The Current - How to get to know your neighbours

Episode Date: December 10, 2024

At a time when loneliness is described as a public health crisis, can your neighbours be the antidote? We hear from people  who are bringing their communities together, and a researcher who says a simple nod or smile can go a long way in strengthening relationships. 

In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news, so I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with Season 3 of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current Podcast. I have friends on the building. We cook and we share with one another. And I visit, sit with them and we talk and so on. It's very helpful because most of the time I'm living alone and I'm so, so lonely. I just want to get out and thank God I have friends that I can visit and sit for a while until I'm ready to go home. That's Shirley. She's a senior living in a bachelor apartment in High Rise Tower in Toronto's Weston neighborhood. She says knowing her neighbors is a lifeline from small day-to-day

interactions to harder moments when she needs someone she can count on. One of my friends, church sister, I remember one time I was ill and she was the first one I called and she was there for me. Pauline. You can run out of sugar or salt, you know. It's good to knock your neighbor up, you know. Like Sunday, I want an onion because my onion run out, and I go knock Miss Wright. Dear Pauline, come down with two. Chances are you've been there looking for a cup of sugar,

shoveling the walk for the house next door. You knock your neighbor up when you need something, as Pauline was saying. Neighbors can often come to the rescue. Research shows that knowing your neighbors can make a real difference to your health. Troy Glover is a professor of recreation and leisure studies at the University of Waterloo. Also director of the Healthy Communities Research Network. Troy, good morning. Good morning.

Why should people make an effort to know their neighbors? I think they should make the effort because the health benefits are just so consequential. As you indicated earlier, we're living through what is really an epidemic of loneliness and social isolation. And I think that is hugely problematic to people's individual health, to our collective health as a society. And so, I think we're very unaware of how important these connections are. I think at an intuitive level, we understand, but the mounting evidence that demonstrates its connection to our mortality, to our morbidity, is just overwhelming. And I think if more people understood that, they'd understand how important it is for their own health to branch out and connect with others.

How have you seen that evidence play out in your own life? In my own life, it's interesting because I'm recognizing that researchers often are the worst at what they study. And I've recognized that over time I've allowed my own social network to wither. And so I've been making efforts recently to actually reach out to people understanding how important it is to my overall health and well-being. So I've been connecting with old friends, I've been connecting with old friends. I've been connecting with neighbors. And I think those different types of relationships are very important to our overall health and well-being.

I mean, we just heard that from Shirley, right? She said she was so, so lonely. But having people around her, having a space where she can be that she can hang out with people until she's ready to go home is a real lift for her. Absolutely. And I think that we need to recognize that there are different types of loneliness that people experience. And they point to different types of relationships that we need in our lives. So, for instance, we need intimate relationships with close others, close friends, family members, intimate partners. We need relational intimacy. So by that, I mean with our acquaintances, our weak ties, people

like co-workers or neighbors. And then also collectively, we need to connect to people who help us understand that we belong to a community larger than our small social circles. So your research in part looks at how we go about creating conditions for this to happen. And this is through what you call activating neighborhoods. And we're going to look at a few examples of this across the country. I want to go back to that neighborhood in Toronto in a cramped lobby of that apartment building in Weston. Christmas carols are playing, residents were meeting to make Christmas cards,

eat samosas and check in with each other. And Lisa Enhelmet says that these sorts of events, she believes capture the heart of her neighborhood. I always say that Weston is very eclectic. I love the area because there's just so many mom-and-pop restaurants, stores. You walk up and down Weston Road. It takes me at least half an hour because I'm saying, hey, how's it going?

You're saying hi to everyone. So there's a real sense of community. And with all the different resources, everyone joins in to make this really big web of support. For me, it makes a complete difference knowing that someone's there for you. So, Troy, how does this building in Weston play out as an example of what you call community activation? I think it's a classic example of where a group of people have really opened themselves up to creating these relationships. And often it just starts with what are called nodding relationships. So, in our communities,

there are people that we come across every day who are just known to us as a presence in our neighborhood. These are invisible ties, people we don't really think of, we don't know, we don't have any sort of relationship with them other than maybe smiling or nodding. So how is that? I mean, we all have those relationships. I walk the dog at night, I see the same people. I don't know who those people are, but you give them a nod, you smile and you continue on. How is that a relationship? It's what's called an invisible tie. And so it's important with respect to what I was referring to before about this idea of having a connection to a collectivity. As we get to know other people or recognize other people, we acknowledge their presence. We humanize them.

