MANILA TO MANITOBA ORAL HISTORY EXHIBIT

Official Opening Friday June 18, 2010

The Manila to Manitoba Exhibit draws from 25 oral history interviews with community pioneers, recent immigrants, as well as second-generation Filipino-Canadians on the growth of the Filipino-Canadian community in Winnipeg from 1960 to 2010. The exhibit includes never before seen portraitures, replicas of artefacts, and documents that illustrate the differing waves of migration from the Philippine to Canada.

Contact us to RSVP for the official launch – the culmination of years of research. This project has brought together Filipino-Canadians across the social spectrum – as students, pioneering seniors, newcomers, and second-generation youth – in an effort to preserve our culture and history here in Winnipeg.

Celebrate with us and make our stories – as Filipinos, Canadians, and Manitoba known! Visit the exhibit at the Manitoba Museum (190 Rupert).


Stay tuned for the official publication from ANAK Publishing Worker Cooperative.

NOSTALGIA PILI-PEG

People Power, Martial Law and Winnipeg

In 1972, President Ferdinand Marcos declared Martial Law thereby enforcing an end to fundamental freedoms and rights enjoyed by Filipinos at home. For Filipinos in the diaspora, including those in Winnipeg, Marcos’ decree was a cause for worry as much as it was a call for action. The Filipino living outside the Philippines was, although out of reach physically, very much involved intellectually in the movement that would culminate as People Power in 1986. The tie between the Filipino and the Philippines; the Filipino-Canadian and Canada; and eventually Canada and the Philippines under Marcos were conceptualized by one and the same person through his/her multiple migrant identities. Events were organized, messages fowarded, and funds likely raised as a show of support miles away. Kalayaan Philippine News and Views, a community paper published by Ted Alcuitas, agitated rising anti-Marcos sentiment in Winnipeg. The paper later welcomed church official and key People Power proponent, Cardinal Jaime Sin to Winnipeg in a 1988 visit to the city under the Winnipeg Filipino Project. The push for Philippine Democracy from the diaspora appears to have been acknowledged by Cardinal Sin’s visit to Winnipeg. I will reserve the discussions shared in our Oral History interviews on this topic for the actual Manitoba Museum exhibit so do stay tuned!

I can go on forever about Martial Law and its implications to Filipinos living outside of the Philippines as an intro to what multitudes more can be said about People Power and Philippine politics, but I leave that for you to learn and discover. Instead, listen to Mr. Benigno ‘Ninoy’ Aquino, the foremost opponent to Marcos and later celebrated martyr of Philippine democracy, speak as a vocal exile in the diaspora in this American interview on the 700 Club.

Source: (top) Winnipeg Free Press (25 February 1986); (middle) Kalayaan Vol.5, No.1 (January 1988); (bottom)tscacbnasia You Tube channel (uploaded 23 Dec 2008)