When a migrant worker dies suddenly, a community takes charge

Arranging a funeral for a migrant worker is not on Alberto Rodil’s job description as an immigrant settlement worker.

Yet, he knew it fell upon him — and the wider Filipino community — to give Girlie Gioquino a proper memorial and, more important, repatriate the woman’s body to her family in the Philippines, the home she left behind a decade ago to work as a live-in caregiver, first in Israel and later in Toronto.

Diagnosed with an aggressive form of lung cancer on April 23, Gioquino, a non-smoker, wanted to return to thePhilippinesand die at home. However, she was already too sick to travel and died at the Lakeridge Health community hospital inOshawa— within three weeks of her diagnosis — on Mother’s Day.

The problem is that Gioquino, like many migrant workers inCanada, had no family inCanadato take care of her funeral or the money to send the body home.

“It gets very complicated when you die suddenly and you don’t have any family around to take care of you,” said Rodil, who works at Thorncliffe Neighbourhood Office, where Gioquino, 42, was a member of the live-in caregiver support group. “Who is responsible for that?”

Rodil, with help of his colleagues at Thorncliffe, has been working around the clock, making arrangements with Gioquino’s family, thePhilippinesconsulate and funeral homes. They have also gone to Filipino community groups as far away asCaliforniafor financial support.

The Filipino diaspora isn’t unfamiliar with sudden tragedies like Gioquino’s. Last spring, Shirley Mae Lao, a native of Lapaz, died after a fatal fall from an apartment onLawrence Ave. W., and a similar ad hoc campaign was launched.

Over the past two years, Toronto’s Balmoral Funeral Home has hosted services for at least five Filipino migrant workers who died of sudden illness or accident and needed repatriation to their families in thePhilippines.

“Often their distant relatives or friends would take charge of the funeral and go to the community with the financial matter,” said Balmoral’s manager, John Arienda-Jose, who is also of Filipino descent.

In all cases, he said, the deceased migrants’ families were unable to come toCanadabecause they had just lost their breadwinners and didn’t even have the money for the funeral.