Islanders come together to mourn lives lost at Filipino festival in Vancouver

Tony Davis · CBC News

· Posted: May 01, 2025 5:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 11 minutes ago

More than 100 Islanders including members of the P.E.I. Filipino assemblage attended a Mass astatine St. Dunstan's Basilica successful downtown Charlottetown Wednesday evening to commune for and honour the 11 radical killed astatine a Vancouver festival implicit the weekend. 

They died when an SUV crashed into the assemblage Saturday nighttime arsenic Lapu-Lapu Day Festival events wrapped up and kiosks were being taken down.  

"I truly consciousness atrocious astir the people — those who died, that got injured, and astir of each for those who survived, due to the fact that they're the ones that volition beryllium keeping this successful their bosom and their mind," says Raymundo Yu.

He's been a subordinate of the Filipino assemblage connected P.E.I. for implicit 3 decades and helped signifier the event.

A five-year-old miss and a 65-year-old were among those killed during the incidental successful Vancouver.

"There's 2 families that had a father, parent and kid that were there, and you know, died. That procreation is gone," Yu said. 

The assemblage has a batch of enactment successful P.E.I., Yu said. The choir astatine the basilica leapt into enactment astatine abbreviated announcement and everyone was connected committee to signifier an evening of mourning successful conjunction with vigils held crossed Canada the same night.

"It's truly important due to the fact that radical who acquisition this, radical whose families were killed, they request idiosyncratic to clasp them beardown by doing this, by praying for them, to punctual them determination is inactive a God that volition assistance us," Yu said. 

'Our bosom is broke'

Billy Bautista is the president of the Filipino Association of Prince Edward Island. He learned of Saturday night's onslaught implicit societal media.

"It truly feels atrocious and truly devastating. Our bosom is broke. We don't person immoderate relatives determination but they are our countrymen, chap Filipinos. We attraction for them, they attraction for us," Bautista said.

The greater Filipino assemblage connected P.E.I. is feeling the aforesaid way, helium said.

A 30-year-old Vancouver man, Kai-Ji Adam Lo, has been charged with 8 counts of second-degree murder. After the incident, constabulary said Lo had a past of interactions with officers and health-care professionals related to intelligence health.

Bautista says if an SUV tin ram into a thoroughfare festival successful Vancouver, it could hap elsewhere successful the state too.

"People, we don't cognize what's connected their caput now," helium said.

Yu knows the assemblage is hurting, but astatine times similar his, helium said helium likes to think of a works called a bumble that grows successful the Philippines.

"It's truly flexible. In beardown wind, it volition crook down to the ground. Then aft that, it volition emergence up. So I deliberation Filipinos are strong. In spite of difficulties, they volition emergence up."