"Nostalgia is not a strategy. "

This week, I’ve found myself returning again and again to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Line by line, it lingered with me—deep in my soul—not because it was dramatic, but because it was honest. Each sentence felt like it named something many of us sense intuitively, but rarely hear said out loud.

Carney refused to soften the moment we’re living in. He called it “a rupture, not a transition”—not a temporary disruption on the way back to normal, but a decisive break from the world we assumed would endure. He described a global landscape where great powers increasingly act on their own terms, unconstrained by shared rules, while middle powers retreat into defensive postures, building economic and political fortresses in the hope of preserving security.

But he was clear about where that path leads. “A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile, and less sustainable.” Instead, he argued that this is precisely the moment when middle powers must act together—anchored in shared principles, honesty about power, and a willingness to build something new rather than cling to what no longer works.

His speech brought to mind something much closer to home.

A week ago, Esther, our son Noel, and I visited a café and restaurant called the Pavilion in Coquitlam on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. From the moment we stepped inside, it felt like we had entered a space that was both carefully designed and genuinely alive.

On one side was Nemesis Coffee, and on the other Gigi’s, the Italian-inspired restaurant operated by The Kitchen Table Group. Two different restaurants, two distinct identities—and yet their presence beside one another felt harmonious, seamless, and natural. Nothing competed. Everything complemented.

Above us, glass ceilings allowed light to pour into the space, illuminating the plants and trees growing inside. People lingered. Families talked. Friends shared meals. There was joy in the room. It felt like a place intentionally designed to foster culture, community, and culinary creativity.

As I wandered through the Pavilion and visited the gallery upstairs, I learned that this project was born out of partnership: QuadReal Property Group, the institutional investor; Marcon, the developer and builder; and the local operators—Nemesis and The Kitchen Table Group—each bringing their own strengths to the table.

I also learned that the Pavilion itself is only a foretaste—a sign of what is to come. It is a preview of a much larger vision for the Tri-Cities, an invitation to experience now the kind of place this development hopes to become.

Hearing Carney’s speech later this week reminded me that what I experienced locally that day at the Pavilion was the same truth he named on the global stage. The scale was different, but the principle was the same: no power, however great, can endure or accomplish what truly matters alone. What lasts is built through partnership, interdependence, and shared responsibility.

In his speech, Carney turned to Václav Havel, the Czech dissident who later became president, to warn that societies endure not only through force, but through ordinary people “living within a lie”—publicly performing beliefs they privately know to be false. Recalling Havel’s image of the shopkeeper who keeps a political slogan in his window simply to avoid trouble, Carney reminds Canadians and the global audience alike that this is not a moment for pretense—as if the old order were still the norm—but a call to move forward with the courage to “take the sign out of the window,” further emphasizing…

“We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn’t mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy. But from the fracture, we can build something better, stronger, more just.”

Standing in the Pavilion that day, looking at the plans for what is to come—shaped through mutual, interdependent partnership among diverse powers, from investors and developers to cooks, artists, and ordinary people, young and old—I recognized in that space exactly what Carney has been framing in his speech: our shared longings and commitments for a truer city, both locally and globally—one where great, middle, and small powers come together around shared principles of truth, honesty, and responsibility, and where we can build a future that is better, stronger, truer to reality, and yes, more just.