The City of Vernon in Canada and Tome City are sister cities.

In August 1906, 102 years ago, the people of Yonekawa Village (present-day Towa-cho in Tome City) were on the verge of starvation due to crop failure. Therefore, in order to help the citizens of Yonekawa, a man named Oikawa Jintaro led an expedition of 82 people by ship to Canada.

Without having been given official permission to emigrate, the ship smuggled its way by disguising itself as a fishing boat.

The party spent 50 days crossing the Pacific Ocean, after which they were not only granted permission to land but were given a warm welcome by the Canadian government. The people found success in Canada processing salmon at an island in the Fraser River near Vancouver.

Many people ended up emigrating permanently to Canada in this way, and there are still many people with links to Tome City living in Vernon City, which has since become Tome's sister city.

This year, an ALT will be joining us from Vernon City. This will be done through the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme, which was established in 1987 to contribute to the internationalization of Japan and the promotion of mutual understanding between Japan and other countries through language teaching and grass-root-level international exchange.

The furthering of this kind of human resource exchange is important for the intercommunication between our sister cities.

I believe that ALTs have a large role to play in the strengthening of these relations.