And we become conscious of them, which means that our imagined communities expand. So that when I go to the store and I see the same person and I say hello to that same person and we chat about whatever we're chatting about and then we move on, part of that is about me understanding that I don't live by myself, that I'm part of something larger. Exactly. Exactly. Part of our neighborhoods, part of our communities. Exactly. Exactly. Part of our neighborhoods, part of our communities. These sorts of connections, often we focus so much on our intimate ties and maybe to a lesser extent our acquaintances. But these sorts of invisible ties are actually quite important to feeling part of a community.

In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so we want to go from Weston to Winnipeg. Christy Hemmerling lives in Winnipeg. Her neighborhood has come together to, over the last couple of years, create this gigantic outdoor skating rink. It's not in the backyard, but it's out in the front. Christy, good morning. Good morning, Matt. Aside from the glorious winter weather in Winnipeg, why did you decide to build a skating rink in your front yard? Well, it's been an evolution over time. This is our seventh year, and the space just really was more welcoming out front. And so over time, as the neighbors grew

and we developed this collective approach and expanded from one or two houses all the way to the four houses across, it's about 160 feet long and really joins our four houses together in an amazing way in the front yard. So I don't know what I expected when I heard about this. And then so I went and looked for photos.

You have to describe this thing because it's not the rink that I thought it was. It's huge. It's huge. I know. I know. It's really an amazing amount of effort from the neighbors to put that work in. But it's essentially the huge sheet of ice and it's got lights, floodlights and Christmas lights on the top, little white lights.

There's trees in the middle of it too, right? There's a hundred-year-old elm that seems to be the most famous. That's part of the tree or part of the rink. And there's an ice bar that's developed over the years, which is a real highlight, a slide. There's a fire pit that we have going so that people are welcome to come and sit and chat. And there's curling rings that we've developed over time. And just usually just a bunch of kids out there

is really what you'll notice. What is this about the Winnipeg Jets showing up? Yes, yes, they did. Yes, Mark Chipman, through a community outreach, asked some of the Jets and Mark Shifley and Josh Morrissey came over for a meet and greet on the rink. So that was a highlight for all the kids and families. The fire is a big deal too. I mean, tell me a little bit about how having this rink in the front yard, not tucked away in the back behind a fence, but spread out across four houses. How has that changed your relationship with your neighbors in the winter? It is amazing. I mean, we're outside, the kids are outside a lot, friends are over, people walking by with their dogs are just walking by. And we always end up chatting

and having the fire going is just a way to say, you're welcome. We're here. And it's just really allowed for our community, which is already quite a connected community. It's just another way to be outside in the winter and really embracing our time outside in Winnipeg. What does it look like? I mean, on a Friday night when it's cold, what does it look like? Well, I'll say we've had some of our best New Year's Eves out there. But on a typical Friday, yeah, the lights are on, the fire's going, and there's at least probably 15 kids out there playing hockey or ringette. And it's just usually adults kind of walking around chatting and

yelling at people walking by to come on over. Is that the deal? So if somebody's walking by, I mean, you're open for business and they are going to get hollered at to come over? Oh, yeah. We're waving. We're hollering. We're saying, come on over and have a seat by the fire. Yeah, it's a lively place.

And speaking of community, we feel really lucky and we know how lucky we are to have the opportunity to do it. And we're just amazed by especially having the kids outside. And, you know, often we're pulling them back inside because it's just such an opportunity for play and being together. Embrace winter. Yes. Yeah. And right now it's a winter wonderland. We've got tons of snow.

Amazing. So you're always welcome to come by Matt for a skate. Honestly, I saw the picture and I thought, how can I get there? And how can I get the suit? I'm a terrible skater, but I'm good by a fire. Christy, thank you very much. Perfect. Thank you so much, Matt. Christy Hammerling built a skating rink with her neighbors across the front yards of four homes on their street in Winnipeg. Troy Glover has been listening. Troy,

what do you make of that? And the way, I mean, part of this is about building the thing, but if you build it, they will come, right? People will show up. This is an excellent example of the type of things that I'm trying to promote in terms of activating your neighborhoods. You know, I have so many thoughts. The first thing that comes to mind is, Christy was mentioning how lucky she was to live

in a community like hers. And I think that's one thought, but I think she and her neighbors deserve a lot of credit for thinking of community as a verb as opposed to a noun. It is a place that we live, but we also can take actions to activate community. And clearly her neighborhood has done that. Part of that is about finding the space too, right? That this is a communal space. It's not in the backyard tucked away where you have to knock on somebody's door and say, can we come to your rink? And maybe they're there, maybe they're...

