At first sight, Port of Spain and St Catharines, Ontario, couldn’t be more different.

About 4,000 kms north of Port of Spain, St Catharines is frozen during winter, and even as the eighth largest urban area in the province of Ontario, dwarfs its “twin city” in area and population.

What the two cities have in common, Philip Atteck – the Trinidadian responsible for twinning the two cities – once said, are the warmth and vibrancy of their people.

St Catharines (frequently misspelt and wrongly given an apostrophe), is in the Niagara Region and is one of its least populous with about 140,000 residents. A sizeable minority include Caribbean migrants and generational migrants, who have found comfort in one of Canada’s many welcoming cities.

The flag of Port of Spain was recently hoisted by St Catharines mayor Mat Siscoe, at St Catharines City Hall, to commemorate the 55th anniversary of the twinning, an arrangement formalised in 1968.

Twinning began after World War II when Japan, led by survivors of the catastrophic Hiroshima bombings, reached out to several European countries and cities, and approached the UN with an idea to “mundialise,” (from the word French word mondial, meaning "global”), with an end goal to prevent such human-caused tragedies from recurring.

About two decades later, in 1965, Richard Hilker, a manager at Air Canada, asked Atteck, sales manager for Radio Guardian, to tour Canada to promote the Caribbean as a tourist destination for Canadians. Atteck travelled across the country, and with the support of donations and promotional materials, led a successful campaign to boost the Caribbean’s visibility as a tourist destination.

[caption id="attachment_1040575" align="alignnone" width="230"] Barb Peters, St Catharines Twinning executive, left, with Sassy Garcia, Port of Spain twinning executive, at the Grape and Wine Festival, an annual feature of the association's calendar. -[/caption]

During his tour, Atteck visited St Catharines, and the idea of twinning St Catharines and Port of Spain was conceived. Twinning committees were formed, and the cities officially twinned in 1968, embracing the UN Charter of Human Rights.

The arrangement was formalised in August, 1968 when Hamilton Holder, shortly after becoming mayor of Port of Spain, officially declared Port of Spain a “mundialised city.” St Catharines mayor Mackenzie Chown was in Trinidad for the ceremony and declared his support for the newly twinned cities.

Holder pledged on behalf of Port of Spain residents to “observe and uphold the universal declaration of human rights by the UN,” and “to join the rest of the world in the pursuit of peace, justice and friendly co-operation.”

From there, the St Catharines Twinning Association was established.

Atteck, who has been credited as the inspiration for the popular tourist attraction Festival of Lights in Niagara Falls, and served as honorary chairman of the association, died in 2009.

The twinning arrangement led to a number of benefits, including free surgical treatment for Trinida