Celebrating Filipino Culture in Canada – A Conversation With Ms. Milagros Torrejon
You’ve definitely seen Ms. Torrejon at the school. She has a lovely smile and is always willing to lend a hand whenever you step foot inside the office doors. I had the honour of talking to her and learning about her family’s journey as well as the richness of Filipino culture. I hope you enjoy the article as much as I enjoyed speaking with her!
What is your story?
I came to Canada in 2006 through the “live in caregiver program”. I came to provide my children more opportunities. I am part of a large family. My husband has 6 siblings and I have 3 siblings. We are all very close. When I arrived, my sister already lived here.
What was life like in the Philippines?
Ms. Torrejon is from Davao city (look to the bottom right portion of the map!)
I grew up near the beach – the Pacific Ocean. It’s tropical. I grew up in the provinces. The ocean was like our playground. I now realise what a beautiful paradise it was. You don’t recognise that when you see it everyday.
How has your culture shaped your identity and helped you become who you are today?
My family has given me emotional stability and open mindedness – that’s why we came to Canada. In addition to my immediate family, my younger sister and brother are also here. While it has given us a sense of adventure, most of all it’s made us resilient. To be uprooted from your comfort zone is not easy, but we survived and survived well, I would say.
Have you been back home since 2006?
Our last visit was December 2018. We were supposed to go last year. My parents are 88 and 89 years old. Our plan is to visit them every December. The weather is nice all year round 27-30 C – t-shirts everyday.
How does your heritage impact your life either at work or home?
In the Philippines, communities are like a tight knit family and very close. I have 6 sisters in law. When we are together, we could be chatting all night. It’s something I treasure, and I hope my kids are also close to members of the family. I think it is beautiful. When I moved to Canada, we are so far from family. Back home, my house is your house, like ‘mi casa su casa’. You have extended family living in your house, and it is not seen as a burden. It is just family and that is how we grew up being very close.
At Vic, there are 5 or 6 custodians who are also Filipino. We don’t know each other well, but since Filipinos are a close knit community, we connect and are friends with one another very easily. This is because there is a comradery being of the same ethnicity. We came from different cities and provinces in the Philippines and we even speak different languages – there are over 120 languages in the Philippines and 8 major dialects. We don’t speak the same language but we talk like we’ve been friends for the longest of times. That just part of being a Filipino!
How strongly do you identify with your culture?
I consider myself Filipino-Canadian. I strongly identify with that. I am happy with my identity.
Have you every struggled with your cultural identify?
No - I consider myself lucky. I came here when I was already mature/older, so emotionally I would say that I was already stable. I didn’t struggle with the culture, more just surprised because it was different. I [was] well-travelled already when I came here, so it was adapting and picking up the best of both worlds. When I arrived here, my sister was already here. I’ve seen it as more of an adventure. I’ve never struggled with being “too Asian” or “too Filipino”, this comes with age too. There may be differences that surprise Canadian friends, but I don’t care so much as long as I don’t hurt anybody. I know who I am, and I respect the opinions/points of view of others.
Your whole family immigrated here. How did they adapt?
The Torrejon family:
Son: Roberto, Husband: Robert, Daughter: Riana and Ms. Milagros Torrejon
My daughter was 10 and my son was 17 when they came to Canada. My son finished his mechanical engineering degree at university and my daughter is studying human resources at the University of Alberta (3rd year) as a scholar. They’re doing well. I’m proud of them. I think it’s an Asian thing to push our kids to have a better life and to be better than us [parents]. Back home, poverty surrounds us in the Philippines, so we tell our children to go above, they need to finish college or university. It is the first step for us. When we moved, it’s always been like that. It’s a different situation because they have access to a good education, but still your values don’t change that much even when you’re far from home. You still have the same hopes and dreams.
In Social 20, we talked about the “American Dream” and how it’s becoming outdated. Did your family have a vision about coming to Canada?
Back home, our kids went to a private school because it was the best option. Private schools are well funded compared to the public schools in the Philippines. The public system is not well funded. When they moved here, it was a shock for them as private schools in the Philippines are stricter, run differently and you pay tuition fees. Not the American Dream, but seen as more options to finish studies. Back home, if you pay out of your own pocket for everything. Here, there are more options to pay for your own education. I have a lot of Filipino friends in the US - before it was mainly nurses who went there, but now there are many in the field of IT. They are not there for the American Dream because emotionally it’s different. You are not complete if your emotions are not in a good place- you feel homesick. If you ask some people, if there were more opportunities back home, they wouldn’t come here. However, in the Philippines, there are thousands of people competing for one job position. So, we don’t call it the American Dream.
What is something from your culture you use to keep your culture alive?
“Continuing to speak the language is how we keep ourselves grounded. It’s a good reminder that this is who we are.”
We speak our dialect, and we still cook the same food. Of course, we’ve added some Canadian foods. I didn’t know what “cooking from scratch” was. I never heard that before. I didn’t know you needed a recipe book – we don’t do that back home. You cook whatever you have in front of you. We don’t call it cooking from scratch, just home cooking. I might adjust my cooking a bit as some spices are not here, but it’s basically the same.
Continuing to speak the language is how we keep ourselves grounded. It’s a good reminder that this is who we are. My daughter said, “we can learn and speak English at school, but our home is still our home and we can still speak our language as this is our home.”
Our dialect is Bisaya. Tagalog is the national language for the Philippines, but we are not Tagalog speaking. I came from Davao City and we speak Tagalog Davao.
What are some values/traditions related to your culture that are important?
Being together and respect. We always make sure our children give us a kiss when they arrive or leave. Asking permission or letting us know where they’re going, even when they don’t have to, even though they are all grown up. Greeting us as parents is important.
In the Philippines, there are a lot of ‘brown outs’ (when there is no electricity) – we would play the ukulele and sing when there was no electricity. We miss that – just hanging out with the kids. In the Philippines, we know each other, we know our neighbours. We talk to our neighbours, we smile a lot. It’s not that we find people funny, we just smile and like to laugh.
