Editorial

June 2019 is a special month for Canadian Filipinos.

For the first time in Canada, Filipino Heritage Month is being celebrated across the country.

In legendary Camelot, they sang about their merry month of May of long ago, but in the Philippines, people are still singing about their own “Mary Month of May” to this day. 

2019 is shaping up to be a historic year for Canadian Filipinos.

In the Philippines, general elections are taking place mid-way into the current Duterte administration in May, and ballots for overseas voting have been mailed to every registered voter residing elsewhere in the world.

The world is marking International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on March 21.

The annual event is an opportunity to renew the commitment to eradicate all forms of discrimination because of race.

For most, to call 2018 a crazy year is an understatement, what with new realities like fake news and the #MeToo movement. But 2019 forces us Filipinos to remind ourselves of who we are, what we are made of, what we are capable of doing. A new year is a chance to turn over a new leaf, to turn our backs on the year that was and to accept a brand new opportunity to make real changes. And we Filipinos can easily do that by going back to the basics through the virtues that we have become known the world over – but this time with the wisdom of those many lessons we have learned as a people.

In 1998, the University of British Columbia’s Institute of Asian Research published a book titled The Silent Debate: Asian Immigration and Racism in Canada (edited by Eleanor R. Laquian, Aprodicio A. Laquian and Terry McGee).

The elimination of poverty is one of the loftiest goals of government.

However, delivering on this objective is easier said than done.

As November is the sunset of a calendar year so is old age the setting sun for a senior’s life.

But the golden years can be good if one prepares for aging according to Lindsay Green, author of “You Could Live a Long Time, Are You Ready?” This and other books and magazine articles on the subject of aging are gold mines of ideas for enjoying old age.

This fall, six of Canada’s 10 provinces will be holding local government elections. Based on historical voter turnouts, it’s not looking very promising.

It may come as a big surprise for many in Canada to learn that public universities in several countries belonging to the European Union do not charge tuition fees.

Statistics Canada's 2016 census showed that there were 5.9 million Canadian seniors, compared to only 5.8 million Canadians 14 and under. The proportion of the senior population (aged 65 and older) has been increasing steadily over the past 40 years. From 1971 to 2010, the proportion of seniors in the population grew from 8% to 14%.

We’ve seen it on Netflix – the wildly popular Stranger Things have characters cross into the “upside down” world where the air is toxic,