The annual National Trust Conference is Canada’s largest heritage learning and networking event. Held every year since 1974, the National Trust Conference brings together a wide-range of people working to keep Canada’s heritage alive: from grassroots activists and elected officials, to professionals, planners, policy makers, and property owners.
National Trust Conference 2026 – Waterloo Region, ON
Read the Call for Presentations.
Submit a Presentation Proposal. Click here
The heritage conservation sector in Canada faces a “perfect storm” of social and political pressures. Heritage places are increasingly threatened by fast-tracked development, deregulation, and housing demands, even as rising cultural nationalism highlights their vital role in Canadian identity and economic resilience. At the same time, the sector is advancing reconciliation, addressing inequities in practice, and leading on climate action.
In this period of rapid change, how can the heritage sector shape the future of Canada’s tangible and intangible heritage? How are societal shifts and new technologies transforming conservation and stewardship? What will heritage leadership look like tomorrow? Canada’s largest heritage learning and networking event will convene 500+ professionals, policymakers, industry and NGO leaders, academics, students, and volunteers. Join this dynamic, annual, cross-sector conversation.
Heritage Futures will bring together bold ideas, practical case studies, and solution-focused dialogue to chart a path forward.
2026 Conference Themes and Tracks
Housing Creating & Building Reuse: Heritage Solutions for Increasing Density, Accelerating Development, and Reducing Carbon
Re-Storying and Reclaiming Heritage Places: Heritage Sites, Policies, and Organizations
Retooling the Heritage System: Policy, Codes, and Communities in a New Era
Craft, Tech, and Teaching: Leveraging Digital Tools, Sustaining Heritage Knowledge, and Educating the Next Generation
Past Conferences
National Trust Conference 2025 – Halifax, NS
Conference Website: Click here
Full Printed Conference Program: Click Here
Heritage conservation in Canada has never felt more critically important, whether it’s recognizing marginalized places, responding to the climate emergency, or helping sustain the sense of place, pride, and wellbeing of communities. And yet Canada’s heritage movement is under unprecedented pressures: from social disruption and calls to resolve inequities, to seismic economic or environmental shifts, to rapid intensification for housing. How to navigate this societal sea change? Where is heritage now, and where does it need to be? Now is a time for the full spectrum of the “heritage eco-system” – non-profits to professionals, government to educational institutions and industry – to come together, and rearticulate the value of sustaining and reinventing our heritage places. Now is the time for action.
