He's been in Sudbury, Ont. for 50 years and makes it his mission to welcome Filipinos to the city
Filipino Canadian Association of Sudbury is hosting its first festival on Sunday
Bayani Maristela guesses he's welcomed at least 500 Filipinos to his home in Sudbury, Ont., over the years.
When Maristela moved to Sudbury in 1974 to work for Inco – now mining giant Vale – he said you could count the number of Filipinos on two hands.
"We are the originals here," Maristela said about himself and his wife, who he met in Sudbury.
As more people from the Philippines have settled in the northern Ontario city, Maristela has made it his mission to be the unofficial welcoming committee.
He spends a lot of his time at the New Sudbury Centre mall where he greets people he suspects are from the Philippines in their language.
If they respond, he invites them to talk and introduce them to other Filipinos in the community.
Dave Javier was one of those people who had a chance encounter with Maristela at the local mall.
"I ended up in Sudbury in 2019 when I was recruited at HSN (Health Sciences North) to work as a cardiologist," Javier said.
"And for four months I knew very few Filipinos in the city."
But that all changed after he met Maristela and was invited to his home for dinner.
"I thought it was a casual dinner," Javier said.
"So I brought my family with me and to my surprise there were more than 40 people in the house. All Filipinos with lots of food."
Maristela had invited people in the community he thought would hit it off with Javier and his family.
"I always have a lot of people coming to my place because I have a big house," Maristela said.
Inaugural Filipino festival
Javier built lasting friendships with many of the people he met that day. Now he heads the Filipino Canadian Association of Sudbury.
On Sunday the association is hosting its first Philippine Festival at Bell Park to mark Filipino Heritage Month.
"The idea is to make the Filipinos visible," said Javier.
"In 1974, there were probably 30 or 40 Filipinos, but now there's more than tenfold of those, maybe 20 fold."
The festival will feature Filipino music, food and dances and give visitors at chance to experience "Filipino warmth and hospitality."
The Filipino Community Association in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., is hosting two events over the weekend to mark Filipino Heritage Month.
The Soo Blaster venue will host Filipino music on Saturday, and the association is hosting what it's calling a "Fil-Can Day" in Bellevue Park on Sunday.
Roberto Rivera founded the Sault Ste. Marie Filipino Community Association and says there were fewer than 50 Filipinos in the city when he arrived in 2005. Now he says almost 5,000 people from the Philippines live in Sault Ste. Marie.
Like Maristela, he says he spends a lot of time at the local mall, keeping an eye out for Filipinos he can welcome to the community.
"It's nice now because we have a lot of Filipinos here," he said. "So there's a lot of connections."
With files from Markus Schwabe