Gov. Edgar Chatto and a Boholano Vatican envoy to Haiti will keynote the 14 th Biennial Convention of CONBUSAC or the Confederation of Boholanos in the USA and Canada in the latter’s festival city of Edmonton on June 30-July 4. Organizers expect a record participation to this year’s assembly of what is reputed to be the biggest umbrella union of Boholano groups not just in the North American continent but all foreign lands. The governor will lead the invited Bohol officials, who include members of the Sangguniang Panlalawigan presided by Vice Gov. Concepcion Lim, to the important event that can reinforce the oneness of the Boholanos for the welfare of their mother province. The CONBUSAC, thru its president Carlos Cagaanan, asked Chatto to keynote the assembly and induct the confederation’s new officers during the Gala Night on July 2 at the elegant Sutton Place Hotel.

Archbishop Barney Auza, the Boholano apostolic nuncio to Haiti, has been invited to keynote the convention’s Family Night on July 1. The last CONBUSAC biennial covergence, which was in Seattle in 2009, had one of its invited honored guests a Boholano already settling in Mindanao, Surigao del Sur Rep. Florencio Garay, a native of Pangangan island in Calape. This July’s once-in-every-two-years event is bound to be CONBUSAC’s first ever graced by Chatto as Bohol governor---and by a first family of the province in complete attendance. The organization’s president asked the governor to come along with his wife, Pureza Veloso-Chatto, and their only child, Esther Patrisha, for their full family presence during the family night with the apostolic nuncio. The governor is honored to also present the awards to the Ten Outstanding Boholanos in the USA and Canada and, together with his wife, crown the Miss CONBUSAC 2011 at the gala night.

Chatto will present his administration’s overarching development agenda in the day meeting of the confederation’s Council of Leaders on July 1 and the convention’s plenary session dubbed the “Tigum Bol-anon” on the following day. In these meetings, the CONBUSAC and Bohol government can share strategies to help the less-privileged among the Boholanos back home. “It is always a joy to share others’ sacrifices---even forgetting ourselves---to give the people we love the good life that is just confined in the depth of their yearning,’ the governor said. Chatto said the convention is significant because CONBUSAC’s goals complement with his banner thrusts coded as HEAT Bohol---Health and sanitation, Education and technology, Agriculture and food security, Tourism and livelihood.

The governor is expected to present the pains and gains of his administration, which will coincidentally ripe into one year on July 1, thus likely turning the convention into a some sort of an instant, although unofficial, venue for his first annual State of the Province Address (SOPA). Sentimentally, the convention will nurture the great tradition of Boholano hospitality while strengthening the bonds between the Boholanos in the foreign lands and the very soil of their roots. The governor, his family and other invited Bohol officials will leave Bohol two weeks before the CONBUSAC gathering because of chance invitations to separate earlier meetings with the Boholano communities in California and New Jersey on June 23-25.

The invitations were extended to the governor and his delegation by the Tagbilaran Association of Northern California (TANOCAL) thru its president, Ricky Inting, and Boholanos of Eastern USA thru New Jersey-based Ma. Elizabeth Garcia. Garcia, elder sister of the governor’s wife, is the chairperson of the Tigum Bol-anon sa Tibuok Kalibutan (TBTK), a phenomenal movement that reunites right in their home province the Boholanos from around the world in every two years. The next TBTK, also regarded as the grandest Boholano homecoming, will happen in the fiesta month of May in 2012, the first outside its traditional schedule within July. Chatto this early cited the cohesiveness of the Boholano groups in Northern America to the cause of involving all Boholanos across the globe in next year’s more phenomenal reunion of a Philippine province. The TBTK 2012, particularly its participation by the Boholanos in the US and Canada, will be discussed in the CONBUSAC gathering.

SOME POINTS OF INTEREST

The 14TH CONBUSAC convention will be the second ever held in Canada, which first hosted the biennial gathering in two activity venues, Toronto and Ontario, in 1991. The rest of the past assemblies had been held in different US areas since its founding convention in Alameda, California in 1986, except for two which were both held in Bohol. The CONBUSAC conventions in 1999 and 2003 were respectively joined with the TBTK in Tagbilaran City in the same years. The upcoming convention will be the first ever hosted by the Edmonton Boholano Cultural Association (EBCA) under its president, Alejandro Aurestila, and vice president, Benjamin Pepino. While Bohol is emerging as a convention center largely as a consequent of its growing tourism, Edmonton has an impressive track record for hosting world-class conferences and special events. Canada’s oil capital and festival city, Edmonton is home to the West Edmonton Mall which is the largest mall in North America and world’s biggest until 2004.

This explains why the mall is the first Edmonton attraction that tourists can discover. Tourism with historical twist is finest at the Fort Edmonton Park, Canada’s largest living history park. There are Bohol-Edmonton “coincidences” on which the CONBUSAC delegates and guests can ponder. Edmonton adopted a new---and which is now in effect---system of representation to its legislature on a July 22, the same month and day of Bohol’s provincehood. The new system has since come to effect following Edmonton’s election in 2010, the year Bohol marked another founding anniversary with Chatto as its newly-elected provincial governor. It was also in a July that Tagbilaran, the capital of Bohol, was chartered into a city. Bohol’s seat of government and provincial legislature are situated in Tagbilaran City. Edmonton is the capital of the Canadian province of Alberta and the seat of its provincial lawmaking body. In 2007, Edmonton was named the cultural capital of Canada. Three years later, Bohol earned the title as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) cultural capital for the month of July. (Ven rebo Arigo)