The Town of Oliver is hoping to get pollinated again by its sister city, but first it needs to find a few worker bees who are willing to make the trip.
Since the early 1960s, communities around British Columbia were being matched with similar sized towns and cities in Japan. In 1988, Oliver was paired with Bandai, Fukushima (pop. 3,599), and cultural exchanges have been sporadically arranged ever since.
Delegates from Bandai are scheduled to arrive in Canada’s wine capital this fall, which prompted the Oliver Tourism Association to start the process of finding its own delegates to send to Japan for the spring of 2017.
Bandai delegates planned their trip for the fall time, as the tourism association encouraged the visit to coincide with Festival of the Grape.
There have been several groups of Oliver delegates to visit Bandai in years past, such as Mayor Ron Hovanes, who’s been there four times with his wife Tara.
“It’s a wonderful cultural experience,” he said. “Bandai has a similar population to Oliver but there’s less infrastructure. It’s very much a rural farming community, and it really gave a taste and flavour of rural Japan.”
Both Oliver and Bandai’s economies count on agriculture and tourism to support a healthy GDP. But instead of luring tourists to the area with vineyards, the Alts Bandai Ski Resort is the main draw for visitors in the sister city.
As hosts, the two towns offer their sister city guests the full experience. Delegates receive generous amounts of hospitality which make the trip essentially cost-free aside from the airfare. A Google search for flights from Kelowna to Tokyo in March 2017 shows costs under $1,200 for a round trip.
“They treat you like royalty,” Hovanes said, mentioning the numerous cultural sites, festivals, museums and temples that complete the experience.
The mayor noted that Oliver has a second sibling in the family of municipalities – Chelan, Washington – and while that relationship is tended to, it is more “hit-and-miss” than Oliver’s alliance with Bandai.
Another past delegate to Bandai was Marion Trimble, who was representing the arts council.
“It was such a beautiful country – so green and lush,” she said. “It was absolutely fabulous.”
Trimble admitted she was apprehensive about making the trip in the beginning, not really knowing the other delegates from Oliver, but it turned out to be “such an eye-opening experience.”
For Beth Garrish, vice-chair of the Oliver Tourism Association, the most invaluable part of the trip is the exchange of ideas.
“It is an opportunity to become more aware of what people are doing in other parts of the world,” she said. “The differences and similarities; you can be half-way across the world and people are the same.”
Anybody up for the challenge to represent Oliver in Bandai can contact the Oliver Tourism Association at [email protected].
DAN WALTON
Oliver Chronicle
