Filipino Canadian paper celebrates 25th anniversary

Hermie and Mila Garcia, political prisoners under a dictatorship, did odd jobs to fund their own paper, which celebrates its 25th anniversary.

For the past 25 years, Hermie and Mila Garcia have followed the same routine every other week: up till the wee hours proof-reading and fact-checking on Thursday and then rising early Friday to check on the bundles coming off the press at a Yorkdale Mall area print shop, the ink still fresh on the pages of their family newspaper.

As their Philippine Reporter reaches its quarter-century milestone this spring, the couple has seen it grow from a 12-page, 2,000-copy black-and-white publication to a 56-page, 12,000-copy full-colour biweekly.

“When we came to Canada in 1984, it was supposed to be temporary,” says Hermie, 67.

He and his wife fled Manila after they were released from military camps under the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos for reporting on the rampant exploitation of peasants and corruption in rural Philippines.

Read full story at www.thestar.com