“Ang hindi lumingon sa pinanggalingan ay hindi makakarating sa paroroonan.”
What’s that hyphen for? Does that mean you’re not a pure Pinoy anymore?
Yep, I used to be one but I renounced it to become a Canadian citizen. Also, I have lived a lot longer in Canada than the Philippines. My daughter and granddaughter were born here. Canada has given me so much more, especially in terms of economic and health security. In fact, I get annoyed a lot when somebody asks me: Where are you from? I wish I could answer back: “Canada, of course. What are you, a mushroom?” But I resist from being rude, mindful of the Canadian way, eh.
But no matter how much I detest the question, a tiger cannot easily change its stripes. My accent is still Pinoy. I have to pause when I speak in English, always searching for the right words to say. I’m also still having difficulty understanding especially when the speakers talk fast, or when they have the Irish/Scottish accents, or when they rap.
Another thing that irks me so much is when I meet a kababayan and greet him/her with the usual acknowledgement: Oy, kumusta ba? I usually get this surprised look and the response: Ay, akala ko intsik kayo. I think the response is neither complementary nor necessary. What’s more infuriating sometimes is that the kababayan looks more Chinese than me. And by calling me intsik first, I guess the kababayan feels happy and secure in firmly establishing his/her Pinoyness.
If we can’t correctly identify the Pinoys in our midst, how do the non-Pinoys categorize us? Are we Chinese or Asians, or just simply visible minorities? What are their impressions or perceptions of us? What are the stereotypes they throw at us? Are we valuable contributors to the Canadian society? Or are we just social and economic burdens? How are we as a cohesive Filipino community?
In October, 1993 a ground-breaking book was published by Kalayaan Media Ltd. that chronicled the life stories of Filipinos immigrating to Canada with particular emphasis on those who settled in Ontario, especially in Windsor, Ottawa and Toronto. It was titled Portrait of Filipino Canadians in Ontario (1960 – 1990). The author of this book was the late Ruben J. Cusipag, the former editor and publisher of Balita.
The book was anecdotal, amassed from personal interviews and the issues of local community newspapers, such as Balita and Atin Ito. It described the trials and tribulations of individual Filipinos upon setting foot on Canadian soil, as well as the growth and development of the Filipino communities “in terms of the economic, social, cultural, religious, and political aspects.”
It provided valuable insights to the success and failure of Filipinos in making this promised land of Canada as either a replacement or extension of a familiar life in the Philippines. What’s notable from the attitude of these pioneers was their reluctance to come here. Nobody knew a thing about Canada. Those who arrived here via the United States decided to come here as a last resort. Their green card application was taking so long. And those arriving from the Philippines came here because Canada was less stringent when it came to immigration as compared to south of the border or other foreign countries.
Another gleaming absence in attitude of those interviewed was their lack of patriotism to Canada. Nobody said, “I love Canada in spite of its cold winter, although it’s got four seasons I can enjoy and look forward to; or, I am so blessed to be here because Canada allows me and my family to thrive freely and economically; or, Canada is home now.” Instead there’s a general sense of “subtle racism” experienced, especially in the workplace. And by that, Canada was just an economic haven and a difficult place to really belong and be identified homogenously as Canadian.
According to the book, the Filipino community had grown from 1,467 in 1965 to 153,303 in 1990. From this glowing statistics, it could be said that the non-Pinoys had a generally good impression of Filipinos. Of course it helped that the federal government had liberalized its immigration policy. But more credit should be factored in due to Filipinos’ dedication to hard work, their education and skills and their love of family. In the whole context of a good society, Filipinos have shown they are valuable contributors rather than economic parasites.
Sometimes, though, the Filipino community could be the target of bad press. An article in the November 29, 1981 issue of the Toronto Sun depicted the Filipinos as dog-eating lovers. Its title in bold letters, “Dogs doomed to die in torture market”, condemned the entire Filipino community. In Cusipag’s book, “Many Filipino Canadian children went home complaining that their classmates ridiculed them allegedly for being dog slaughterers. Many Filipino Canadian employees also became the butt of jokes.”
