Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi — recently voted the world’s greatest mayor — hammered home community engagement and practical ideas over ideology and indifference in a speech at the Whitehorse Chamber of Commerce Business Connect forum this morning.

Citing examples from his four-and-a-half years at the helm of Alberta’s biggest, most diverse city, Nenshi said he hoped to foster voluntary “service as a part of daily life.”

Last month, he won the World Mayor Prize, awarded every other year by the City Mayors Foundation, a London-based public affairs group.

Nenshi, 43, recounted acts of everyday heroism he witnessed during the Alberta floods in summer 2013: a mosquito-bitten volunteer, “covered in mud, working incredibly hard to save the home of someone she doesn’t even know”; a citizen vowing to sew a quilt around which a family that lost photo albums and heirlooms can weave new memories; neighbours mowing each others’ lawns in the aftermath.

“It’s about reminding people that at a low time in their lives ... they live in a place where somebody’s thinking about them, where somebody cares about them,” Nenshi said.

“These things really matter.”

Instead of affecting a tight-lipped approach to civic service, “talk about it loudly and proudly ... and most importantly talk about the joy that it brings you,” added the mayor, who enjoys widespread popularity and 230,000 Twitter followers.

Rather than a political orientation like left-wing or right-wing — “I don’t know what those words mean” — Nenshi opts for one simple maxim: “People are not stupid.

“You can inherently trust human beings to do the right thing if they’re given the right information,” he told the assembled crowd of 150 or so at the Coast High Country Inn.

He compared Whitehorse to cities with 40 times its population, like Calgary, and even 800 times larger, like Beijing.

“The basic building blocks of community are the same regardless of geography or of size. It really is about fostering connections between people,” he told the Star after his speech.

Local concerns come down to “building physical spaces that encourage people to get and out and spend time with one another,” he said. That “experience of life in the community” applies to everything from walking to the store to having reliable public transit and roads.

Internet access forms a key part of Calgary’s poverty reduction strategy and its “100-year vision” of connectivity.

“If you don’t have a fixed address, how do people connect with you? How do you apply for jobs?”

The city initially piloted public Wi-Fi in several locations, and has expanded it to more than a dozen sites at no cost to taxpayers.

“Many, many people have devices now, even if they’re very poor,” Nenshi noted.

He also touched on recycling, as Calgary recently rolled out its curbside blue box program. Whitehorse is aiming for the same thing, with a 2014 report estimating households would pay $15 a month for weekly collection.

The municipality hopes to implement the program this fall.

Whitehorse is ahead of Calgary on at least one front: compost collection. Food and garden waste is collected curbside every other week.

Nenshi is trying to institute green bins by 2017, along with a new compost facility.

In the wake of heightened rhetoric around Islamic extremism in Iraq and Syria, controversial anti-terror legislation at home and values-driven wedge issues like the niqab, Nenshi expressed concern over “the battle lines that are being drawn” in the run-up to the federal election, likely to occur this fall.

“It’s not about what you look like or how you came here or what you worship or who you love,” he said. “It’s about building that quilt and mowing that lawn.”

He proposed replacing “the politics of division and the politics of fear (with) everyday people doing everyday things with their everyday hands.”

Nenshi also stressed the importance of municipal services. He highlighted infrastructure, transit, housing — “ensuring that people can get around and that they have decent places to live.”

He acknowledged the role of the federal government too: “It’s a giant cheque-writing machine in Ottawa.

“This order of government is by far the worst funded and by far the most difficult to deliver services,” he added of the local level.

Nenshi also had some fun at Calgary’s expense along with civil working groups everywhere.

After 45 days of discussion, a committee tasked with examining community participation in Calgary came up with one thing, a name: the Mayor’s Committee on Civic Engagement.

When he pointed out its bureaucratic blandness, they changed it — “to the Mayor’s Civic Engagement Committee.”

Mayor Dan Curtis introduced Nenshi, who was scheduled to meet formally with the mayor and council later today.

“I’m proud to have someone that I can look up to ... and I’m just delighted that he’s here,” Curtis said.

Nenshi planned to spend much of today sequestered in his hotel room speaking with officials and media in Calgary, where the provincial budget is being tabled today.

The mayor, re-elected in 2013 with 74 per cent of the votes, has a reputation for progressive policies as well as budgetary restraint.

He received a master’s degree in public policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and has worked in the private and public sector.

Councillors Mike Gladish, Jocelyn Curteanu, Dave Stockdale and John Streicker attended the half-hour speech, which began after 8:30 a.m. and received a standing ovation.

Community Services Minister Currie Dixon, NDP MLAs Liz Hanson, Jan Stick and Kate White, Liberal Leader Sandy Silver and Liberal MP candidate Larry Bagnell were also present.