Event report (World Plaza ~Canada edition~)

World Plaza ~Canada Edition~

　``World Plaza'' was held at Ohno Minami Community Center on Sunday, December 12th. The speaker was Marshall Elliott Ginsler Viner from Canada.

　Marshall is from Toronto. Toronto is Canada's largest city, rich in nature, has long and cold winters but comfortable summers, and has been a friendly city with Sagamihara for 30 years. They talked about a variety of topics, hoping to convey at least one thing they didn't know about Canada.

　Canada is a country about 26 times larger than Japan in area, but its population is about 1/3 of Japan, and it is a multi-ethnic country with many immigrants. Official languages ​​are English and French. Many people in Quebec only speak French, so when Marshall was traveling, he was unable to understand the language when he tried to ask for directions, and only the fourth person was able to speak English. Furthermore, as it is a country where many ethnic groups maintain their own cultures and have a mosaic-like structure, the culture is diverse, and for example, there are various foods that have different roots.
Winter sports are popular, and ice hockey is the national winter sport. By the way, the national sport of summer is lacrosse.

To put it simply, Canada is a country with very cold winters, rich nature, and a wide variety of people and cultures. According to Mr. Marshall, the autumn leaves are so beautiful that he never gets tired of looking at them.

During the question and answer period, many people asked questions about multicultural coexistence, hoping to get some tips from Canada, and Ms. Marshall answered each one carefully. Everyone listened intently, demonstrating a strong interest in multiculturalism in Canada.

At the end, Mr. Marshall gave us a guitar performance.


Marshall has been in Japan for four months. He speaks Japanese surprisingly fluently. When he was in junior high school, he became interested in Japanese manga and other things, joined a Japanese American soccer team, and improved his language skills through the experience of being surrounded by Japanese.

I was impressed by Mr. Marshall's sincere approach to the participants' questions. Apparently they hold a social gathering called "Marshall's Room" in the international lounge every Thursday afternoon. If you want to know more about Canada and Toronto, it's a good idea to stop by.