its Kootenay chapter. So far, the program has served free programming to more than 200 people.

“There’s a culture of holding things alone, and it’s just not necessary,” says Cheryl Smith, a psychotherapist who co-facilitates the Kootenay circles with Kat Williamson. “We want people to come and heal in community.”

Jordyn Hansen, the Mountain Muskox Bow Valley onboarding mentor, understands the program’s impacts first-hand. She got involved in 2022 — more than a year after two of her closest friends died in an avalanche. Han-

“There'sa cultureof holdingthings alone,andit's justnot necessary."

Cheryl Smith

sen’s initial response to the accident was to shut down. But, after learning about Mountain Muskox, she wept on the phone for an hour and a half while a Mountain Muskox volunteer listened. Shortly after, she went to her first circle, where she was told, “These things that happen are hard, and they’re awful, but we don’t have to go through it alone.”

She joined on the spot.

Mountain Muskox continues to grow and work on its vision to create a global community, change the dialogue around the aftermath of accidents in the outdoors and bring people together to heal.

mountainmuskox.com

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A QUIET PLACE

IN THE ROCKIES

THESE SILENT SOJOURNS WILL PUT THE R&R BACK INT O OUTDOOR ADVENTURE.

[ BY LISA KADANE ]

n 2025, “quietcations” were dubbed one of the biggest travel trends. These hushed holidays prioritize calm over chaos, as travellers seek out secluded locations or mindful time in nature, far from crowds. The reward? Hearing only birdsong and the crunch of snow underfoot on a forest trail or enjoying a scenic viewpoint without the crush of other day-trippers. Science supports the mental and physical health benefits of “quietude” Research shows

that turning down the volume can lower blood pressure, reduce stress hormones, and improve focus, sleep and creativity. Nature has a similar calming effect, so engaging in silent activities outdoors is a win-win.

You don’t have to go far on a quietcation to reap these benefits. Simply leave your phone, earbuds and speakers at home, and find a quiet corner in the Rockies for your next outdoor adventure. Here are some ideas.

H IDDEN LAKES

Gliding across a frozen pond is as Canadian as ice hockey. Unfortunately, when word gets out that popular lakes have turned to ice (usually between mid-November and early December), everyone shows up to skate, and it’s not so quiet anymore. For a more intimate experience — and a glassy surface that’s not yet carved up — choose lakes or ponds that require a hike or longer drive.

Loon Lake, located in the Yamnuska Recreational Area, is a short walk from the parking lot. You can’t beat the scenery either, thanks to Yamnuska’s distinctive limestone backdrop.

Another pretty spot is Goat Pond in Kananaskis, along the Smith Dorrien Trail just before the Spray Lakes Reservoir — you might even spot moose or bighorn sheep on the drive from Canmore.

Be aware: Natural ice surfaces are not monitored for safety. Ice should be at least 15 cm thick for skating, according to Parks Canada.

TheRockiesoffermany quietcornersandsecluded locationsinnature,ideal forquietcations.

F OREST BATHING

Try forest bathing for a more intentional quiet activity. Scott Berry, an accredited guide through the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy, leads private sessions year-round with his company, Original Path Guiding. Berry takes guests along the Spray River in Banff — or to other peaceful, biodiverse spots in the Bow Valley — to lead them in meditation, an individual nature experience, a sharing circle and a tea ceremony. The idea is to let go of worries, connect to nature and be present in the moment.

“It’s an opportunity to get out of your busy mind and into a quiet mind,” says Berry. “Forest bathing in this season allows people to see the beauty of winter, embrace it and enjoy it.”

D ESERTED SNOWSHOE TRAILS

There’s something meditative about snowshoeing through a forest rendered silent by downy, snowblanketed evergreen boughs. In Banff National Park, try the easy Johnson Lake Loop trail with views of Cascade Mountain and Mount Rundle, or the Ink Pots trail via Moose Meadows, a peaceful alternative to busy Johnston Canyon. Farther afield, venture to frozen Wapta Falls on a just over four-kilometre out-and-back trail, or explore the self-guided snowshoeing network at the Columbia Wetlands Outpost south of Golden, B.C.

You can also join a snowshoe tour with Discover Banff Tours for a guided experience that includes gear, nature interpretation and making maple taffy in the snow. Guides know all the secret spots, like the quiet, scenic path to the Paint Pots in Kootenay National Park.

O VERLOOKED HOT SPRINGS Peak peeping while soaking in a natural hot spring is a coveted cold-weather activity. It’s even better when you can enjoy the water’s mineral benefits in solitude, without splashy co-bathers harshing your mellow. Head to lesserknown hot springs in B.C.’s West Kootenays.

Ainsworth Hot Springs, near Nelson, attracts zenseekers with a warm pool, cold plunge and a piping hot spring located inside a natural cave. Resort guests get exclusive access to the springs: mornings (8 to 10 a.m.) and evenings (7:30 to 9:30 p.m.).

North of Nakusp, admire Monashee Mountain views and the glassy surface of Upper Arrow Lake at Halcyon Hot Springs. Tip: You’ll have the placid pools mostly to yourself if you soak on a midweek morning.

AINSWORTH HOT SPRINGS

NEAR NELSON, B.C.

5:35 P.M.

CALGARY FARMERS' MARKET WEST 25 Greenbriar Dr. N.W.

More than 60 local vendors showcase their products, including hot dishes, fresh produce and locally crafted spirits.

Set the table for new traditions

ESTATE HOMES IN LEGACY

With a limited number of ridge facing homes on 300 acres of green space, bring your plans to life with award-winning builders Morrison Homes or Veranda at Legacy. Our estate home builders can make your dream home into a reality.

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