Vigil draws on Filipino 'bayanihan' spirit after car attack

The vigil drew a crowd so large that police in Vancouver had to move the crime scene barriers back so that people would not spill out on to the busy traffic along 41st Avenue. “It’s amazing. It’s really a show of how important the Filipino community is just very broadly,” said Chelsea Brager.

- By Dustin Godfrey VANCOUVER

Brager works with a Filipino youth organisation called Anakbayan BC that helped organise a candlelight vigil last Sunday evening to remember victims of the previous day’s car-ramming attack that killed 11 people and injured dozens at a festival in the Sunset neighbourhood, home to the city’s Filipino community.

Earlier in the day, the nearby Anglican memorial church of St Mary the Virgin was overflowing with members of the Filipino community and others who wished to pay their respects.

Last Saturday had been intended as a night of celebration for the community - of resilience and of collective resistance. It was the second time the festival had been held in the city. Lapu Lapu Day commemorates the victory in 1521 by Indigenous Filipinos, led by Lapu Lapu, against Spanish colonisers on the island of Mactan. It drew nearly 100,000 people, many of whom were families with young children.