| Journal of Community Safety and Well-Being (2026) 11(s1), S1–S1. | https://doi.org/10.35502/jcswb.570 |
Norman E. Taylor∗
I am thrilled to open this special 10th anniversary issue and to offer my congratulations to each and every one of you – our readers, authors, reviewers, and supporters. Each of you has contributed to the mission and together helped to build a decade of early successes for the Journal of Community Safety and Well-Being (JCSWB). In my very first editorial, in May 2016, I invited all of you to join us in a growing partnership in discovery and innovation. Your response has far, far exceeded our expectations, and as a result, we have all grown this community together.
I have many fond memories of frequent day trips into the coolest corners of downtown Toronto as a young, long-haired teen from the suburbs. In the late 1960s, there were two primary targets for any such excursion – the record stores on Yonge St. of course – and the coffee houses of Yorkville. The latter come strongly to mind as I reflect on the kind of community we have begun and nurtured, now for a decade. Everyone is welcomed. Lively and sometimes even raucous dialogue is expected. Knowledge flows and grows as it moves from one to another, from some to many, and into all the spaces in between. Two of my favourite McLuhanisms feature commonly among the psychedelic and anti-war posters lining the walls: “the medium is the message” and welcome to our “global village.” Oh, and there on those walls, just as here on our pages, peace, hope, and love abound.
I would particularly like to extend my thanks to the partners and supporters whose insightful writings and very generous reflections populate the core of this special issue. I will keep my own thoughts brief and instead I encourage you to enjoy the wonderful oral history their papers provide.
Before that, I do want to draw attention to what I personally consider to be the most significant pivot point in our first 10 years, that being the creation of our Contributing Editor Community (CEC), now numbering over 20 brilliant thought leaders representing a wide diversity on several dimensions. When we switched from the more conventional section editor model to an open, unsiloed, interdisciplinary, and global community, I would submit that is when the journal truly began to thrive and to reflect and reinforce its own self-concept.
Permit me to take the opportunity of this current occasion to introduce and congratulate our first ever emeritus editor, my long-time friend and collaborator Dr. Brian Rector. A fitting parallel to this anniversary indeed, as Brian recently leaned into his retirement from a stellar career spanning almost six decades of innovation and compassion, long before any of us coined the community safety and well-being (CSWB) terminology. My JCSWB colleagues and I thank Brian for his leadership, mentorship, and remarkable good humour, without which we might not have gotten very far in our early work together. And from my own family to yours my friend, I wish you and your loved ones all the best.
Finally, for now at least, here are just some of my own top-of-mind thoughts as we mark this milestone together. I confess I am as yet very unclear if we are actually emerging from one absurdly consequential decade or simply entering another that just might shatter the mold. Please read closely in the pages that follow as my colleagues triage this question in many both obvious and subtle ways. You will no doubt encounter and recognize strong themes and concerns that lay close ahead on our path, including rising displacement and both social and economic marginalization from hunger, poverty, war, climate, job-killing technologies, and the unmistakable age of unbridled oligarchy. Some also highlight the pernicious continuation of imbalanced efforts and resources, with worrying effects across issues of gender, youth, race and indigeneity, and north–south economic and democratic disparities.
As you all move forward with your own valiant works, in your many overlapping disciplines and in your dispersed global environments, please remember the doors to this coffee house are always open, the pots are always hot, and the hospitality is always warm enough to share some time and conversation with your friends.
With love and respect for all you do.
Norm
The author has continuing business interests that include providing advisory services to communities, police services and related human service agencies.
∗Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Community Safety and Well-Being.
Correspondence to: Norman E. Taylor. E-mail: Norm.Taylor.EIC@journalcswb.ca
This work is distributed under the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. For commercial re-use, please contact sales@sgpublishing.ca.
Journal of CSWB, VOLUME 11, NUMBER S1, May 2026