Charleroi hosts mayor from its namesake in Belgium
CHARLEROI – The mayor of Charleroi, Belgium, suspects he and others from his city share DNA with residents of a borough bearing the same name in the Mon Valley.
About 500 residents of the city in Belgium left their homes in the late 1800s to help give birth to the Charleroi along the Monongahela River, said Paul Magnette, mayor of the city in Europe.
“They knew nothing of this place, left their families so far away and came here full of hope,” Magnette said Wednesday when he and a small delegation from Belgium visited the Charleroi in Pennsylvania.
The local mayor, Ed Bryner, presented Magnette with a symbolic key to his borough following a lunch of salad and wraps at Riverhouse Cafe.
“We’d like to visit your city sometime,” Bryner said.
Both Charlerois share similar issues, such as blight and a loss of steel and glassmaking jobs, said Steve Toprani, the borough’s solicitor.
The city in Belgium is much older and larger, with a population of 202,000 people, as compared to the borough in the Mon Valley, which is home to about 4,100 residents.
“They share the same type of collapse of industries,” Toprani said.
Magnette and his entourage are spending a week in the United States. They came to Charleroi from Pittsburgh, where they looked at universities. They were expected to travel Wednesday night to Detroit.
Magnette said he knew one day he would come to Charleroi, Washington County, which is about 3,000 miles away from his city.
“We actually came for you,” he said while talking to elected officials and others in the cafe.
“We have the same history,” he said.
Magnette also praised the residents of Charleroi, Belgium, for “contributing to the growth of this nation.”
“They produced some of the best glass and steel in the world. Sometimes we forget that.”