Volume 5, Issue No. 29
OPINION/COMMENTARY
/ News That Fears None, Views That Favor Nobody /
Our latest as of Tuesday, March 26, 2024
~ Community aspiration for a place name that gives Filipinos a sense of belonging has been realized 10 years ago with the unofficial christening by Philippine Ambassador Leslie B. Gatan of an area from the junction of Bathurst St. and Wilson Ave. in the city's North York district as Little Manila. Since then, the hub has become the preferred choice for community events such as FUN Philippines festival. Now three years after its birth there, the festival is abandoning the site for the glitzy Harbourfront Centre on the coast of Lake Ontario.
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FESTIVAL MOVES TO HARBOURFRONT CENTRE
FUN Philippines Dumps Little Manila
Sacrificing a Community Legacy for the Glitz
By ROMEO P. MARQUEZ
Editor, The Filipino Web Channel
"There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about." - Margaret J. Wheatley
TORONTO - One of the promising Filipino street festivals in Greater Toronto Area is moving south this summer to a tourist destination in downtown about 12 kilometers away.
The transfer may have something to do with factors that I could only speculate absent official explanation, namely, money, money, and money. Understandably so, for without those, no festival would ever be possible.
Published reports indicate that Harbourfront Centre has been chosen to be the site for this year's FUN Philippines food and music festival on July 26-28. It calls Harbourfront "the heart of Toronto's diverse cultural landscape." (Video at: Forget Little Manila for the Touristy Harbourfront Centre)
One of the reasons for picking the area was probably spatial (it overlooks Lake Ontario) than historical although organizers harken back to the time when Filipinos were colonized, oppressed, exploited, and abused for centuries.
Organizers consider their festival there as "the essence of the 'Pearl of the Orient Seas'," a clear allusion to the period when Spaniards dominated the islands.
The figure of speech (Pearl of the Orient Seas) was also used by the national hero Jose Rizal in his "Mi Ultimo Adios", calling it in Spanish "Perla del mar de Oriente."
The "pearl" was a paradise of abundance. Minerals, spices, and food on land and water were there for the taking, as did the Spaniards greedily take, for three centuries up to the time the natives fought back against further exploitation and oppression.
It'll be a challenge to capture all these elements in one festival being marketed as a "sensory journey" targeting, I supposed, non-Filipino tourists over the Filipino diaspora. Isn't it called mainstreaming?
FUN Philippines is therefore leaving Little Manila, its birthplace, for the monetary potential that Harbourfront Centre offers. That hurts. (Related video: Taste of Manila Gives Birth to 'Little Manila' in Toronto).
It probably did not want to be identified with, or be mistaken for, that stolen idea that has morphed into Taste of Manila festival.
Instead of strengthening Little Manila as an authentic Filipino hub for cultural and commercial events, FUN organizers appear to have decided to abandon it, perhaps disappointed at the unsightliness of its contours, i.e. the hole-in-the-wall shops, ambulant vendors, the struggling store owners, the bakeries, the karaoke joints, the istambays and scammers in coffee shops, the turo-turo restos, the pick-up points, etc.
Well, it's exactly for those reasons it's called Little Manila. It mimics the Philippine capital or a portion of it, which makes it the closest to a home away from home. I remember one reveler who told me that it's almost like Manila without the pickpockets.
However imperfect Little Manila is, it has already become a Filipino community legacy. It has weathered the passage of time and people, especially politicians who, eyeing the voting population, paid lip service to the Filipino community.
Filipinos yearning for a sense of the homeland in places like Canada would be responsive to any event that simulates the very things they'd left behind. That's where the success of the earlier Taste of Manila (ToM) - now a breeding ground of scammers and con artists - lied. (Related story: https://filwebchannelmagazine.blogspot.com/2024/03/vendors-ask-taste-of-manila-wheres-our.html).
In my 14 years in Toronto, I've never seen Chinatown, Little Italy, Greektown, or the Polish community in Roncesvalles moved to Harbourfront Centre to do their festivals. All the time, the celebration is onsite.
To compare Little Manila with Harbourfront Centre is like comparing apples and oranges. The former reeks of spartan amenities, very pedestrian, and no pretensions of being high class. The latter is gentrified and stands out in the shadows of high-rise condos, office building, and the iconic CN Tower.
Little Manila has real-life character. It gives a sense of belonging and bustles with activity 24/7. Harbourfront Centre, while glitzy, has provisional glow that quickly recedes into memory.
When FUN Philippines finally had its festival, it's Harbourfront Centre that will be remembered and FUN would just be one of those events that took place there.
Meanwhile, Little Manila, however informal it is as a distinct geographical location, stands as some memorial to Filipinos' aspiration for a place closer to home in Canada. It's a dream come true. (Copyright 2024. All Rights Reserved).
