1 The ugly face of fear
Fear drove us out of our homeland. The constant, nagging fear that on any day, at any hour, some frenzied military soldier would put the whole country on hold, declare a mini-coup, forever shatter the fragile peace we knew under the Marcos dictatorship. Marcos had placed the Philippines under the dragnet of martial rule on September 21, 1972, ostensibly “to keep the peace.” Proclamation 1081 suspended civil rights and imposed military authority in the country. The directive effectively barred mass demonstrations and rallies against the regime’s inaction to ease poverty in cities and on farms, improve abject working conditions, and end corruption in the government. The military incarcerated labour, farm, and student leaders who led mass protests on the streets of Manila and in other parts of the country. Although the government was ousted from power after two decades, when protest masses and mass rallies in the mid-1980s galvanized effective opposition to the government, the country continued to experience only restive peace.
That was the point at which my husband and I decided we could not live with any more uncertainty. Our four daughters were growing up; we did not want them to suffer and live the rest of their lives knowing the ugly face of fear. We would move to Canada.
Six suitcases. My husband Joe and I decided we needed just six suitcases to emigrate from the Philippines in the summer of 1987. Although staff at the Canadian Embassy in Makati, the financial and commercial hub in Metro Manila, said we could send over household items and furniture free of freightage, we opted to travel light. Our journey would be a clean break. No baggage from the past. Just our clothes, shoes, and some money in the bank to tide us over in the first few months.
We had earlier sold our house so there would be no home to go back to. We were homeless and property-less now. It would be with a certain sense of premonition and irony that 1987 also inaugurated the International Year of Shelter for the Homeless, since we would begin our first day in our adopted country without a home, without any next of kin, and just the shirts on our backs. At the same time, we were heartened that, at the beginning of the year, astronomers at the University of California took first sight of the birth of a galaxy. We had bought one-way tickets only. There was neither a looking back nor a going back.
Six suitcases. One each for me and my husband. One each for our daughters — Jenny, Kim, Isobel, and Rani. Our two older daughters were in their teens, fourteen and thirteen, and our two younger ones, eight and six. How do you leave a past lived for more than thirty years in a suitcase? How do you determine which item or belonging to keep? Or which memento or memorabilia mean the most to you and your family? Our decisions were fraught with risks and uncertainty but were founded on what we knew we wanted most for our family: some peace of mind. A good education for our children. A family life centred on simplicity. Although my husband and I were both gainfully employed and enjoyed thriving careers in Manila, our lives were forever on the brink of the next coup or the next bombing or prey to any and all of the stresses and dislocations that seethed and frothed over the cities and towns, small and big, in our old country.
In January 1987, government forces fired at a group of farmers on their way to Malacañang Palace in Manila to protest the lack of government action on land reform. In June, seventeen civilians suspected to be members of a rebel group were reported to have been killed by army soldiers in Lupao, a town near the foot of the Caraballo Mountains in Nueva Ecija. We chose to follow the map to the Door of No Return, a map that navigated rivers, mountains, and oceans ten thousand miles away from where our home once stood. We left our homeland with its storied 7,641 islands, a cacophony of voices and cultures that spoke in 186 languages (two of them now dead), a diverse flora and fauna, and the uncertain dangers of the Pacific Ring of Fire making it vulnerable to typhoons and earthquakes.
In January 1987, Frobisher Bay, in the Northwest Territories, changed its name to Iqaluit. Iqaluit is now the capital of Nunavut, the newest, largest, and most northerly territory of Canada. On June 30, Canada introduced its one-dollar coin, which locals quickly nicknamed the “Loonie.” By early July of that year, we had said our goodbyes to siblings and their children and close relatives and friends. It was like experiencing a death in the family. My parents had died within a year of each other: my father in 1985, my mother in 1986. Joe had lost both his parents years earlier. They had been our anchors. Their loss meant breakage from our roots, our past. We felt like orphans needing to heal. We were saddened but determined, and ready to leave. For good.
On July 31, 1987, we landed in Vancouver, British Columbia, where our immigration papers were stamped at the airport. Earlier, we had asked friends in Toronto to help us find an apartment, but it was suggested we look for a place to live after we’d arrived. Once in Toronto, we stayed at a hotel in Don Mills and spent four days searching, but we were fortunate to find a place right away and settled in a three-bedroom townhouse in the Finch and Leslie area.
