January 16, 2025 — When Esmie’s father started showing signs of diminished sensual perceptions and arthritic hands while struggling with the challenges of dementia but still trying to engage with his family, environment, and sculpting hobbies, she saw not an old man but a healthy human being who is aging but still determined to use his faculties to accomplish his goals. Her father passed away in February 2024 at age 94, just 3 months short of 95.
Esmie is a Vancouver-based visual artist who paints scenes of everyday life using watercolor, acrylics, and oils through an emotive use of color and light. Inspired by her father’s focus in creating a mythical animal from a piece of clay one fine day, she painted his portrait with an ethereal look about him which she observed and titled the portrait “Lifegiving.” The painting highlights her father’s countenance, expressing his diligence in an activity even as he aged. It portrays the softness in his eyes that marks his purpose, that of showing his love for his family for whom he creates.
This is the painting that Esmie submitted to the Healthy Aging Visual Art Contest sponsored jointly by the Edwin S.H. Leong Centre for Healthy Aging and the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health at UBC.
The goal of the contest was to feature diverse, authentic, anti ageist representations of human aging through visual art. Its concept of “healthy aging” is based on the WHO’s definition of it as “the process of developing and maintaining the functional ability that enables well being in older age. “ Functional ability is having the capabilities that enable people to be and do what they value. This definition does not require an older person to be free of diseases or health condition.
The contest received over 50 submissions and reviewed by a panel of experts who awarded Esmie’s portrait of her father the grand prize at a ceremony held at UBC on January 10, 2025.
Editor of Canadian Filipino Net
Eleanor R. Laquian has written four best-selling books, and co-authored four others with husband Prod Laquian. She has served in various capacities at the University of British Columbia’s Institute of Asian Research as manager of administration and programs; editor and chair, publications committee; and primary researcher of the Asian Immigration to Canada project. She has a degree in journalism from Maryknoll College in the Philippines, and a master’s degree in public administration from the University of the Philippines. She did postgraduate studies at the School of Public Communications, Boston University in the U.S.
She has been researching and writing about Filipino immigration to Canada since 1969. For her Master's degree in Public Administration at the university of the Philippines, she conducted in 1972 the first, and up to now, the only nationwide survey of Filipinos in Canada. It was done by mailed questionnaires with self addressed stamped envelopes for replies and followed up by personal in depth interviews of respondents who agreed to be interviewed, Interviews were done on a two-week drive from Ottawa to Vancouver in the summer of '72.
Her Master's thesis was published in 1973 in Ottawa by the United Council of Filipino Associations in Canada. It was titled A Study of Filipino Immigrants in Canada, 1962 - 1972. As the primary researcher of UBC Institute of Asian Research immigration Project, she edited in 1998 a book titled The Silent Debate: Asian Immigration and Racism in Canada published by UBC. In 2005 she co-authored with her husband a book to update her MA thesis and titled it Seeking a Better Life Abroad: A Study of Filipinos in Canada 1957 - 2007. It was published in 2008 by Anvil Publishing in Manila.In 2023 she edited Indomitable Canadian Filipinos, a book on the 70-year history of Filipinos in Canada, published by Friesen Press in Manitoba, Canada.
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