Vehicle attack in Vancouver devastates a vibrant and growing Filipino community

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — For Bennet Miemban-Ganata, owner of a popular Filipino restaurant in Vancouver, the arrival of spring means a season of fiestas, bringing both good business and celebrations of culture.

From Filipino Restaurant Month in April to Filipino Heritage Month in June, there would be colorful clothes, folk dances and traditional food like crispy lumpia, marinated and grilled pork belly, and beef stew. And of course, there would be togetherness for Vancouver's rapidly growing Filipino community.

All that made Saturday night's vehicle-ramming attack on a large crowd at a Filipino block party all the more devastating.

''We felt ... the whole day that it's a fun celebration, that people are happy being together,'' Miemban-Ganata said as she fought back tears Monday during an interview at her restaurant, Plato Filipino. ''We were just there to have fun, to know that we have each other in a foreign land.''

A black Audi SUV barreled down a closed, food-truck-lined street and struck people attending the Lapu Lapu Day festival, which celebrates Datu Lapu-Lapu, an Indigenous chieftain who stood up to Spanish explorers in the 16th century.

Eleven people were killed, including a 5-year-old girl and her parents. Thirty-two people were hurt. Seven were in critical condition and three were in serious condition at hospitals on Monday, Vancouver Police Department spokesperson Steve Addison said.

Authorities quickly ruled out terrorism. The driver, 30-year-old Kai-Ji Adam Lo, faces multiple counts of second-degree murder, police said, and he had a history of mental illness that had prompted law enforcement responses, including one the day before the attack. His brother was the victim of a homicide in 2024, and Lo wrote in an online fundraising appeal that he was devastated by that killing.

The festival is a testament to the growing presence of the Filipino community in the Vancouver area. Filipino-owned shops and restaurants, like Plato Filipino, have proliferated, especially in South Vancouver. Miemban-Ganata said her restaurant serves as a gathering place, one where people feel comfortable enough to leave their kids when they're pinched for child care.

Over the weekend, British Columbia Premier David Eby vowed not to let the tragedy define the celebration and urged people to channel their rage into helping those affected.

''I don't think there is a British Columbian that hasn't been touched in some way by the Filipino community,'' he said. ''This is a community that gives and gives and yesterday was a celebration of their culture.''

Filipino immigration to Canada was heavily restricted until the 1960s, when Filipino immigrants began arriving to help offset labor shortages in Canada's health care, garment and other industries, according to a Canadian Historical Association report. Now many work in finance, caregiving, real estate and other sectors.

Filipinos are the third-largest Asian immigrant population in Canada with nearly 1 million residents, and more than one-third arrived in the previous decade, according to the 2021 census. And roughly 175,000 live in British Columbia, mostly in the Vancouver area, where they make up a little more more than 5% of the population.

The community's growth helped prompt the formation in 2023 of Filipino BC, a nonprofit that seeks to foster Filipino Canadian heritage. Filipino BC has advocated for a Filipino cultural center and organized the first Lapu Lapu Day celebration last year. The festival is already so popular that it has attracted attendees from Seattle and Toronto, said RJ Aquino, chair of the organization's board.

''It's really a festival designed to celebrate and share our culture,'' Aquino said. ''Everybody also just loves having a big party.''

Aquino grew up in the Philippines and moved briefly to the U.S. as a teenager before settling in the Vancouver area in the 1990s. The Filipino community was small then — ''It really did feel like everybody knew each other,'' he said — and even now it's not uncommon to meet a stranger and learn that they're related through an aunt or uncle.

As he stood before a memorial of flowers and a white cross, he called the weekend "the highest of highs and the lowest of lows.'' He had left the festival to have dinner with his family when he received a call about the attack and raced back.

The community's ''first imperative,'' he said, was ''to just be present with each other and make sure we don't feel alone.'' The city of Vancouver and Province of British Columbia had been active in offering support services, he noted.

''The Filipino community knows how to be resilient,'' Aquino said. ''How that manifests this time around — from a tragedy we've never experienced, on a scale like this — we're going to see how it plays out, and I'm going to make sure we come out of this stronger.''

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Johnson reported from Seattle.