The small townhouse on Thorny Vineway in Willowdale overlooked a children’s park. It was also close to St. Timothy’s Catholic School, where we promptly enrolled our children. At the time of our arrival, the school was in the process of registering new students. It had been a fine, sunny, and breezy summer, so the children did not have a tough time adjusting to life in Toronto.
We planned our move like clockwork: house, school, work, in that order. We came a month early to allow our children to adjust to the weather and to life in a new country. We did not want any surprises. Our goal was to blend in as smoothly as possible. And we did. Our empty apartment soon filled as we went bargain hunting for furniture, kitchen appliances and utensils, fall and winter clothes and boots. Before Zellers and Winners and The Bay, there were the BiWay and Simpson’s department stores. We would scan the sales ads in the dailies and got what we needed as the seasons changed.
At school, our youngest, Rani, who had kept mum and just quietly observed her new surroundings, was abruptly hustled into an English as a Second Language (ESL) class. As soon as her teacher heard her speak the next day, however, she was promptly upgraded to the grade one class. “Why didn’t you tell me you could speak English?” her teacher asked with concern. “Because you never asked,” our tiny tyrant quickly replied.
When we moved to another townhouse a year later, our children responded to the new situation in the best way they could. There was no house help or aunts and uncles around to assist with errands and chores. The kids learned to help with the dishes, the cooking, the laundry, and the house cleanup. Initially, it was challenging. Getting up early to head to school in the middle of winter when they wanted sleep and a warm bed. Doing chores in addition to school work and assignments. Fending for themselves while my husband and I were at work at low-paying jobs.
After two years of struggling with humdrum administrative work because he did not have any vaunted “Canadian experience,” my husband decided to go to law school and etch out a new career.
Like most immigrants chasing a dream, we wanted careers we had trained for at university. A job commensurate with our education and work experience. Or if it were not yet achievable because we did not have the requisite Canadian experience, a job just a few notches below what mainstream Canadians would be hired to do. We did not want to think that our skin colour defined us when employers looked at job candidates. We were optimistic that future employers would see beyond what was visible and hear beyond the sounds of our cacophonous and accented voices.
In truth, we were given a modicum of leverage and provided opportunities to vie for employment that typical newcomers would have a challenging time with. I was hired as a telemarketer within two weeks of our landing in Toronto. Since I was still converting dollars into pesos, I felt elated that I was earning eleven dollars when the minimum wage was eight. And when I did find more stable work as a junior reporter for a national religious newspaper, my first real job just two months into my time in the country, I was ecstatic. Of course, I never let on that only four months earlier I had a driver, a secretary, and an office staff three times larger than my then employer.
Early on, the managing editor of a big Toronto newspaper whom I had written to asking for advice on how to get a start as a journalist had generously written back: “Try to get into a local paper first. That is where you will get your Canadian experience.” I still thank him to this day, for giving me the time of day to “get real,” to get my feet back on the ground. For what was real at that time was immigrant medical doctors selling insurance policies or working as orderlies in hospitals. Or PhD-holders, chemists, and engineers driving taxicabs. Or accountants taking orders for takeout. Or architects sorting merchandise in department stores. Or nurses and pharmacists tending to the elderly as caregivers. You name a service job or a low-income occupation, and there is an immigrant or newcomer in Canada, formerly a professional in their country, ready, able, and more than willing to grab and fill it.
Before I went job hunting, I went to the University of Toronto to have my educational achievements evaluated and credentialed. I still have that certificate to this day. A document certifying that my four years of university education in journalism from the University of the Philippines and two years in graduate communication studies from the same university was the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree in Canada.
At first, I prepared a concise resumé for prospective employers with my real education and work experience. Soon, I began to realize that requests for interviews were almost non-existent. However, as soon as I downgraded my work experience and education to fulfill the basic education and work experience needed for the job advertised, I had more request-for-interview responses. To get hired, one needed to hide what one was worth. Otherwise, no employer would give me the opportunity to compete for a job. With zero Canadian experience, the best entry to the Canadian job market was to enter at the lowest level of the position one wanted.
