February 1, 2025 — John Oliver Secondary, the Vancouver high school with the highest number of Filipino students at 40 percent of its student body, is currently displaying 12 colourful Philippine murals in its hallways that students now call “corridors of joy.”
The display honors the club’s sponsor Joy Jose, Filipino culture, and celebrates the artistic creativity of the young artists under the tutelage of well-known Filipino muralist Bert Monterona who embraces multiculturalism through his art.
The murals were the result of a community project by the Filipino Club at John Oliver with the guidance of Monterona. The club has 32 Filipino students from grades 8 to 12. The Pena Family Foundation, through the assistance of the club’s sponsor Joy Jose, donated $10,000 to fund the project.
“It gives the students a sense of ownership of the school and a sense of belonging that they didn’t have before,” John Oliver’s principal Andrew Schofield said about the murals. “The murals express the culture and identity of Filipino students through their artwork.”
Murals by John Oliver secondary school students.
For Filipino Club president Abigail Gache, it was a source of joy and pride to be part of the project. “Being in the presence of my community as we made all these paintings made me feel like I never left home in the first place” she said. “It’s not just the paintings that made me feel that way, but being around my fellow club members made me feel that we were all in this project together, supporting one another and representing one community.”
The Filipino Club students worked on the murals every Tuesday after school, for upwards to four hours each week, from October until late November last year with Filipino community artist Monterona observing and directing their work. Their murals reveal their parents' struggle to give them a good future in Canada and the joy they felt when they reunited with their parents after years of separation.
The mural project is the first step in a larger initiative at John Oliver Secondary to “center the voices and experiences of new immigrant families in the school and in the community,” said Schofield. He plans similar mural projects with the Southeast Asian Students Club and the Sikh Students Club. He sees the murals as a way to create an inclusive and multicultural environment for the school.
To view all of the murals completed by the students, access the Google Docs link here, For a video on the project, access this link.
John (Jack) L. Peters joins Canadian Filipino Net as community relations officer. He is interested in researching politics and issues relevant to the Filipino community. He received his bachelor's degree in International Relations at the University of British Columbia in 2023. He was born to Filipino and Canadian parents. He taught English in Japan for a year at a public junior high and elementary school in Kumamoto City. He can be reached at
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