A community mourns

Re: “Officer helpless to stop wrong-way vehicle; Hotel staff rally to support families of four co-workers killed in crash,” The

Journal, March 7. I am a Filipino immigrant living in Edmonton. I mourn with the rest of the local Filipino community for the senseless death of four foreign workers Sunday night in a highway accident near Innisfail.

This accident is particularly hard to accept because impaired driving charges have been laid in connection with the crash.

We leave our families back home to work in First World countries. Most of us are professionals who are willing to do service jobs here because we earn much more money than we would back home. We send our earnings home. The money gives our families better lives; it gives our children better futures. We support family members by sending them to school. We help even extended families.

Many of us work two jobs. We leave our families and are homesick. We are called “Bagong Bayani” (new heroes) by our government because we help our economy.

The Philippines is a country of 95 million people in a land mass half the size of Alberta. We have too many people and too few jobs. Thus, we need to work abroad. We do not want to leave home, but for the sake of our families we have no choice.

Our community is in shock and in mourning. The four workers who died left home full of enthusiasm and hope for a brighter future. They’re going home in boxes.

With these four people also died the dreams of four families.