With four daughters to raise and Joe having trouble finding a part-time job (even with his extensive education and work experience), I decided to apply as a junior reporter at a Canadian national religious newspaper. Just like my first temp position that gave me unbounded joy, working in journalism again, even at the lowest rung on the ladder, was heaven-sent. To keep me abreast of world events, our managing editor assigned me to rewrite news stories churned out by the hourly news feed from the Catholic News Service based in Washington, DC. Then she began assigning me to cover local news. Six months later, I was upgraded to national news. I interviewed church leaders and church workers — bishops and cardinals, priests and sisters and lay people. And when the news crossed boundaries, even Members of Parliament, business and political leaders, professors and researchers, social and community leaders of every stripe and colour.
My beats and reportorial assignments became my Canadian Education 101. If I needed to draft a story, deep-digging research and interviews became de rigeur. Since our newspaper covered the whole breadth and length of Canada, from east to west as well as the Canadian North, the twelve provinces and territories became a template that opened my eyes to the reality of a nation as vast and as varied as the four seasons and the peoples that lived, struggled, and thrived in it. Even as I wrote stories about the faith life of Canadians, I was also immersed in social justice issues and the struggles of immigrant workers and labourers in the Canadian workplace: from miners and transient service and migrant workers in the Prairies to domestic workers in homes and migrant men and women working in farms, factories, meat- and fish-packing plants, and service industries.
My family settled into a pattern as we tried to establish a new life in Canada. We would find a habitual rhythm to our inchoate and tenuous existence, like the Kellogg’s “The best to you each morning” slogan from 1958 that I first encountered when I was nine and in grade three.
This became the lore and legend of our lives:
On weekdays, breakfast-in-a-hurry, and lunch and dinner cobbled from two tins of sardines, some veggies, or a quick casserole.
Also, help with homework, clothes and school snacks prepared for the following day. On Friday nights, laundry and some ironing, if needed. On weekends, off to Knob Hill Farms in Markham to get the cheapest groceries, fruits, and vegetables.
Sundays were reserved for church.
Early on, we taught the girls easy bed-making tricks.
Fluff the pillows.
Take off and tuck in a loose bedsheet.
Tidy up the bedskirt.
Add another sheet and cover the bed with a duvet. Also,
Dust.
Polish.
Scrub.
Sweep.
Mop.
Vacuum.
Clean the bathroom. Understand the basics about laundry and household cleaning chemicals, detergents, air fresheners, and cleaning liquids. In a way, we were mimicking the every-day-as-regular-as-clockwork chores of compatriots whose duty it was to work for, serve, and wait on others. Towel-offering house cleaners in resorts and spas.
Coffee-serving baristas.
Cocktail-serving bartenders.
Stevedores, cooks, helpers, cleaners in cruise ships.
Maids, cleaners, and laundrywomen in hotels. At the end of the school term, our eldest daughter Jenny’s English teacher advised: “You should ask your parents to take you to the park or to the CNE. Go somewhere!” Little did the teacher know we only had enough to put food on the table, clothe the kids, or pay for our townhouse rental. But we managed to scrounge enough money to send our two youngest daughters for piano lessons up until they lost interest and began to gravitate increasingly toward school activities. To this day, I have never been to the CNE. My daughters have, with their dad and with their friends. We only went to Canada’s Wonderland a few times: once when my youngest sister and her family visited from the United States, and the other times when we were able to get coupons for half the price of admission. I inherited thrift and frugality from my mother. She managed to put her eight children through school as well as numerous cousins and relatives who boarded with us when I was young. She collected odds and ends of clothing and sewed them into new dresses for me and my three sisters. She went to markets to get fresh fish and vegetables to feed our huge household. I knew how to bargain because I accompanied her in her morning forays to the Blumentritt wet market in Manila. No exclusive private schools for us; my father was a product of public schools. Yet we lacked for nothing as we were well fed and clothed within modest means. Our daughters must have sensed our early struggles in Toronto and tried not to demand too much. A trip to BiWay, the cheapest department store at the time, was like a trip to a big mall. It was a cause for celebration. They did not ask for expensive toys or clothes and shoes, just what was necessary to keep warm in the winter months. They did not complain but were grateful to receive hand-me-down coats and boots donated by old friends.