That this is out front and it's kind of open for business. Exactly. And I think what's important about that is it's an invitation to others to participate. We often need cues or nudges to feel like we can be part of something. And I think that when you put something in your front yard, it's communicating to others that you're welcome to come in and be part of it. What are the other kind of spaces that people could, I mean, if they don't have four front yards that they can stitch together, that they could perhaps activate and turn into a neighborhood meeting space?

I think the point is that people need to think creatively about the spaces around them. We have so many mundane spaces in our cities, in our towns, that could easily be activated. I'm thinking, for instance, as a quick example, in Vancouver, there's an ugly alleyway that I guess local business owners appropriated and painted pink and put up a basketball net and call it renamed the alley alley oop. And the idea of being like, you know, to encourage people to come and use that alley space. Prior to that, there would be no interest in doing so there was nothing to nudge people to use it. So, you know, there's there's a an architectural professor named Patricia Albrecht who talks about fourth spaces or fourth places, rather. And the idea there is that when we think of first places, we're thinking about our homes.

Second places, we're thinking about our work or school. Third places are places of community. So, community centers, libraries, parks, that sort of thing. But she's drawing our attention to fourth places. These are the places between that we often neglect. We don't think about front yards as spaces to activate and encourage community to be part of because we think of it as a private space. But the more we reimagine the spaces around us, the more we can be creative and think of ways that we can activate them. Reimagining it, again, back to what we were saying earlier, for the purpose of understanding that this is actually going to make you feel better, that this is going to improve your health. Absolutely. The more that we can connect with other people, the more we are going

to be happier and healthier. And if you look just recently in 2023, Waldinger and Schultz, two Harvard professors, published a book called The Good Life. And in it, they outlined the findings from an 83-year-long longitudinal study on adult development. And the number one finding in following all these individuals over their lifespan to determine what was that major determinant in terms of their health and well-being. It was cultivating warm relationships of all kinds. So in Atlantic Canada, rural Nova Scotia in particular, the community of New Ross has another way to connect with their neighbors. And this is something called Ruby's Trail, which picks up a lot on what you were talking about.

After losing his granddaughter when she was just eight months old, Marty Murphy felt the support that a neighborhood could provide firsthand. They pitched in to help him through this. And as a thank you for helping him through this time, he decided to open up his Christmas tree farm to the community and carved this trail system through the farm for people to enjoy. He took us on his trail overlooking New Ross, which at this time of the year, it's got little churches and there's lots of snow and barns. It kind of looks like a Christmas card. I like to work where the trees are near the trail. And so that way I can see the people. So just seeing them is very gratifying, but especially when I'm really near the trail and get a chance,

if the people wish to talk, I'll say hi. And sometimes that's the extent of the conversation. Other times people want to prolong it. And sometimes, well, sometimes'll say hi, and sometimes that's the extent of the conversation. Other times, people want to prolong it, and sometimes, well, sometimes they prolong it by quite a bit. And so, what's more important, my work at the trees or making somebody's day? It's more important to make somebody's day, because they also make my day. And just to have somebody come along in your workplace and say nice things, well, what could be more uplifting? have somebody come along in your workplace and say nice things, well, what could be more uplifting? So we're just going to go off the main trail. Oh yes, that's something else.

We can't wait to show you. Now here's something here. Again, the sense of community. People are so attached to this place. This Vino family, they donated two benches Both of these brothers are now deceased so they paid to have these benches here in memory of Glen vino and Ian so We decided to put them side by side Have a little Christmas tree between them

Ian's came first and he decided we would was straight between them. Ian came first, and we decided we would point the bench in the direction of where Ian used to live. He used to live up there to the north, so we pointed it to the north for him. It's hard work, but with all these good things, you don't mind the hard work. I might start minding it more now that I'm turning 65,

but I'll keep at it. Troy, what do you make of what Marty's doing here? Again, a great example of just bottom-up placemaking. So the idea here being that people are actually intentionally trying to change their spaces to encourage people to connect socially. I think that's amazing. Is that more difficult to do? I mean, it sounds obvious, but more complicated, certainly in a rural community like New Ross, as opposed to an urban center where, sure, there are alleyways cutting through the back of people's houses and you can figure out a way to activate those alleyways

or band together with your neighbors who are close by and build a skating rink. I think it's just a matter of creativity and imagination. I think, you know, the example that you just presented, I think was an excellent one. I think rural communities, you know, you used the example of Winnipeg and the ice rink. I mean, that could easily be done in a rural community as well. So I think there's just plenty of ways.

