Filipino nurses shaken by deadly Vancouver festival rampage say tragedy 'will not define us'

Filipino-Canadian nurse Glesy Banton-Victoria says she had planned to attend the Lapu-Lapu Day street festival in Vancouver on Saturday, but took a nap instead, exhausted by a funeral earlier in the day.

When she learned that a vehicle sped into a crowd of festival-goers at the Filipino community event, she says she was stunned by the horrific details, thinking, "Is this real?"

Banton-Victoria says she's seen many dead bodies in her job as a veteran emergency room nurse at a Surrey, B.C., hospital, but expects she would have frozen in place if she had witnessed Saturday's carnage.

"It hits home because it is home, the Filipino community," said Banton-Victoria, born in Legazpi, a city in the southeast Philippines.

Police said Wednesday that 11 people had died, including three members of a family from Colombia, while a 22-month-old boy was among three people in serious condition. Dozens were sent to hospital with injuries.

Banton-Victoria says she's thinking a lot about the victims, and the Filipino nurses she expects are providing them care.

"If you're a Filipino working through those days in emergency, this is probably one of the toughest days of your life, seeing your community. [It's] almost like a violation of yourself, of your values," she said.

Mass casualty events such as these are already stressful for health workers suddenly pressed into action, but B.C. Nurses' Union president Adriane Gear says the alleged attack is especially difficult because so many Vancouver nurses are Filipino and may have had a personal connection to the festival tragedy.

Nurses and Nurse Practitioners of British Columbia said in a statement Monday that many members of the Filipino community were called to respond without knowing if loved ones were involved.

Gear broke into tears while noting that nurses who volunteered at the event told her they saw an SUV plow into the crowd before they ran toward the injured.

She said none of them were physically harmed, but she said she worries about their psychological health.

"Vicarious trauma is witnessing human suffering, and nurses and other first responders, they do that all the time," Gear said.

"But there are situations that even [for] the most seasoned, it is just so difficult. And, this would be one of those situations."

Just 24 hours after the tragic incident, B.C. Premier David Eby spoke about how every person in the province has been touched in some way by the Filipino care community.

"We can't go to a place that delivers care in our province and not meet a member of that community," Eby said at a news conference on Sunday.

"This is a community that gives and gives."

Those words moved Vancouver nurse Ron Burke to tears. He founded OMNI College to support internationally-educated nurses who come to Canada from countries including the Philippines, Singapore and India.

"And now we should be helping them and supporting them," Burke said.

"Without a doubt, we will probably know somebody who was injured or killed, and then that makes it very personal because we know about the person and the family. I know, firsthand, the struggles many, many Filipinos have had to come to Canada," he said.

Statistics Canada says there were more than 44,000 Filipino nurses and health-care support workers across the country in 2021. Many provinces, including British Columbia, have said they were recruiting nurses from the Philippines to fill hospital staffing shortages in 2022 and 2023.

Filipino nurse Jennie Arceno didn't treat injured patients, but knows others who did. She worries they are having a hard time processing the casualties and injuries they witnessed.

She said she was on Vancouver Island on Saturday night, scrolling social media at a birthday party when a live video appeared on her feed from the festival: victims on the ground, first responders doing CPR and a damaged SUV.

"I could just hear from my own language, saying like, 'Oh my God, there's a baby under the truck,'" said Arceno, who came to Vancouver from Palompon in 2016 for a registered nurse re-entry program.

"I was just like, 'Oh my God.' And that's how I stopped watching because it was just like, was that even real?"

She's also thinking about the families who lost loved ones.

"You come to Canada. You think about a good life … you only think about the future of your family and wanting to work here, wanting to live here, peacefully away from the chaos, and then you just end up going home with a dead body."

Banton-Victoria said the "tragedy has shaken us, but it will not define us."

"To our Filipino nurses: your courage at the bedside and your care for our community inspire all of us. You are the bridge between pain and healing, and we are stronger because of you."

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