Starting in the sixteenth century, Filipino men travelled to the Americas, first as seafarers in the Manila Galleon, a Spanish co- lonial link between its Philippine colony and Mexico, and then as American nationals following the annexation of the Philippine is- lands in the Spanish-American War of 1898. [...] The au- thor of the letter, who also owned a farm in British Columbia, wrote, “You will be surprised to hear that the advance guard is already in British Columbia and we have had applications from Philippines to work on my farm and I confess it is very tempting.” The ultimate solu- tion to what was considered the “problem” of Filipino immigration was the creation of an Act to supersede the Chinese. [...] In Winnipeg, the social me- dia group “Life of ‘Peg” was set up with the intention of connecting the Winnipeg Filipino community to people in the homeland who were intending to immigrate to the city, or had recently arrived. [...] The influence of Hispanic Catholicism is apparent in the preva- lence of bright and festive religious processions such as the Santacru- zan, originating in the Philippines in the mid-1800s in honour of Saint Helen and her son, Constantine the Great, finding the True Cross. [...] Filipino/Tagalog is the most common because it is the national language taught across the Philippines, but the presence of other regional languages indicates the importance these identities have to the cultural lives of respondents to the 2016 Census.
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- 46
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- Canada