From Connection to Community: The Calgary Interfaith Council Journey Across Faiths

Every community tells its own story and the Community Connector approach brings those stories to life through relationships, trust, and meaningful connection. These building blocks are vital in interfaith spaces, where understanding grows one conversation at a time. 

Join Elyse Brazel, our Calgary Interfaith Council Community Connector, as she chats with Victoria Wood, BCC Capacity Builder, to share her journey of navigating, connecting and building bridges across diverse faith communities in Calgary.

The Interview

So tell us about yourself?

My name is Elyse. I am the Community Connector with the Calgary Interfaith Council (CIC).  I have been doing Interfaith community-building for many many years now and have been volunteering with the CIC in different ways since I moved to Calgary back in 2016 to work at UCalgary’s the Faith and Spirituality Center as the Education Coordinator.

Since April 2025, I've been working as the Community Connector with the Building Connected Communities Project. This is a larger Citywide community asset-based community development project funded by the City. The project's overarching goal is to create a greater sense of belonging here in Calgary. Part of my job is to build connections and create opportunities for communities to come together, to use their passions, interests, assets, skills and resources, to work towards collective goals for the betterment of our city. One of the things that I had the opportunity to support during this time is the creation of an interfaith public art project called the Wheel of Compassion.

What does the CIC do?

The CIC is a collection of different individuals and religious communities that have decided to come together for opportunities to build relationships across lines of difference, a process that helps us break down barriers and misconceptions about each other.  The work of the CIC is about building relationships and creating opportunities for people to learn from each other face to face, so that we can recognize each other as human beings and work together to live in peace in a good way here in Calgary.

Tell us more about your role? What do you do and what does a typical day in the life of a CIC Community Connector look like?: 

In my role, I  attend community events and find opportunities to talk to folks about the things that they are passionate about. One night I was attending an Arts for Social Change Networking Night at the Alcove Art Centre and my friend Tyson introduced me to Tenzin.  Tenzin is a cool cat, he is a member of the Tibetan Buddhist community and he runs a social entrepreneurship called True Gents Barber Shop. The shop is both a business and a space where genuine conversations flow, connections are built and a sense of belonging thrives. Through their ongoing commitment to community initiatives, mentorship and collaboration,  they strive to create meaningful impact fostering growth, pride and unity within the city. I told him that I worked with the CIC and Tenzin said he was already an individual member and was dedicated to building religious harmony because of his admiration for His Holiness The Dalai Lama. 

The 14th Dalai Lama is the religious leader of the Tibetan Buddhist community and has been an advocate for religious inter-religious cooperation all his life. This year is The Dalai Lama's 90th birthday so Tenzin wanted to commemorate by gathering the local religious communities to do service together and engage in an interreligious art project called the Wheel of Compassion. 

Wow, that sounds interesting. Tell me more about this Wheel of Compassion-

The idea; create a Buddhist prayer wheel and include scripture about compassion from different religious perspectives as the text on the wheel. When the wheel was spun, those prayers for compassion from all traditions would energetically be released into the world and would travel to all the things that need them. Tenzin wanted to connect with the CIC to ask religious leaders to  select the text that's most appropriate from their community which we would then use as the prayers on the prayer wheel.  

That sounds like a cool idea. How did you support Tenzin in your role as a Community Connector?

I was able to support him to get the wheel of Compassion done. However, we hit one barrier of cultural communication, so we sat down with the director of the interfaith council and a knowledgeable community member to help Tenzin clarify the project and help communicate it to be more easily understood by folks outside of the Buddhist context. Tenzin made a short write-up and used Ai to create a visual mockup, which made things much clearer. If you want more info, you can see them on the Wheel of Compassion website. 

How did the conversation with the director of the interfaith council and the community member go? 

It went well but even with more clarity, time was a barrier to getting people onboard. We approached the CIC Board to get their assistance in finding scripture that fit the project, but with Board Meetings very full, this project would always be pushed to the end and not allotted enough time for people to engage. Now, Tenzin is working with the Board Chair to set up an alternate time to get this part done. 

Aside from the board, did you get help from any other interfaith groups?

Yes! The team wanted to get support from the Tibetan Buddhist community and CIC also had a vested interest in deepening their connections. CIC has representation from the community in its circles; This person has been an active participant because many of the Tibetan Monks here don’t speak English fluently, and she acted as translator for many years and has been an amazing contributor to the work of the organization. But some of the barriers of having a single person represent the entire community is that there is some level of representational burden, and that if that person disappeared, the connection to that community would basically be lost. 

Is there a way to get more representation? 

Yeah, in fact last June, our team set up a meeting between the CIC staff and a collection of Tibetan Community leaders with the help of Tenzin and our regular Tibetan representative. We met on their turf at the Jam Tse Cho Ling Tibetan Buddhist Temple. The Monks and the Buddhist community reps (who all helped translate) said they were excited about the opportunity of doing more work with the CIC because they wanted to celebrate the Dalai Lama and work towards his vision of inter-religious harmony. They also said that sometimes they felt isolated and it would be lovely to have allies in the larger community. We talked about different ways that we could partner and possibilities for the future, maybe even a Tibetan Buddhist  Interreligious Harmony Stampede Breakfast. They also shared their dream of building a larger community space to call their own, so they wouldn’t have to always rent space to be all together. 

What happened at that meeting?

At that meeting, the CIC was also invited to have representatives from different Faith communities come celebrate the Dalai Lama's Birthday Party at a large Tibetan community celebration later in the summer. We organized representatives of the Interfaith Council, including the Chair of the CIC Board/Sikh Representative, a Protestant Christian, a Byzantine Catholic, a member of the Church of Christ of Latter Day Saints, and a member of the Baha’i community to attend and each spoke to honor the Dalai Lama’s contributions to interreligious harmony as a globally recognized religious leader and advocate for interreligious cooperation. The party was great: There was cake and karaoke and the Dalai Lama himself made an appearance in life-sized cardboard cutout form! 

That sounds fun and I am glad the party was a success and that you were able to get reps from diverse interfaith societies in Calgary.

So Elyse, do you have any final words?:

Well, I would love to end on this note- Cultural and language barriers can make things complicated but if you are genuine in your desire for real inclusion, they require effort but are never insurmountable. Real belonging comes when you feel seen and feel valued as a contributor who can offer your culture / hospitality as a gift to the wider community. 

That's lovely! Thank you so much for your time Elyse! Have a lovely day.