Where Light Remains: A Filipino Reflection on the Vancouver Tragedy
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The Lapu lapu Day Festival in Vancouver before tragedy struck (Source: Yahoo News)
"When violence strikes one of us, it strikes all of us."
I live 112 kilometers away, with the Pacific Ocean stretched between me and the place where my people gathered. And yet, the horror, the anger, the grief, and the deep sadness cross that distance as if it were nothing. It finds me here, heavy in my chest, tightening in my throat. Because when violence strikes one of us, it strikes all of us.
In the Filipino way of life, celebrations are sacred. Whether it is a simple birthday or a grand cultural event, we come together as family — not just by blood, but by spirit. Laughter spills out like sunlight through windows. Tables overflow with food prepared with love, each dish a memory carried from home. Music rises — sometimes from microphones, sometimes just from the swell of voices singing songs we all somehow know. There is dancing, there is teasing, there are stories told and retold. These gatherings are not mere events; they are affirmations of who we are.
That’s what was happening in Vancouver. A day when the air was meant to be thick with celebration became instead a night marred by senseless violence. A vehicle, weaponized by a mind untethered from reality, tore into that joy and left devastation in its wake. And now we are left with the unbearable aftermath — the names of the lost and the injured, the images that sear into the mind, the ache of knowing that something so full of life was shattered in an instant.
We are left asking: How could this happen? How is it possible that a severely mentally ill person was allowed behind the wheel of a vehicle, free to move unchecked through streets filled with families and friends, joy and laughter? These questions ache for answers. They demand more than silence; they demand responsibility.
But answers come slowly, and in the meantime, grief moves quickly.
It moves across oceans, across distances, finding us wherever we are. It moved into my home last night as I sat by the window, looking out into the distance — the quiet streets, the muted night — and feeling the stillness broken. It found its way into the messages and phone calls between friends and family, checking on each other, sharing fragments of news, sharing heartbreak.
It moved into the hearts of every Filipino — whether standing on Canadian soil or living an ocean away.
Because we know that this could have been any one of us. It could have been any one of our aunties laughing with a friend, any one of our children dancing in excitement, any one of our elders sitting proudly, watching the next generation celebrate their heritage.
It is right to demand a world where mental illness is not ignored until it leads to tragedy, a world where public safety is not an afterthought but a sacred trust.
When you carry the understanding that every person in your community is somehow connected to you — by history, by love, by hope — grief becomes not just personal, but collective. It becomes something vast, something that calls us not to retreat, but to stand closer together.
And yet, even as sorrow floods the spaces between us, something deeper rises too: resilience.
The Filipino people have always been a people of light — joyous, warm, resilient beyond measure. It is part of our heritage, this stubborn joy, this ability to gather the shattered pieces of ourselves and make beauty out of them again. We are no strangers to hardship. We come from islands shaped by storms, from histories marked by struggle. Yet with every generation, we have found a way to dance again, to laugh again, to sing songs loud enough to be heard across the seas.
Our gatherings, large or small, are rooted in that spirit of bayanihan—a word that cannot be neatly translated but holds within it the ideas of community, solidarity, and the belief that no burden is carried alone. Last night was no different. For a time, there was dancing. There was music. There was laughter that only comes when people feel safe and seen.
No act of violence, no sudden horror, can erase that. It is stitched too deeply into who we are.
Today, as grief settles into aching hearts and unanswered questions gather like storm clouds, what endures is not only what was lost but also what was present: love, community, culture, and the undying resilience of a people who have weathered many storms — and will weather this one, too.
It is right that we mourn. It is right that we rage against the broken systems that failed to protect our loved ones. It is right to demand a world where mental illness is not ignored until it leads to tragedy, a world where public safety is not an afterthought but a sacred trust. These are not political issues; they are human ones, matters of life and death in the most literal sense.
But even as we do the necessary work of seeking justice and demanding change, we must also remember who we are. We must remember that our greatest power has never come from the walls we build, but from the bridges we form. From our ability to show up for one another — with food, with song, with shoulders offered for leaning, with prayers whispered and shouted into the sky.
Across the water, across the distances between us, I grieve with my community. I honor the lives touched, the moments of joy shared before they were shattered, and the strength that will carry us forward through the difficult days ahead.
To the Filipino community, and to all those mourning today: your sorrow is shared. Your strength is honored. And your light — our beautiful, enduring light — remains.
It always will.
Lani Domaloy is a Filipino-Canadian writer, poet, and photographer living on Vancouver Island in Canada. She draws her creative inspiration primarily from her love for the outdoors, nature, traveling, and the arts.
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