It's not you it's me: Why Hope rebuffed French mayor's advances

A 2023 fling was so memorable that a French mayor is asking for a long-distance relationship with the District of Hope. But the BC municipality needs time to work on itself.

Last month, Eric Koeberlé, the mayor of Bavilliers, France, a community of roughly 5,000 people about 430 kilometres southeast of Paris, wrote a letter to Mayor Victor Smith, gauging interest in establishing a “twin city” partnership.

“We would be delighted to build ties with you to strengthen the bonds of friendship between France and Canada,” Koeberlé wrote in the letter, which was discussed at a public council meeting on Oct. 15. You can read the letter here.

The letter comes roughly one year after Koeberlé visited Hope during a stay in the Rocky Mountains. He said the two cities have a lot in common—including their population and proximity to large forests—and could forge a strong, international relationship.

However, it’s an ‘it’s not you, it’s me,’ situation between Hope and Bavilliers, Smith told The Current. Hope needs to strengthen the relationship with its current twin city, Izu, Japan, before entertaining any new twin city commitments.

“We’ve twin-citied with Japan and we haven’t done enough with them,” Smith said. “I’d rather do one well than two not well.”

Like any long-distance partnership, the success of the relationship is based on commitment. In 1995, Hope and Izu agreed to become twin cities, a broad agreement that usually involves cultural exchanges and shared projects between the two municipalities.

Izu has sent delegations to Hope, and vice-versa, multiple times following the agreement, Smith said. A group of 19 students from Japan visited Hope in 2012. Seiji Okada, the consul-general of Japan, also visited Hope two years later and discussed the possibility of residents travelling to Izu in the future.

But Smith said the last co-operation between the two cities occurred about five years ago, when a group from Izu visited Hope. Smith has since talked with multiple dignitaries and the consulate general of Japan about jumpstarting visits between the municipalities. That could include sending local students overseas.

“It’s an eye-opener for kids to go to another country,” Smith said, adding that renewing dialogue with the Japanese community is necessary as the district preserves the Hope Station House, a century-old building that transported many Japanese-Canadians to internment sites in the 1940s.

“It’s important for our local culture,” he said.

(Click here to read about the Tashme internment camp, where Japanese-Canadians were forced to live during the Second World War.)

Smith isn’t ruling out partnering with Bavilliers in the future once Hope rebuilds its ties with Izu.

“We’ll see then because we want to get this one up to speed,” Smith said. “We need to do lesser things well instead of band-aiding everything.”