Erie Maestro

Erie Maestro

WRITER / COLUMNIST [BC]

Erie Maestro is a retired librarian and archivist. When she retired during the COVID-19 pandemic, she was the Head of the Kensington Branch of the Vancouver Public Library. She was a Children’s librarian for many years at VPL and did Storytimes in English and Pilipino. She earned her MA in Library and Information Studies at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia and her MA in Archival Studies from the University of British Columbia.

She arrived in Canada in 1991 with her four-year-old daughter and lived in Halifax, Nova Scotia for 10 years before relocating to Vancouver, BC.

She is active in community issues, especially migrant justice issues. She co-founded several organizations: Migrante BC (Sept 14, 2008- ), the Canada Philippines Solidarity for Human Rights (2008), the PANCIT Art Collective (2012), the National Philippine Canadian Cultural Centre (July 2019), and the Malaya Movement in Canada or MALAYA (Sept 2019 – ) In 2021, she served as the Coordinator of the 1Sambayan chapter in Canada, a broad coalition of democratic forces from different kinds of political persuasions during Philippine 2022 elections.

She is also the people’s warden at the St. Mary the Virgin South Hill Church-Anglican in East Vancouver (2023- ) which has an active Migrants Ministry. She is a member of the Executive Committee of Migrante Canada, the Canada-wide alliance of Filipino migrant organizations, a member of FILNET, and the UP- AABC.

Erie is a member of the Canadian Ethnic Media Association, also of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines-North America chapter. She writes for the Philippine Asian News Today and the Philippine Showbiz Today, The Philippine Reporter, the Munting Nayon online magazine and the PinoyAbrod Canada online platform.

Her story is captured in a book collection of 18 autobiographies of contemporary Canadian women entitled And I will paint the sky: women speak the story of their lives(2000), edited by Carole Trainer, and in the collection of 18 personal narratives in the book Aboriginal and Visible Minority Librarians: Oral Histories from Canada (2011), edited by Deborah Lee and Mahalakshmi Kumaran.

She was born and raised in the Philippines and was a student at the University of the Philippines during the Marcos dictatorship. In the Philippines, she has worked various jobs, including as a high school teacher, human rights worker and organizer, and researcher. Now that she is retired, she finds that she is busier than ever.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

AWARDS & ACHIEVEMENTS

EDUCATION & EXPERTISE

AFFILIATIONS & MEMBERSHIPS

CONTACT & SOCIAL MEDIA

PICTURE / VIDEO GALLERY