COVERING nearly 2,000 kilometres of the Pacific Ocean between China and Indonesia, the islands of the Philippines are home to more than 78 million people speaking some 85 dialects including English, Tagalog, and Sugbuanon. The Philippine islands were colonized first by Spain in 1521 and then controlled by the United States until after World War II. The population of these islands is diverse, with people of Indonesian-Malay, Negrito, Chinese, Spanish, American and other European heritage.

Migration has always been a tradition within the Philippines, with movement from the smaller islands to Manila and the southern island of Mindanao, yet Filipinos did not arrive in any significant numbers in Canada until the late 1960s. Between 1971 and 1992, Filipinos constituted between four and six percent of annual immigration to Canada. Today, these newer Canadians constitute one of the fastest-growing immigrant communities in Canada. By 1996, there were 243,000 people of Filipino heritage living in Canada with half of those in Ontario, 50,000 in British Columbia and 25,000 in Alberta.

Early Filipino immigrants were mostly single women who primarily worked as nurses, medical doctors, technologists, and secretaries, but in the late 1970s and ’80s the gender imbalance had substantially decreased because family reunification became a priority of Canadian Immigration policy. Even today, roughly sixty percent of all Filipinos in Canada are female. Since the late ’80s, Filipino women many with university degrees, have arrived to work initially as nannies and domestics in order to fit in with Canada’s employment needs. Filipinos have tended to settle not in ethnic neighbourhoods but close to work and public transport. Nevertheless, Canada’s major cities are home now to Filipino organizations, many of which are based on the region of the Philippines from which people emigrated, such as the Ang Bisaya Association sa Metro Toronto and the Circulo Ilongo in Vancouver. Special interest groups such as the Philippine Women’s Sports Association of Montreal, the Fiesta Filipina Dance Troupe and Kabataan Theatre Group in Toronto, the Philippine Choral Society in Mississauga, and the Philippine Charity Society in Vancouver provide social activities for many people of Filipino heritage. Professional organizations include the Manitoba Association of Filipino teachers, the Filipino Nurses Association, and the Filipino Canadian Medical Association of Toronto. The taste of Filipino immigrants for hometown delicacies is answered by the many Filipino grocery stores, which carry items such as frozen banana leaves used for wrapping rice cakes, canned and dried fish, sausages (“langgonisa”) and cured meats (“tapa” and “tocino”). Bakeries make cassava cakes, rice-based desserts (kakanin) and a butter and sugar-topped bun (“ensaymada”). In many of these establishments one can pick up Filipino community newspapers such as the Philippine Reporter in Toronto, the Filipino Journal in Winnipeg and the Pahayagan in Ottawa that provide community news, dates for folk song performances or various Catholic religious festivals. Performance skills are highly appreciated and many Filipino Canadians were pleased to see the success of Ma-Anne Dionisio as the lead in Miss Saigon in Toronto.