Ten years ago, the Kultura Filipino Arts Festival was held in the Kensington Market basement of Kapisanan Philippine Centre for Arts and Culture, with a single food vendor standing outside in the rain. 

To celebrate their 10th annual KULTURA Filipino Arts Festival, Kapisanan Philippine Centre for Arts and Culture will feature a four-show run of  “Livin’ La Vida Imelda” at OCAD University.

This summer, a twenty-eight-year-old Filipina is preparing to move to Winnipeg, Manitoba. She’s packing her things, finding an apartment, and attending orientation. But she’s not a student; she’s a professor. 

On June 19th, the opening night of the Lift Off! Festival, a packed Cahoots Theatre held the first public reading of Jo SiMalaya Alcampo’s play, “Hilot Means Healer.”

Author Jose “Butch” Dalisay Jr. gave two presentations at Malvern’s Blessed Mother Teresa CSS as part of his tour with FSALA, the Toronto Festival of Literature and the Arts.

On May 23rd, the TCDSB hosted Proudly Pinoy, an annual Asian Heritage Month event for the Filipino community. 250 people gathered at James Cardinal McGuigan Catholic High School to celebrate their Filipino heritage and to learn how to improve their lives in Canada.

“My parents told me that I can’t live on my own,” he said. “It’s not because it’s cheaper to live at home. They just think I’m too young.”

“Students are supposed to transfer to the academic stream later on. Unfortunately, however, it seems that many newcomers are relegated to the applied courses for the rest of their high school stay.”

On April 1st, 2015, federal government regulations regarding temporary foreign workers caused what many are calling one of the largest deportations in Canadian history. According to the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, an estimated 70,000 workers will have to leave Canada.

On Saturday night, while waiting for his father to pick him up at a Brampton bus terminal, 22 year-old Kev Panlilio saw a man screaming at a young woman. When the man began to punch her, Panlilio, the lone witness in the terminal, knew that he needed to step in.

In memory of Flor Contemplacion, members of Migrante Ontario, iWWorkers, Gabriela Canada, and Anakbayan Toronto held a rally on March 20th outside of the Philippine Consulate.

For many newcomer youth, March Break is just a time to relax at home. But in the GTA, three community agencies have free programs that may give them a brighter future in Canada.

With one of the largest Filipino populations of any riding in Canada, MP Mark Adler of York Centre feels very connected to the Filipino community: “I say all the time, I might look Jewish, but my heart is Filipino.”

They’ve been called bakla, tomboy, bading, silahis, and tibo. And on January 23rd and 24th, they were recognized as community leaders and role models. At Diasporic Intimacies: Queer Filipinos/as and Canadian Imaginaries, Filipino-Canadian history was made with the first-ever queer Filipinos in Canada conference.

Recently, a new set of regulations took effect that drastically changed the Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP). To discuss the impacts of these changes, Dr. Philip Kelly of the York Centre for Asian Research organized a panel of legal professionals and caregiver advocates.

For the first time in Filipino-Canadian history, there will be a Queer Filipinos in Canada conference. This event brings together Filipino and Filipina artists, activists, academics and frontline community workers. It is open to everyone, and free of charge.

For students who have just arrived in Canada, the pressure of adapting to their new lives is often too much to bear.

Every year, the Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB) celebrates Asian Heritage Month with a day dedicated to the Filipino community called “Proudly Pinoy.”