It’s official: Sedona and Canmore, Alberta, Canada, became Sister Cities during a signing ceremony in Canmore on the afternoon of Saturday, June 28,

Canmore, a recreational town nestled in the Canadian Rockies, is Sedona’s first official Sister City.

“While today’s agreement is formal, its deeper meaning is personal,” Sedona Sister Cities Association President Chuck Marr said. “Peace is sustained not by governments alone, but by the relationships between individuals. Friendships that create trust, spark understanding and bridge cultures over time. Sister Cities like Canmore and Sedona remind us that true diplomacy begins with shared stories, open hearts and hands extended in friendship.”

After starting discussions in November 2023, the two municipalities’ respective councils approved the agreement early in June, and residents have had several visits back and forth between citizens, online meetings and online cultural exchanges between schools across the border. Additionally, Sedona City Council approved a two-year friendship agreement on April 23, 2024, and plans to vote on a separate friendship agreement this month with Jasło, Poland.

“Since our inception in 1956, Sister Cities International has worked to create global relationships based on cultural, educational, information and trade exchanges,” the SCI website reads. 

“Participants developed lifelong friendships that provide prosperity and peace through person-to-person ‘citizen diplomacy.’ Today, we continue to expand our reach and strengthen existing relationships. Our members boast exchanges in arts and culture, business and trade, youth and education and community development that not only bring them friendship, but help them to tackle the world’s most pressing issues at the local level.”

Sedona Mayor Scott Jablow read an email from Sedona resident Bruce Browning about the friendships he developed in Canmore with Butch and Allie Whitbread, after crashing on their couch during the 1988 Winter Olympics in nearby Calgary.

“I wasn’t prepared for the pressures of college and decided to leave school and travel for a semester with an ultimate destination of the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary,” Browning wrote. “But how does a penniless college student attend one of the most expensive events in the world? I called and spoke with a phone operator in Canmore who said she had a friend who was considering having guests in her home for the games.”

While Browning’s original visit to the Whitbreads in Canmore was a week, over the years he made over a dozen return visits to the two.

“Allie lost Butch to cancer several years ago and she is now transitioning to an assisted living facility,” Browning wrote. “However I wanted to share with you the powerful connection I feel between my current home, Sedona and my friends in our sister city, Canmore. What an amazingly special place and community. I consider them family.”

“I know that this resonates with the folks from Sedona as well, because so much of what we value and we face and we enjoy and we participate here in Canmore can be said for the same folks in Sedona,” Canmore Mayor Sean Krausert said. “ I think that Sister Cities really need to be a grassroots thing, not a municipality leadership. It has to be something that there’s a shared understanding of expectations. And there has to be, not a reliance upon those that are in office that will change, but really built in with roots [of residents].”

Canmore throughout the process has reiterated one of the lessons that it’s learned from a previous sister city relationship with Higashikawa Japan that has been inactive since 2013, is that such partnerships need to be driven by residents and not governments. A point that Marr reiterated is seen with the members of the Sedona delegation paying their own travel to Canmore.

Additionally, Executive Director of Community Library Sedona Judy Poe and Director of the Canmore Public Library Michelle Preston signed a separate agreement, as ten attendees, including Sedona Vice Mayor Holli Ploog and Councilors Melissa Dunn and Kathy Kinsella, watched the ceremony streamed into a CLS study room.

“It is very exciting. I actually got the chills, because we’ve been working on this for so many years,” Ploog said. What “I’ve learned [from this process] is that we have a lot to offer each other … and we have a lot to learn to help each other to succeed.”

Ploog cited affordable housing as a primary area where Sedona and Canmore can learn from each other.

“Canmore has an affordable housing village where they have combined housing and recreation and open space and commercial [space] similar to what we’re looking at for the Western Gateway,” Ploog said. “When some folks from Sedona went up to Canmore last year, they were all really excited about what Canmore has done in this area and they wanted to bring it back to Sedona.”

“There’s a bright future for Canmore and Sedona, two communities now bound by shared purpose and enduring friendship,” Marr said.

For more information about SSCA visit sedonasistercities.org