Looking back, I see the years as a blur, with both Joe and I preoccupied with the business of living: children, home, work. There was no time for slacking as every minute counted. Our children grew before our eyes: their wants and needs, emotional and physical, subsumed by the nurture and love we could manage to offer them. Latchkey children — this word I learned from Isobel, our third daughter, who tried to impress us with her immense and fast-growing vocabulary — were children left at home after school while their parents worked two or three jobs. We each held only one job, but they were left on their own when both Joe and I went to work. So, every time we were free from work obligations, we tried to stay at home and be with them.
Still, our children did not have the constant companionship and care of relatives they used to have when we were living in the Philippines. There were no cousins, aunts, and uncles to chat with or visit or give counsel. It was just us, our nuclear family, with a few friends. We did not have a regular social life, let alone go to parties. Christmas and New Year we spent by keeping to ourselves, making do with small presents and simple fare: the familiar chicken adobo, the proverbial pancit guisado, and fried rice. Our goal was to survive and live as self-sufficiently and independently as possible. Home was ten thousand miles away, and early on, we set it in stone to burn our bridges once we set foot in Toronto. “Survive or perish” was our mantra.
Although we opted to migrate to another country, my family’s decision to leave was no different, or more immediate, than the decision of Filipino emigrant workers who chose to leave because of the political uncertainty and economic turmoil in our homeland. The outflux of workers began as early as the 1960s but became more pronounced in the 1970s, when under then President Marcos’s strongman rule, political and economic cronyism and corruption in government drove the average person to further exploitation and abuse. Since civil liberties were suppressed, the rights of workers and farmers to organize and work for reforms were effectively scuttled. Faced with a fast-increasing population, high unemployment, and poor living conditions, and to relieve his government of the need to spend on development projects and social support for the people, Marcos launched a massive labour export program. It began with sailors, then domestic workers — nannies, caregivers, cooks, and cleaners — then migrant workers to fill the lower paid and unskilled sectors in countries in the world with chronic labour shortage.
Before this, the Philippines had already sent doctors, nurses, and allied medical professionals to other countries, in a brain drain that, to this day, robs the country of trained and much-needed professionals. In his book, Migration Revolution, Filemon V. Aguilar Jr. sums up the phenomenon: “If Philippine society was ever a cauldron about to boil over, overseas migration has taken the lid off and released the pressure.”1 In 2012, the economic planning ministry reported that the Philippines could not do without the remittances from overseas Filipino workers (OFWs).2 Even the World Bank agrees that cash sent to the country — about $24 billion, or PHP 1,178 trillion, in 2014 alone — is a “key factor” for the resilience of the Philippines.3 Remittances from the country’s close to two million overseas Filipino workers (1,844,406 OFWs in 2015) have enabled the country to withstand recession amid the economic crises of the previous years.4
In 1987, the world’s population reached approximately five billion. A rare earthquake that peaked at 5.0 on the Richter scale on June 11 affected fourteen states in the Midwest of the United States and parts of Canada. At the same time, Supertyphoon Nina hit the Philippines, submerging fourteen fishing villages on the Philippine coast under water, leaving one thousand dead.
We had arrived in Toronto in late July, with the top billboard song “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You” by Michael Jackson high-pitched and spilling in from everywhere. The air steamed with purpose when summer meant another life to live. From every corner, a mirror to reflect on. Outside our window, the children’s park, though treed, appeared bruised from the dark slits on the windowpanes. Thorny Vineway. Did our new street name augur of tomorrows yet to come? Would our life in this new country lead to a path laid with thorns? We were young at the time, and everything looked promising. We were alive in this new country and were no longer afraid, the years in the future distant and to be savoured. We were ready to be every person we chose or wanted to be.
The days shortened in late October, when the sun sank deeper and the leaves fell on the ground: at first, mustard yellow and blood red; later, turning brown, purplish, and ragged. People here called it mid-autumn. At St. Timothy’s Church, Joe and I and our children filled the half-sung hymns with thoughts of the past we had left behind. The shade of leaves falling, hung in mid-air, marking our days.
But those early experiences were mere spots in our post-arrival years. They would be subsumed by the tracks in the snow when our first winter came. We would remember the pride in the little fire we stoked three decades later. We knew we could get lost on every road and never find our way. We could run out of a country and never leave it. Memorize the shape of our name and never recognize it. Something so clear could be something so vague. Like knowing and not knowing at the same time. Like the day that drowns in the bones. Like the night growing into shadow. Like names echoing many towns, burrowing through stones and fragmentary rocks.
Everywhere was where we wanted to be.