June 17, 2017 marked the fourth annual Neighbour Day for Calgarians.
Initiated after the 2013 flood, the day is for the city to celebrate neighbourliness and community spirit at various events such as community cleanups and barbecues.
Mayor Naheed Nenshi told NewsTalk 770 that one of his favourite parts of the entire day is the diversity.
“You know, I was at an event celebrating Telus Spark with probably over 1,000 people. Before that, I was at a block party of 20 houses and 20 or 30 people sitting in lawn chairs in the middle of the street, and I love that because the commonality is everyone is just trying to get together and breathe the same air as their neighbours, and build links of community which I think is more important in this fractured world of ours than ever.”
The mayor said he was pleased to hear that residents in Lethbridge celebrated their very first Neighbour Day.
“I love it! I was just with the minister of environment who is an MLA for Lethbridge and she was rushing back because she said she had a bunch of Neighbour Day events and that’s the first I had heard that Lethbridge was doing it, and it’s great.”
Social media was flooded with pictures from events using the #yycNeighbourDay hashtag.
Neighbour Day falls on the third Saturday of June every year.