Hacienda – Toronto’s club for young Filipinos

Hacienda – Toronto’s club for young Filipinos

By Stacey Hale

It’s the perfect meeting place for anyone and everyone.

And that’s just the way Paul Santos and his friends envisioned Toronto’s only club for young Filipinos. Santos, 26, a fourth-year engineering student at Ryerson University, and his friends pictured a place that would show Toronto just how young Filipinos party and entertain.

In February of last year, Hacienda Lounge became what the group had envisioned. The core of the club holds true to a Filipino flavour, without being intimidating to non-Filipinos Santos said
Hacienda developed for want of a venue, specifically, a place for young Filipinos to showcase their talent and creativity. Winchester Liao, 25, a first-year special events planning student at George Brown knew that Hacienda had a future. Liao used to bartend and promote for the club and he knew that Hacienda was going to be a “good experience.” Liao said the club would be successful because most people involved in the project were “young and capable of doing, and making Hacienda work.”

Located at 794 Bathurst St., just north of the famous blazing lights of Honest Ed’s, Hacienda Lounge is far from Toronto’s downtown entertainment district.

Yet geography isn’t the only thing separating Hacienda from other clubs

Hacienda isn’t trying to buyout its neighbours Santos said referring to the business realities of owning and running a club. “If you focus on the business itself you defeat the purpose of why you started.” Besides, “if it was (for) the money I would have stopped the second or third week.”

Since opening, the club has organized more than 40 events ranging from jazz and rock concerts, to model search pageants, singers, comedians, free stylers and head to head DJ battles.
“We’ll take anything we can get our hands on,” Santos said.

The club came to life via community encouragement. About “40 per cent of our funds came from community support,” Santos said. Local Filipino politicians and businesses granted money to Hacienda, while the rest of the funds came from the Santos-and-friends pocket fund.

Santos stresses that he and his group were not just looking for handouts to establish the club. “What you have to remember is that we didn’t go knock on doors (expecting people to say) ‘yea I’m going to support you. ”

Santos has, and continues to volunteer in the Filipino community. “A lot of people have tried and failed,” he said referring to other groups looking for support in the past. “You have to be involved, doing something you’re happy doing (and then it’s) not that hard to gain support.”

Santos has been involved in many projects and fundraisers where money made has been money donated to charities, and other worthy causes. The most recent event being SuperSkillz 2006 held late January at the Opera House. The show, now in its tenth year running, was designed to expose the local talent of fresh, young performers in the G.T.A. The proceeds from this year’s show will go towards the “Justice for Jeffrey” campaign.

Toronto’s Filipino community has dealt with challenges in the past. This has led community members to be more concerned and involved. The “J 4 J” campaign is a clear example of this concern. The campaign wants to raise money to see that an inquest is held to investigate the details of the shooting and death of 17-year-old Jeffrey Michael Reodica. The Filipino teen was shot three times in the chest and back in May of 2004 by plainclothes police officers responding to a 911 call about a swarming in Scarborough. Reodica’s family and much of Toronto’s Filipino community believe the officers used more force than necessary to restrain and arrest the teen.

Despite recent stereotypes surrounding young visible minorities in Toronto, intimidating is one thing Hacienda is not.

“We (Filipinos) are really a quiet bunch,” Santos said. “We do what we can and we are proud people and we try our best to represent our culture, traditions and norms.”

The club, which is open every Saturday (ladies free before 11 p.m. of course) has a natural ease and flow. Although the core crowd is Filipino, everyone is welcome. “We don’t want people to feel alienated,” Santos said.

According to Statistics Canada 2001 figures 89.3 per cent of Filipinos in Toronto speak Filipino based on Tagalog, one of eight dialects spoken in the Philippines. But at Hacienda “we try to always communicate in English,” Santos said.

Santos now anticipates the future of Hacienda. His goals are to establish a loyal crowd, and to form a team to represent young and talented Filipinos.

“We (the Hacienda team) can do anything (we) want, as long as it’s legal,” Santos joked. This club “is your second home.”