Sisters Under the Skin

At the height of the tourist season, we have reason to hope that Los Angeles visitors to Expo ’86 in Vancouver, B.C., will be repairing family relations and international relations with that shiny city along the Strait of Georgia.

The trouble boiled as long ago as last spring, when the Vancouver Sun, looking down its editorial nose toward the south, questioned the impending sister-city relationship between us: “ . . . bold, brash, tarty Los Angeles? Is that really our style? Some of us would have preferred San Francisco for a sibling city in California.” Then, in July, the New Yorker repeated the slur in a graceful article about Expo by E. J. Kahn.

Unhappy news travels slowly down these Pacific longitudes; shared water is thicker than bad blood. The sisterly relationship was officially cemented, despite shadows cast by the Sun, in June, when Vancouver became our 15th sibling city (14th, if you don’t count Tehran, which has been at least temporarily suspended during the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s less-than-brotherly posture). From Athens to Auckland, from Bordeaux to Bombay, Los Angeles already leads the nation in adopting cities--part of our bold brashness, no doubt. Our tartiness, a matter of domestic dispute, has not frightened the good citizens of Nagoya, Japan, or Lusaka, Zambia. Both Vancouver and Los Angeles, in fact, are already related to Canton, China--sometimes called Guangzhou.

So, belatedly--but in the spirit of one coast, one community--we welcome Vancouver to the family and suggest that San Francisco remain a middle ground: kissing cousin to both.