A Harley-Davidson motorcycle is the first piece of debris from the Japanese tsunami discovered in Canada, on an isolated beach.

Peter Mark, a Canadian who was riding his ATV on Graham Island, suddenly noticed a big white cube, looking like a part of a moving truck. When he approached the object, he noticed a motorcycle tire through the destroyed door.

“I went closer and looked inside and saw a Harley-Davidson motorcycle,” with Japanese writing on the licence, he said. “The wall of the trailer had Japanese print on the tags. And the first thing that popped into my head was this is likely from the Tsunami in Japan”.

Mark invites everybody who may experience similar discoveries to treat the things they find with respect. “These are parts of people’s lives. Some people lost everything in the disaster, and I think people have to keep that in mind when they make a find like this.”

The authorities promised to try to identify the owner of the motorcycle in Japan.

A soccer ball was recently found 3,000 kilometres from Japan, on Alaska’s Middleton Island, by a man who saw the writing in Japanese and immediately thought it would be possible that it comes from the tsunami zone. A 16-year-old Japanese teenager was then identified as the owner. “I’ve never imagined that my ball has reached Alaska,” he said. “I’ve lost everything in the tsunami, so I’m delighted.”