It's just the limitations are our imaginations, really. I mean, these are nice stories, but I think there is a constituency listening, a contingent of the population who would say, you know what, they don't feel that connection to their neighbors. Maybe they don't want to know their neighbors, but they actually don't feel like they have, they live here, the people live next to them, and that's that.

They have no connection. They're not going to go and knock on their door and borrow a stick of butter from them because they don't know what would happen. They're not going to nod at somebody on the street because they don't know whether that would be taken in an unusual way, whether people would be threatened by that. What are the obstacles to creating healthy neighborhoods and to getting people to think outside of themselves for whatever reason? I think the big obstacle are community norms. And I think that we have a norm of what's called civil inattention. Civil inattention is the idea that we occupy the same spaces and we acknowledge that people are in them, but we don't give those other people any sort of attention.

And so in many ways, we're what's called co-present. So we're physically proximate, we're in close proximity to them, but we're socially distant. And I think that we need to get beyond that. I think that more and more that people understand the health benefits of social connection, they'll come to appreciate that even just nodding or smiling or saying hi to somebody is a gateway to strengthening relationships in your life. I mean, there are a couple of things that cut us off from that. One is technology. You can put in your noise-canceling headphones and not hear anybody.

Definitely. of things that cut us off from that one is technology you can put in your noise canceling headphones and not hear anybody definitely and i think that we need to recognize the consequences of those types of technologies and make a conscious effort to actually engage in social connectivity and in fact you know one of the uh terms that's that's that's uh emerging because of the the power of social connection is this idea of we need to engage in social fitness, not unlike physical fitness. We need to make time for it and actually make the effort to do it. How do you go about doing that without getting into a scrap about politics?

I mean, people are polarized these days, and what you believe may not be what your neighbor believes, and the concern might be, if I start talking to this person, we're going to get into something that we don't want to talk about. So it's easier just not to talk to them. I think the problem there is that we often, as a polarized society, we characterize the other side in a certain way and just assume that that sort of interaction is going to go in a negative way. But the more we interact with others, the more we humanize them. And the more we start to appreciate that even though we do have different beliefs,

we can coexist and we can actually flourish together. And so give us some final advice. If somebody wants to make an effort, particularly over the holiday season, to get to know their neighbors, I don't know if they're going to build the skating rink or the trail, but if they want to try to figure out how to strengthen those ties, what should they do? My simple advice to everybody is talk to everybody. Acknowledge everybody. Smile at people as you walk by. There is something called social contagion.

The idea of you having a positive interaction or encounter with another, even if that person's a stranger, can actually result in it being paid forward to others. And over time, it just makes for a much more pleasant everyday life for individuals and can lead to more strengthening of relationships where you move from those invisible ties to being recognized and recognizing others and you know having those stronger relationships that actually matter in your life good advice troy thank you very much thank you this is really interesting troy glover is a professor of recreation and leisure studies at the university of waterloo he specializes in neighborhoods one of the neat things about having conversations like this is that you learn things about the country that perhaps you didn't know about. I didn't know about that giant rink in Winnipeg until I heard about it. Now I want

to go there. I didn't know about the trail in New Ross and Nova Scotia, and that sounds fascinating as well. What is it that makes your neighborhood special? Maybe there's a street party that you hold every year. Maybe you rallied around a neighbor in need. Maybe you built something that brings people together and actually is an activation, as Troy was saying, in your community. What is it that you love about your neighborhood and what is it about your neighborhood that actually brings people together? And let us know and we will feature some of your stories on the program. We used to have a thing on our street where the deal was if you were on your front porch, you're open for business. And so if you're sitting there, chances are somebody might come over and say hello, who lives on the street. If you want to

be by yourself, you hang out in the backyard. But if you're on the front porch, maybe you're going to get a chat or a drink or what have you. What happens on your block or in your building or in your community that you love that brings people together? Email us, thecurrentatcbc.ca, or even better, send us a voice memo. Let us know what it's like in your community and what brings people together. You can record it on your phone, email it to us. Again, thecurrentatcbc.ca. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.