What to know
- Two Toronto residents, Adam Chen and Kai Xie, launched “happy town Toronto” after starting weekly walking and journaling sessions aimed at creating accessible “third spaces” for people to connect outside home and work.
- The initiative grew from informal meetups to organized events, including gatherings in an underused downtown food court and indoor walks through Toronto’s PATH during winter, with activities like crafting, photo walks and writing groups.
- Organizers say affordable, welcoming third spaces are needed as many Canadians lack them, emphasizing that these community-driven events help foster belonging, support well-being and give residents a place to connect without spending money.
Two men from Toronto are curating spaces for residents to unwind and connect affordably outside of their homes or workspaces.
Adam Chen and Kai Xie initially began holding weekly walking and journaling sessions, which turned into happy town Toronto, a group focused on creating accessible ‘“third spaces.”
A third space refers to a place that someone can go that aren’t the usual spots they frequent.
“It’s not work and it’s not your home. It’s the third part,” Chen explained to Now Toronto. “I think a lot of people say it also isn’t a commercial place where you have to pay to be at. It should be like a free place, like a park or a market square.”
According to a survey done by YMCA Canada and the YMCA of Greater Toronto in 2024, 36 per cent of Canadian participants reported not having a third space to go to.
The report added that a majority of participants believed that accessibility to these spaces help to foster belonging, boost well-being and improve overall quality of life.
“The reason that third spaces matter right now… is because it’s too expensive right now to find a connection,” Chen explained. “You have to [pay for] apps to find friends… doing all this work to just say hi to your neighbour or just meet people around you. A third space is the original version of ‘come up and talk to a stranger, meet your neighbour, connect, find that connection, get to know your community, [and] feel part of a neighbourhood.’”
Chen explained that once the winter came around, their weekly walks transitioned over to walks in Toronto’s Path, an indoor pedestrian walkway stretching and connecting 30 kilometres of the downtown area underground.
Chen added he lives in the Aura condominium building in College Park, and when he would go down to the basement, where a food court resides, the area would be empty for most of the time.
“Often people think of it as kind of this strange space which feels liminal to some people but then [Xie and I] saw opportunities,” he said.
Chen and Xie were able to begin running journaling, crafting and mingling sessions in the food court beginning in December 2025.
The group and events have since grown, with Chen saying he’s now begun outreach for other people to hold third space events under happy town, with some upcoming events including a photo walk and a writing group in multiple areas.
Xie told Now Toronto that anyone can turn up as they are to these events.
“If you’re not feeling super great, still come out. There’s still space for you exactly as you are,” he said. “I think at these events, that’s the whole goal, is that there’s space for you to come here at the end of the week, no matter what’s happened to you and as you come out… if something really difficult and challenging happens to you during the week, you realise that it’s okay, because at the end of the week you have somewhere to talk about it.”
Chen added that when people attend their third space events, he hopes they walk away feeling closer to home.
“I think it’s often easy now to get sucked into the idea of everything’s better everywhere else, and that I need to go somewhere to find what I’m looking for and I want people to come out away from our events feeling like, ‘oh, wait, this is here. I actually think this is great. And I like being here. I want to be a part of this.’ Just feeling more like home and happy to be home.”
