OBITUARY: Angeles J. Aureus March 30, 1921 – January 1, 2015
OBITUARY: Angeles J. Aureus March 30, 1921 – January 1, 2015
Angeles Javier Aureus, 93, a leader in the Ontario Filipino seniors community and the widow of the first mayor of Naga City, Philippines, died New Year’s Day surrounded by loving family in Brampton, Ontario.
The widow of Leon Sa. Aureus was born March 30, 1921, in Palapag, Samar, a small, impoverished town frequented by typhoons in the Visayas Island in southern Philippines. She was the first in her family to venture outside her town to seek love and fortune in the Bicol Region where she met her husband, who was an anti-Japanese guerrillas leader during World War II. He became mayor of Naga City charged with rebuilding from the ruins of the war. Following his retirement from politics, he founded and published the Bicol Mail, a community newspaper in English serving six Bicol provinces south of Manila.
Mrs. Aureus’ 30-year marriage to Leon inspired her lifelong interest in politics, journalism, and Filipino community service.
In 1974, two years after her family’s newspaper was shut down by martial law in 1972, she immigrated to Canada with three of her younger children and had to take whatever jobs she could find to survive and support her family.
In Canada, she stayed active in the community where she found an outlet for her love of singing and dancing and took pride serving in leadership positions for numerous associations, including the Hamilton Filipino Seniors, Filipino Aspirations of Rizal, Silayan Canadian Filipinos, Filipino Parents, Ontario Filipino Women’s Club, and Filipino Seniors Ladies of Rizal.
Mrs. Aureus, who pioneered in running several small businesses in the Philippines, and met many challenges in her life, lived by a motto handed down from her own grandmother: “To live is to work and to work is to live.” She saved her modest wages to help her children and travel extensively to visit family and friends in Canada, the United States, the Philippines and Europe.
She was a great source of strength for her children and kept them close as her family grew and established roots in Canada. She was a 10-year survivor of cancer, but when the end came, she died of natural causes just a few hours into the New Year at Peel Manor in Brampton.
She is survived by seven children: Paz (Jesus Villanueva) and Corazon (Ruben Lopez) of Windsor; Eufemia (James V. Calce, deceased) of Toronto; Leon (Adelia Brendia) of Mississauga, Jose (Susan Arevalo) and Virgilio (Jeanette Vetricek) of Brampton, and Leonor (David C. Briscoe, Jr) of Hawaii, USA; 24 grandchildren, and 19 great grandchildren. Her grandchildren and great-grandchildren from her late first son Vicente Aureus (Teresa Ajero) live in the Philippines and Singapore.
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