MetroVanIndependent.com
May 2015
Culture
SPIDS 7th Annual Celebration
The seventh annual celebration
commemorating the 117th Philippine
Independence Day will be held at the beautiful Peace Arch Park at 138 Peace Park
Drive, Surrey on Saturday, June 6th from
10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
This year’s theme will be “Salusalo sa Surrey” and will again showcase
the colourful and beautiful Santa Cruzan
procession or the Parade of Queens and
Flowers. The traditional Santa Cruzan
will feature a line-up of 26 lovely queens
which will be top billed by IJM Miss Canada
2014, Lineth Hizon as this year’s Reyna
Elena (Queen Helena). Philippine teen
actor, Tres Gonzales, will be escorting the
Reyna Imperatriz (The Empress).
The show will be under the musical direction of Maestro Al Mendoza of BC Akafellas,
and will be hoste d by PapaBear,
Star Be rnardo, Glisha D ela Cruz,
and Tres Gonzales. The entertainment will
be presented by a group of talented local
artists in the Filipino-Canadian community
top billed by former Philippines singers Ms.
Linda Magno and Goldie.
Everyone is invited to set up their own
little picnic haven at the park with their
friends. There will also be games and prizes
including demonstrations of traditional
Filipino games like sipa, sungka, piko, tumbang preso, and luksong tinik.
The event is organized by the Surrey
Philippine Independence Day Society
(SPIDS) headed by its President &
Founding Director, Narima Dela Cruz
a n d i t s 11 - m e m b e r B o a r d o f
Directors: Aurea Lucas, Maria Aleli Poe,
Jerry Legaspi, Joel Dela Cruz, Al &
C o n ni e M e n d oz a , M a r i s s a Pe rez,
Marissa Magcawas, Gloria Bacani, Ale
Sevillo and Yollie Tanciangco. Other
SPIDS officers include Lowell Jordan,
Karlene & Jojo Rimando, Nela Tan, Ni
sha Lalwani, Margie Fagela, Yvette De
Leon, Linda Afrondoza, Rema Diaz, and
Winnie Chan. SPIDS advisers-members are Nhemy Cepeda, Rose Duna,
and Cita Schijven.
The event is open to the public. SPIDS
is requesting those who will be attending
to bring non-perishable goods as donation
on the event day itself for the Surrey Food
Bank Society. For more information and for
sponsorship please contact SPIDS at [email protected] or at www.facebook.
com/SPIDSGroup.
ExplorASIAN Festival 2015
The 2015 explorAsian Festival is
celebrating the National Asian Heritage
Month from May 1 to 31 with festivities all
over Metro Vancouver.
This year’s event was launched at
the Simon Fraser University’s Vancouver
campus as part of SFU’s David Lam Centre
for International Communication and the
Vancouver Asian Heritage Month Society
(VAHMS) partnership. The event took
place last May 2nd with Vancouver City
Mayor Gregor Robertson, B.C. Minister of
International Trade Teresa Wat as guests
of honour with featured performances by
Iranian and Japanese artists.
One of the highlights of the festival
is the official launch of the Miguel and
Julia Tecson Collection at the University
of British Columbia’s Mu se um of
Anthropology (MOA).
The explorAsian 2014 Community
Builder Awardees Dr. Miguel and the
late Julia Tecson, one of the first Filipino
families who settled in Vancouver in the
60s, donated over 350 archaeological
and anthropological objects from the
Philippines and nearby countries to MOA
in 1997.
The 2015 festival also features a rich
mosaic of events, including Persian Poetry
in Motion, and on May 19, a night of exotic
music, graceful dance, and inspiring
poetry at the Vancouver Public Library,
The Sensationalists at the Cultch from May
12-16, and Director Yuya Ishii’s Our Family
on May 26.
Established in 1997, the National
Asian Heritage Month was designed
to launch a national festival hosted by
individual communities across Canada,
with a goal to address the concerns that a
growing Canadian Asian population were
not proportionately represented in the
metropolitan arenas of artistic and cultural
life.
For the past 18 years, the VAHMS has
introduced various Pan-Asian artists and
cultural groups to the Canadian audience.
The explorAsian Festival has become
a major platform in bringing together
artists from across Metro Vancouver’s
culturally diverse Pan-Asian communities
to showcase their wide range of cultural
and artistic endeavours.
ExplorASIAN continues to evolve to
meet the needs of our multicultural society
and serve as the driving force that helps our
Pan-Asian Canadian cultural communities
progress to a higher level of awareness,
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