'In our blood': Basketball and Montreal's Filipino community

When Jake Maguigad and Robert De Guzman moved to Cte-des-Neiges six months apart in 1969, they wanted to connect the Filipino community through a shared passion from back home: basketball.

The only problem was, they could only find nine Filipinos in the area who could play one short of what was needed for a game.

We had to befriend a Spaniard to make it 10, Maguigad says with a laugh. We gave him an honorary spot in our league.

Today, more than 60 per cent of all Filipinos living in Montreal callCte-des-Neigestheir home, making the neighbourhood a hub for Filipino businesses, families and community organizations.

The basketballleague now knownas the Philippine Basketball Association of Montreal (PBAM) encompasses more than 65 teams throughout its different divisions, bringing together more than 800 people from the Filipino community each weekend.

Basketball roots

Ask anyone involved in the PBAM, and theyll say basketball was a natural way to unite Filipinos in Cte-des-Neiges.

Every Filipino loves basketball, Maguigad says.Its in our blood.

Every Filipino loves basketball. Its in our blood.- JakeMaguigad, Basketball league founder

If you walk in the Philippines,every corner youll see a basketball board hanging on the coconut trees,"DeGuzman says.

"Theres always a ring and a piece of wood.

For todays younger players, its just something that came naturally.

For me, its like a family thing," 17-year-old Mark AngeloAlmontesays.

"I started off when I was small, I always watched my parents play. Even my mom was out there shooting with my dad.

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As word spread about the league in the 1970s and 80s, it grew bigger and bigger. By the mid-80s, however, the Filipino community started facing some tough challenges, and so did the league.

Tumultuous times

There was a period in the 1980s when PBAM organizers strongly considered shutting down the league.

With an influx of Filipinos settling in Montreal, a divide began to take shape between immigrant Filipinos and those who were Canadian-born.

It was a clash of cultures that was felt both on the PBAM courts and on the streets of the neighbourhood, where rivalgangs were growing in numbers.

The kids coming from the Philippines were having trouble with the kids who grew up and were born here. It was like two solitudes, says Maguigad.

Teams in the league were starting to be divvied up based solely on where players were born, elevating the in-game intensity.

There were fights among the players on the teams. The championship one time wasnt even finished, because three minutes into the game, there was a scuffle, a fight and the referee had to leave, he says.

The Filipinos who freshly arrive here, theyre kind of wild. But the ones that were born here are more refined, there was a clash, says De Guzman.

Through the league, the organizers tried to help newly-arrived immigrants adapt to their new surroundings.

When games would take place late at night, both men would wait outside the gyms, where one group would be waiting for the other to emerge.

De Guzman started receiving calls from Station 20 in Cte-des-Neiges when police officers brought in Filipino youth for misconduct. Often, the youth were found withweapons from back home, like arrows and jungle bolos.

The policemen were wondering why these kids were carrying these," he says.

"I had to explain to them that in the Philippines, its survival of the fittest. I would go there just to make sure that their human rights werent being violated,that they wereOK.Then I would call the parents and explain why they are there and the consequences."

He became an important link between the neighbourhoods young Filipinos and local police.

That was part of the PBAM, he says.

A community united

In the mid-90s,Maguigad decided to focus the league solely on the youth divisions, forcing out many of the older players that had turned it into a place to hash outrivalries, rather than a way of connecting the community.

It was an ambitious gamble, but he says he knew that, with time, everyone would understand what the PBAM was tryingto do by grandfathering out the tension underlining a lot of the league games.

At first the guys who were shut out were at my neck, he says. They didnt realize that what we were doing was for the good of everybody.

I told them, just wait, he says.

What Jake did was try to swing the pendulum, decrease the problems we were having in the older divisions, and start doing it more for the community, as a service for the younger kids, current PBAM president Rick Aquino says.

Within a few years, the association was brought back to what it was first intended to be: a gathering point for Filipinos who could connect over a shared passion of a game from back home.

On weekends today, the whole community comes together through the PBAM. The older divisions take the court in the morning before making way for the younger players in the afternoons.Parents oftenwatchfrom the sidelines as grandmothers serve Filipino dishes just outside.

For Maguigad, however, the associations true success is on display outside the lines of the basketball court.

Theres more kinship now, because of basketball, he says.

Thats what I treasure. We did a lot. We did a lot to integrate the Canadian-born and the Filipino-born. The divide is good now. We did a lot to bridge that gap.

• Read the full multimedia story: Bridging the divide

About the project

Cte-des-NeigesChroniclesis a collaboration between CBC Montreal and the Diploma Program of the Department of Journalism at Concordia University.Students from an online journalism course were asked to report on Montreals Cte-des-Neigesneighborhood.They were also asked to push their storytelling skills through the use of photos, video and information graphicsThe result is a wide-ranging look at the history of Cte-des-Neiges, its key attractions, and theindividuals and communities that make up one of Montreals more diverse neighborhoods.

• Journalists' biographies
• ConcordiaUniversity's Visual Journalism program