Page 9 - LM Confidential Issue December 2014

Canada
NEWS
4 OFW killed in Leduc crash
Drama is queen
A new elective course at the Ateneo studies the most popular Filipino cultural text: the teleserye.
LEDUC - A recently widowed mother working as a nanny to support her two teenagers was among four Filipino temporary foreign workers killed in a head-on crash with a truck on an icy Alberta highway Saturday morning.
Eva Janette Caperina, 41, was travelling with two men and a woman along Highway 21 when their Saturn Ion hit an icy patch near Leduc. The car swerved into the opposite lane and slammed into a tractor-trailer, killing all four people.
The accident comes after Caperina’s husband was killed in a motorcycle crash last year. ”That’s the saddest part of the story, the husband just passed away, and she had two kids — a boy and a girl,” said Hilda Doniego, Caperina’s cousin.
The two men worked at a Fatburger restaurant in southeast Edmonton, while Caperina and the other woman were both nannies, Doniego said.
During the week, Caperina worked in
the hamlet of Kingman, near Camrose, and frequently relied on her employer to drive her to and from the city. Doniego said her cousin was close friends with the other woman killed in the crash, often staying with her in Edmonton on weekends.
Doniego believes, the four were driving out to Kingman to teach Caperina the route in case she ever had to drive it, when the crash occurred. The tragedy echoes a crash in 2012, when four Filipino workers were killed when their vehicle was hit by a suspected drunk driver.
Lyla Gray, a prominent member of the community, said that history is not lost on those that knew the workers.
“Everybody’s so sad,” she said. “The Filipino community is so sad because it happened again.”
Gray said there are efforts underway to raise money to pay for funeral arrangements.
Scenes in the City RIGHT, Ready honda’s Anita Diaz enjoys the party with
her her husband Angelo Busca.
BELOW, Maria Panaligan and her mom Gen join friends at the Masquerade Ball of CARP.
In Philippine television, there are three popular formats: the variety show, the news, and the teleserye. But it is the teleserye format that dominates them
all. There’s a teleserye in the morning, afternoon, and evening or on primetime. Culturally speaking, these local television series are already part of Filipinos’ lives.
CULTURES HIGH AND LOW
Who would forget the scene where Selina tried to kill Via by bombing a whole bus in Mula Sa Puso? Or the moment in Be
Careful with My Heart when Maya and Sir Chief first met in the middle of road? Or that scene where Lally finally con- fronts Eric in My Husband’s Lover?
Because of its extreme popularity among Filipinos, it’s not surprising that the academe creates a course focusing on local soap operas. The Philippine Teles- erye under the English Department of the Ateneo de Manila University is an elective course the school made available this second semester, the brainchild of profes-
TELESERYE COURSE continued on page 13
DECEMBER 2014 L. M. Confidential 9
LMC