The invitation to Toronto’s civic institutions

Every organization that receives this letter gets its own version — addressed by name, with one specific and verified line about that organization’s own work. This page publishes the shared text every recipient sees: the same words, minus the one line personal to them.

I’m writing to you as one Torontonian, with no title worth mentioning. You already do the work. This letter does not ask you to do more of it, and it does not ask you to do it differently. It asks nothing of your mission at all — only whether one piece of what a few Torontonians have been building might be useful to it.

Here is the observation the letter rests on. Toronto is full of organizations like yours, most of which have carried their corner of this work for years, some for generations. But the city has never been introduced to itself. The people who run the halls rarely sit down with the people who run the numbers, who rarely sit down with the people who run the kitchens. Everyone is at capacity. Nobody has the spare afternoon it would take to convene everybody else.

So I did some homework. I’ve been building a free public library of civic information for this election and after it: the city’s problems measured honestly, with sources anyone can check; the solutions other cities have already proven, with their conditions attached; and simple tools that let any resident say what’s broken and what they want, and then see what their contribution became. It costs nothing, requires no account, and belongs to no campaign, no coalition, and no organization — including this one. There is no membership to take out and no roster to join. If any part of it is useful to your work, take it — no permission needed, no credit expected, no strings I get to pull later.

I’m sending this now because of the calendar. Nominations for the municipal election close August 21; voting day is October 26. Last election, seven in ten eligible Toronto voters stayed home. Whatever else that number means, it means the next year is one of the few times the whole city looks in the same direction at once — the school year opens the sprint the first week of September, October 26 lands six weeks into it as a scoreboard check rather than a finish line, and the work keeps running after, whatever the vote decides.

Some of what’s building toward that window may be useful to name plainly, in case any piece fits what you’re already planning. A handful of organizations across the city are informally lining up around six shared, self-chosen measures of a healthier Toronto — happier, healthier, safer, cleaner, friendlier, more beautiful — each with its own public scoreboard, each adopted only by whoever chooses to adopt it. The first of the six, cleanest, is taking shape as an open, citywide clean-up that any neighbourhood or organization can simply do, on its own terms, and have counted. None of this is a program to join or a campaign to sign onto — it’s closer to a shared calendar, offered in case it’s useful, credited to whoever shows up. Nobody keeps a roster or a member list for it; there is no one to ask permission from. If your organization is already doing any of this work — and a great many of you are — the ask is not to start; it’s for you to decide, on your own terms, whether and how you’d like it counted.

If a shape helps more than a description, here is the whole menu, one optional step at a time, none of them mandatory, and the first one costing nothing at all: a pin — a mark on the map saying your organization is part of this city’s conversation; free, thirty seconds, nothing else asked. A host — hold one of the conversations already happening in your own rooms, on your own terms, and send back whatever it surfaced (a vision, a complaint, a name worth encouraging toward candidacy) using the same simple kit any circle or classroom already uses. A quest — if one of the six measures above already describes work you’re doing, let your own progress count toward that scoreboard, on your own terms and in your own words. A covenant — for any organization that wants to say, publicly, that it’s in for the year. Every step past the first is entirely optional, every step returns a receipt, and nothing is asked of you that you haven’t chosen. What gets published from any of this is a running number — how many pins, how many hosts, how many quests, how many covenants — in aggregate, never a list of names assembled without your say-so. The one ask that costs anything close to nothing is the first one: a pin costs nothing.

The invitation is one conversation. Not a coalition, not a partnership, not a commitment: one meeting, with a handful of peer organizations you would want in the room, entirely on your terms — your rooms or neutral ones, your agenda, your pace. If it helps, I can handle the logistics nobody has time for: finding a date, a room, and, if you want one, an experienced facilitator from the many this city already has. The question on the table is small and old: what do our communities want, and what would we try first if we did one thing together? If the room decides the answer is nothing, that is a real answer, and the end of it.

What I can put on the table: the library itself; the tools that gather and cluster what residents are saying; help with convening logistics; and introductions to facilitators. What will never be asked of you, in this letter or after it: not your endorsement, not your data, not your money, not your members, not your name on anything you haven’t personally checked. Money does not move in any direction here — nobody pays to take part, there are no donation asks, and nothing under this banner is ever sold except optional merch at a disclosed margin, accounted to the dollar, in public; not one cent of it reaches any individual’s pocket. This work holds no funds on your behalf and asks for none. Sitting in a room implies no endorsement of anything, and nothing will ever be published claiming your organization’s support, participation, or agreement unless you have actually given it — in writing, for that specific claim.

One more rule, and it binds me, not you: nothing begins inside your community unless it is invited from inside your community. If this is the wrong ask or the wrong season, set the letter down. There is no list you are now on, and no follow-up you haven’t asked for.

If one conversation sounds worth an hour, reply to unknownsoldier@unitetolove.ca and name the terms that work for you: who should be in the room, where, and when.

With respect, and with thanks for the work you were doing long before this letter arrived —

This letter comes from a public library built for every Torontonian alike — not from any organization, campaign, or office — the same library named below, checkable at that address by you or anyone. No individual claims it as their own, and it carries no signature for the same reason the library itself carries none: it is built to be checked, not to be taken on trust.

P.S. The library is at uniteTOlove.ca. Please check it — and if you find something wrong, say so. Corrections are published, with credit to whoever caught the error.