My husband and I were originally doctors of veterinary medicine. This was post-2000s. We got married, settled in Baguio City in Northern Philippines, had five kids. My husband put up a farm and a clinic and pet shop. I went back to school at age thirty-five to become a doctor of medicine.
After passing the boards, I started neurology residency training at Saint Luke’s Medical Center in Metro Manila, but being away from my family took its toll, and I did not finish my residency. I then went into internal medicine at Saint Louis University in Baguio and completed my residency.
We had a good life plan. I would have a clinic. My husband and I would continue our pet shop and veterinary clinic and farm. Our kids would go into vet med, medicine, or engineering, and we would all live happily ever after. That was our fairy-tale dream. Not in a million years did I ever plan or even imagine going abroad. I didn’t want to raise my kids abroad as I was afraid that they would lose the Filipino values that we took so much pain to instill in them.
Then one day, I was on post-call (from overnight duty) during residency training, and an attending physician reprimanded me for something that was not my fault. I felt very embarrassed, upset, and aggrieved. At that vulnerable moment, my sister-in-law, who is also my best friend, asked if I wanted to go to Canada with her family. I said yes, and here we are!
We came to Calgary in June 2011. We wore multiple layers to save luggage space. We wore winter jackets, snow pants, scarves, bonnets, and gloves, in June! Then we noticed that most people were wearing shorts and tank tops, and as we got out of the airport, we found out that it was summer in Canada.
On this fateful day, I met my first friend in Canada and inadvertently found my first job. She was a Filipino-Canadian woman who was offering credit cards to passengers at the airport. I asked her if her company had any job openings and was hired on the spot, along with my eldest daughter. On our first day of Canadian work experience, we earned fifteen dollars an hour with an additional fifty cents for every credit card application we were able to get. I worked there for about four months, then moved on to work as an at-home call centre agent for TELUS for almost five years.
Since I worked from home, I had time to work a second job as a clinic aide and study for the many exams I needed to take to be licensed and recognized as a doctor here. I worked at least fourteen hours every day, seven days a week.
In the meantime, my husband worked as a window cleaner, then as a warehouse associate and forklift operator, then as an Internet and TV technician. He even had a short stint as a security officer. Now he works as a community support worker for adults with disabilities.
To practise medicine in Canada, one must pass at least four very expensive exams, take a language test (IELTS) and another qualifying exam every year, then undergo residency training for two to five years. To get accepted into residency training, one would have to get matched to a training program.
There are two pathways to a residency: one for Canadian graduates and one for international medical graduates (IMG). However, for every ten to twenty slots for Canadian graduates, there is only one or even none for IMGs. And for every one slot for IMGs, there are about 2500 to 3000 applicants, all of whom are specialists in their own right in the countries where they come from.
To complicate matters, many Canadian-born citizens who could not get into medical schools in Canada go abroad — Australia, England, or Jamaica, for example — to study medicine there. When they come back, they compete with the other IMGs as they are also considered international medical graduates. They are favoured over those of us who have come as immigrants because of the loyalty they show by coming back to serve their country. Thus, for a fifty-plus-year-old woman, this competition was proving to be not in my favour. For some reason, even if I thought I did very well in my exams and interviews, attended masses in ten churches, prayed to all the saints, and asked for “signs,” I did not get matched.
After four years, I stopped applying for residency and concentrated on just being a good clinical assistant, which has been my job for six years now. I am basically a decently paid, supervised physician in three hospitals in Calgary. I function in the same way as a doctor, admitting patients to the hospital, managing them in the units, going on twenty-four-hour and sixteen-hour calls, making prescriptions, discharging patients, doing the necessary paperwork, interacting with patients and their families, collaborating with other doctors and the multidisciplinary team, and occasionally performing minor procedures like a bone marrow biopsy or paracentesis. It is a very demanding and difficult job but a really fulfilling one with less responsibility than a fully licensed physician. I am indeed fortunate for being able to practise my profession in Canada.
Our first ten years here just whizzed by so swiftly. Through those years, I helped support four nephews and nieces, who also now have good, independent lives. My kids have almost all graduated from universities and found careers. My husband has found his retirement job, which is not too physically demanding and which he enjoys very much.
When describing the life that we left behind, I remember mostly the good things: that the temperature in Baguio is about sixteen degrees all year round except during Christmas when it falls to five to eight degrees; it is the cleanest and greenest city in the Philippines; food is cheap and really great; people are friendly; patients loved me. Life was peachy. When people hear this, they ask, “Then why did you come here?” to which I give the cliché answer: “For the kids.”
When our children and I talk about it, I tell them, well, we thought it was the best decision at the time. But really, there must have been reasons other than the kids that pushed us to make that ultimate decision to leave everything behind and take a risk somewhere else. Then I realize that we tend to forget the crimes, that one of my kids’ classmate’s father was kidnapped in broad daylight in the middle of a public place, the “padulas” that we were forced to give to the BIR lady despite our business’s immaculate books and documents, the heavy hours-long traffic, the many issues that we only remember whenever we went to visit.
Since we left the Philippines, many things have changed. Many Christmases have been missed. Many loved ones have passed. It could be sad, and sometimes lonely, and we always yearn for “home.” But I had a realization the first time we went for a vacation. As we got back here and entered Vancouver airport, I suddenly relaxed, released all tension, and thought, “Thank God, we’re finally home.” That was the first time I realized that this — Canada — is home.