Filipino centre unites generations
No one was more thrilled to see yesterday’s opening of a cultural home for Filipino Canadians than Martha Ocampo. The Kensington Market centre, which will throb with the youthful energies of film and theatre companies, could help a new generation reconnect with its roots. But it was a long time coming for the 58- year- old Mississauga nurse. Ocampo and other community members have been fundraising for the Kapisanan Philippine Cultural Centre since the 1980s, when live- in caregivers and nurses started arriving in Canada in droves from the Philippines, often using the Eaton Centre as a gathering spot. Over the past two decades, the community tripled in size, but the dream threatened to fade.
After many fundraising dinners and gatherings in church basements, banquet halls and recreation centres, the group finally had $ 180,000 in the till last year. Then came the biggest problem: They had lost touch with what the community would need after all these years. But Nadine Villasin and Caroline Mangosing, and their Canadianborn peers, had an answer: The community needs a space to rediscover its identity in the Canadian mosaic.
“ For us growing up in Canada, we don’t know what the Philippines is. People know more about the number of shoes ( disgraced former first lady) Imelda Marcos had than the People Power Revolution that overthrew her husband’s dictatorship in 1986,” laments Villasin, 31, a Toronto actor. The joint product of the two Filipino- Canadian generations is a 3,500-square-foot storefront cultural centre on Augusta Ave. It has a gallery space, resource centre, meeting rooms and dance studio, and joins the community’s three other facilities on the outskirts of the city. The group hopes Kapisanan will become the place to be for its “ lost” generation in the hub of immigrant Canada. Long considered a well- integrated community because of their Catholic heritage, collective colonial history and Englishskills, many of Canada’s 200,000 Filipinos — most of them in Greater Toronto — are still struggling to define their identity here. Ocampo’s organization has seen its membership dwindle from a peak of 200 individuals and families down to 80 in the past decade. “ Some people would deny their own heritage and feel ashamed because they came as domestic workers and were treated as lower- class people despite all their qualifications,” explains Ocampo, a past president of Kapisanan, the Tagalog word for “ community.”
Mangosing, 31, a film and television producer with The Digital Sweatshop, knows first- hand about “ not belonging.” She and others try tirelessly to audition for roles and pitch production ideas to mainstream broadcasters and funders. “ We get roles as Japanese geishas, prostitutes from Saigon and other Asian roles. We never get roles as Filipinos.” Mangosing and Villasin, artistic director of the Carlos Bulosan Theatre Company, quickly jumped on the idea of working with the community centre. They believed their organizations, both lacking a permanent home, would form a great partnership with Kapisanan, bringing the community’s young blood together through programming such as playwriting and video-production workshops, films and arts festivals, along with social services for youth, elderly and newcomers.