Adrienne’s bathroom has a cold spot. “As a woman of my age,” she tells the group, “it’s just so bothersome. After my shower, I’m just shaking like a chihuahua.” The room chuckles softly. Trevor, a man in his 30s, says, “We used to have a terrible cold spot in our kitchen. It turns out it was an updraft from our poorly insulated crawl space. The guys that fixed it were amazing. Do you want their contact information?” Adrienne nods, and my colleague Sadie says, “Send it to me too, so we can share it with the group.”
The group carries on, sharing what they are observing, planning, and undertaking in their home retrofit projects. Elaine is doing the math to see when her investment in solar panels might pay off. Aisha is worried that her heat pump isn’t set properly. Cam is applying for funding to increase the energy efficiency and comfort of his 1890s schoolhouse. Each participant brings a unique situation to the table: homes big and small, old and new, rented and owned. The group is made up of people who might otherwise never meet: retirees and young families, newcomers and lifelong residents, owners of century homes and new subdivisions, experienced solar adopters and people just beginning to think about replacing a furnace.
The above is fictional, but based in the reality of Concierge clusters. As a coordinator of Climate Network Lanark’s Neighbourhood Climate Concierge, I may be biased. But as a social anthropologist who has spent years studying rural communities across Eastern Ontario, I think the Neighbourhood Climate Concierge is doing something that is special and increasingly rare.
Today, many of our communities are organized around shared interests, affiliations, or identities. Don’t get me wrong, those communities matter deeply. Yet there is something different about neighbours coming together simply because they inhabit the same place. Neighbourhood Climate Concierge has clusters in Almonte, Carleton Place, Lanark Village, Perth, Smiths Falls, and online. In each of these groups, participants come from disparate backgrounds, have very different incomes and political identities, and are at completely different stages of life. What they share is a landscape, a climate, and, increasingly, many of the same challenges.
These conversations between neighbours matter for reasons that extend well beyond improving the energy efficiency of individual homes. Research has shown that this kind of neighbourliness is important for two big reasons. Firstly, people who feel connected to their neighbours and have a strong sense of belonging to their community report better mental health, higher life satisfaction, and greater overall wellbeing than those who feel socially isolated. A strong sense of community belonging has become recognized as an important determinant of health in Canada, alongside more familiar factors like income and physical health.
Secondly, these relationships matter because climate change is not something any household experiences alone. Storms knock out power across neighbourhoods. Heat waves affect entire communities. Flooding rarely stops at a single property line. Increasingly, climate researchers argue that resilience depends not only on stronger infrastructure but also on stronger social infrastructure: the relationships that enable people to share information, check on vulnerable neighbours, lend equipment, recommend trusted contractors, and solve problems together before and after emergencies.
The conversation about Adrienne’s cold bathroom may seem small, but it illustrates exactly this kind of resilience in action. Not only will the group’s advice help Adrienne stay warmer after her shower, but it also forms the basis for connections between neighbours that can extend beyond the boundaries of the program. In a presentation to our participants, Dr. Anabela Bonada, Managing Director at the Institute for Climate Science at the University of Waterloo, stresses that these connections can literally save lives as we confront climate change. She, too, has noted that Concierge is “ahead of the curve” due to “the level of audience engagement” in taking action to build climate resilience. “Communities across the country have much to learn from [Concierge],” she said.
I see that social infrastructure taking shape every month. Participants certainly come hoping to gain expert advice about the many avenues of funding available, as well as insulation, solar panels, and heat pumps. But over six months of meeting in libraries, community centres and town halls, something else emerges. Relationships form. Trust grows. Uncertainty gives way to confidence. Aisha has already navigated the grant application Cam is struggling with. Trevor has found a contractor that Adrienne can trust. Someone else has lived with geothermal heating for a decade and can tell you what they wish they’d known before installing it. The value of these relationships is harder to quantify than kilowatt-hours saved or tonnes of emissions reduced, but they are key to building neighbourhood resilience as we navigate climate change.
Andy Cockburn is a Perth resident of 28 years and Senior Director of Education and Impact at NAIMA Canada (North American Insulation Manufacturers Association). He describes one of the benefits of “having small clusters in local settings” this way: participants “can feel free and comfortable to ask questions and get advice from people who care about their success. It’s a good feeling to see how CNL has structured the sessions to give participants a chance to be heard and helped.” Cockburn acts as Technical Advisor for the program, and regularly attends sessions to offer his expertise during group discussions. He says, “Many people feel that their situation is unique and solitary, but the group opens participants up to the notion that they can lean on others who have similar challenges.”
Climate change is often described as one of the defining challenges of our time. We tend to imagine the solutions in technological terms: better insulation, cleaner electricity, more efficient heat pumps. Those things matter. But sitting in these monthly meetings, I’m reminded that another part of the solution is much older. It begins with neighbours sharing what they’ve learned, helping one another solve problems, and, in the process, becoming a community. Resilience can start with something as simple as a conversation about a cold bathroom.
You can learn more about the program at climatenetworklanark.ca/climate-concierge.