Nine years ago, I received from the mail a catalogue of books from the University of Toronto Press. In the list was Filipinos in Canada: Disturbing Invisibility (2012), edited by Roland Sintos Coloma, Bonnie McElhinny, Ethel Tungohan, John Paul C. Catungal, and Lisa M. Davidson. I purchased the book out of curiosity. As soon as I received it I skimmed it to have a sense of what’s it all about.
The book has 441 pages of academic gobbledygook. It is divided into five parts with 20 chapters written by 29 contributors. The target readers are professors, scholars and researchers “from the vantage points of anthropology, cultural studies, education, geography, history, information science, literature, political science, sociology, and women and gender studies.” It is a difficult reading for the average Filipino-Canadian reader.
Part one deals with the issues of racial “Difference and Recognition” vis-à-vis Canada’s policies on multiculturalism and immigration. Chapter 1, for example, takes on the paradox of being “invisible and hypervisible” that the Filipino community faces. It argues that we are “invisible because numerous kinds of people, problems, and achievements are ignored, and hypervisible because only the stereotypes are deemed relevant and significant for public circulation.” And what are these stereotypes? The authors enumerated what they called tropes: “victimized nanny, selfless nurse, and problematic gangster youth.”
Part two aims at the conditions shaping Filipinos since the 1960s in terms of “Gender, Migration, and Labour”. Four chapters describe the experiences of nurses and live-in caregivers. According to Cusipag in their aforementioned book, “The Filipino newcomers in Metro Toronto in the 1960s were easily absorbed into the work force. The nurses and doctors were very high in demand.” And they were given immigrant status right away. In Chapter 4, “The Recruitment of Filipino Healthcare Professionals to Canada in the 1960s”, written by Valerie G. Damasco, the author was surprised to see a recruitment letter dated October 7, 1965 from the Riverdale Hospital in Toronto addressed to her aunt in the Philippines offering her a job as a nursing assistant with a starting salary of $235.35 per month. That was indeed unusual and extraordinary. Several years later, the easy demand for professional nurses from the Philippines was closed and they could only come to Canada through the Live-in Care Program (LCP). And they could only apply for immigrant status after two years of continuous stay in Canada.
Part three, “Representation and Its Discontents”, discusses how Filipinos and the Philippines are showcased in “mainstream technologies, such as museums, textbooks, and public libraries, and by Filipina/o artists themselves.” Part four, “Youth Spaces and Subjectivities”, focuses on the experiences of Filipino-Canadian youth. And Part five, “Contemplating New Spaces in Canadian Studies”, plots the directions of future research on Filipino-Canadians as a separate field in Canadian studies.
According to Statistics Canada’s census of 2006, visible minorities were 16.2% of Canada’s total population and Filipino-Canadians made up 8.1% of visible minorities. Thus, the Filipino community can represent an impactful ethnic voting bloc during any federal, provincial or municipal election. That’s why nowadays politicians of all parties can be seen attending Filipino community events, large or small. But the Filipino community still suffers as a monolithic group. As noted by Cusipag, the aspiration of having all the Filipino organizations into one umbrella always fell short because of transported regionalism, misuse of funds, internal bickering, diverse interests, lack or excess of democratic procedures, too many arguments, and petty politics.
I am still part of the generation that was born as a Pinoy and will die as a Filipino-Canadian. My link to the Philippines cannot be easily broken. But I submit here that the majority of Filipino youth (pure or mixed) born in Canada will be completely merged in the Western culture and Canadian values. It is a generation that will have “no memories to bind it to the old, vanished world…a generation born without umbilical cord…And yet it had right on its side,” says Arthur Koestler in Darkness at Noon (1940). There won’t be a hyphen, just Canadians. Canada is home.
When I watched Dr. Eileen de Villa, the scarf-loving chief medical officer of Toronto, did her daily news briefings during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, together with Mayor John Tory and Fire Chief Matthew Pegg, all I could see, without the benefit of checking into her personal history, a Canadian doctor performing her professional duty. She belonged in the podium equally and rightfully with the two male Caucasians. She’s what I envision as the great example of a generation with a Filipino blood simply being Canadian. Her generation has come so far to be held back by values and traditions from distant shore.
HAPPY CANADA DAY EVERYONE
24 June 2021