This community brief shares what we did, what we heard, and what could come next from Together for Sooke, a series of six small-group community conversations held in Sooke, B.C., in late 2025.
Led by Shandell Houlden of the Cascade Institute in partnership with Fireweed Learning Commons, and funded by the Accelerating Community Energy Transformation (ACET) initiative, the dialogues were designed to reduce affective polarization, particularly around climate policy and energy transformation.
Residents described Sooke as a community with deep strengths that is under strain from rapid growth, infrastructure gaps, and civic processes that can feel tense or discouraging. The conversations surfaced 10 themes, from the “one road in, one road out” bottleneck to the gap between “Sooke online” and “Sooke in real life,” along with five directions residents proposed for strengthening their community’s capacity to live with disagreement and navigate change.
This brief is a companion to Listening Across Difference: A community dialogue pilot for navigating polarization, which details the pilot’s methods, findings, and lessons for practitioners.
