31/12/2025
Kære Alle Sammen,
As we prepare to welcome in the new year, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on the year that was and how far we have come as a group.
As Canadians in Denmark, we have a lot to be thankful for in 2025. It was the year we worked together to organise and host our first Canada Day event. Thanks to so many of you pitching in to help in all sorts of ways, Canada Day 2025 in Copenhagen was an amazing success. It is something we can all be proud of as a group. We will now use all of that work as a foundation as we begin to organise what we hope will be an even bigger Canada Day celebration in 2026.
Another big moment was a loud and proud contingent of our group coming together to take part in this year’s Pride parade in Copenhagen as part of the group Diplomats for Equality. What an amazing day, and we hope for an even better day at Pride 2026 with our own presence as Canadians in Denmark and perhaps even a float in the parade.
We were also proud to see a new chapter of Canadians in Denmark open in Northern Jutland this year. Thanks to the hard work of Steph and Jonathan, the group held its first event at Aarhus Street Food in September. A number of Canadians and their families showed up, and for those of us who were there, it was a really fun and well-organised few hours getting to know each other. Steph and Jonathan have already set up their next event on January 24 for those interested. It will involve outdoor ice skating in Aarhus, followed by drinks at a nearby Irish pub, with lots of Canadiana sprinkled in. We can’t wait!
This year, we have been very fortunate to forge a new and much closer relationship with the Canadian Embassy, thanks in no small part to the energy and vision of Ambassador Caroline Bennett. We are grateful for her work not only in directly engaging our expat community here in Denmark, but also in being a very active initiator of, and participant in, so many of our gatherings. For those of us who have been here for a while, we have seen a few ambassadors come and go, but Dr. Bennett is the first to truly see the benefit of activating Canadian expats in Denmark and working to use the potential our community offers in a variety of positive ways. This has been especially pertinent as we Canadians abroad here in Denmark have been looking to express our displeasure with the ugly rhetoric directed at Canada coming out of the United States and the Trump White House. Our “Elbows Up” meeting at the embassy, hosted by Ambassador Bennett earlier this year, was very cathartic as we began, as a group, to explore avenues for leveraging our Canadian community abroad to push back and create positive change.
It has also been really encouraging to see networking within the group for all sorts of activities, including social events—whether meeting for drinks, cheering on the Blue Jays in the World Series, or supporting Team Canada at the 2025 World Hockey Championships. We have a small but growing volunteer base active in our community working with the Danish Refugee council, among others, and are looking forward to a much larger and more active presence of Canadians doing decent things around Denmark as an identifiable community, engaged and active with other communities in Denmark. We have also seen many people turn to our online community for help on a wide variety of topics. It is heartening to see so many members jump in to offer thoughtful and informed answers in the comments that follow such posts. We look forward to seeing this continue in the new year.
Looking ahead, as a group we are working on a number of exciting initiatives for the coming year. We will debut a new website in 2026, with plans to leverage it in a variety of ways to provide a focal point for our online activities among our community of Canadian expats here in Denmark. We are also working to set up resources within the website to, for example, provide help for Canadians abroad who are in crisis. We have already held several high-level meetings with the embassy that included Canadians dealing with particularly difficult challenges, as well as Danish experts in those areas of concern. We look forward to building on the knowledge gained through those conversations to develop resources on our new CiD website that address a range of challenges facing members of our community, with the hope that they will offer meaningful avenues of help and support for others in similar situations. We have a big vision for the website, and behind the scenes there has been—and continues to be—a great deal of work happening across multiple fronts to ensure it meets our expectations.
We will also debut a quarterly newsletter in the coming year. Our hope is that it will be a fun and engaging addition for all of you throughout the year. More news and an official launch will follow in the coming months.
2026 is going to be a busy year for Canadians in Denmark, and we could use all the help we can get. If any of you would like to volunteer your time—whether for our next Canada Day event or any of the other activities on our 2026 calendar—please feel free to fill out our google docs sign up sheet (https://forms.gle/tg488BbJSggjGEfL8) for a range of activities in the coming year We would love to hear from you if you have ideas or initiatives of your own that you think would suit our group and its members.
Also make sure to follow our LinkedIn page if you haven’t already.
Finally, we want to say thank you to all of you. We have seen so many new members come on board this year, along with an incredible growth in activities and connections within our expat community. We live in a world filled with sudden uncertainty, and with too many bad actors seeking to divide us and tear us apart. Yet, within that gathering storm, as Canadians, our families, and those connected to Canada who share the common experience of living here in Denmark, we have chosen the strength of community and the positivity of connection. That is something to be thankful for and to draw hope from. Thank you all.
Happy New Year / Godt Nytår from all of us at Canadians in Denmark (CiD)
