About Pilipino Express

Pilipino Express

Overview

Pilipino Express — formally the Pilipino Express News Magazine — is a Filipino news magazine published in Winnipeg, Manitoba, by The Pilipino Express Inc. Community historian Jon G. Malek dates its start to 2005, when broadcaster Emmie Joaquin established the publishing company with colleagues Rey-ar Reyes and Paul Morrow and began publishing the magazine. Joaquin remains the company's president and the magazine's editor-in-chief.

Appearing twice a month in print and continuously online at pilipino-express.com, Pilipino Express covers Winnipeg and Manitoba community news, Canadian and Manitoba politics, news from the Philippines, arts and culture, food, entertainment and immigration, in a mix of English and Tagalog. It is one of the three Filipino publications long associated with Winnipeg, the Canadian city where Filipinos form the largest visible-minority community, alongside the Filipino Journal and Ang Peryodiko. Its website was publishing current community news, features and columns through 2025 and into 2026 at the time this profile was prepared.

History

The magazine's founder brought a broadcaster's background to print. Emmie Z. Joaquin earned a degree in broadcast communication from the University of the Philippines and worked in media and public relations before immigrating to Canada in 1988. In Winnipeg she became a fixture of Filipino radio on CKJS 810 AM: from 1989 she produced and co-hosted Good Morning Philippines, the first Filipino weekday morning drive-time program in the city, and she also produced and hosted the weekday afternoon show Manila Sound and the Saturday program Tunog Pinoy Pang Sabado. After almost fifteen years in radio, she left CKJS in December 2003 to serve as special assistant for communications to Dr. Rey Pagtakhan, then the federal Minister of Western Economic Diversification, and later briefly worked as executive assistant to Winnipeg's deputy mayor, Mike Pagtakhan.

Out of that experience, Joaquin, art director Rey-ar Reyes and associate editor Paul Morrow established The Pilipino Express Inc. and launched the Pilipino Express News Magazine, which Malek's history of the Winnipeg Filipino community dates to 2005. The new magazine joined — and competed in — a community press scene in Winnipeg that stretches back to the Silangan of the 1970s. Malek notes that the Express "brands itself a newsmagazine," mixing news items, entertainment stories, immigration articles and community-events coverage, and it was among the outlets that reviewed the Manitoba Museum's fiftieth-anniversary From Manila to Manitoba exhibit in 2010.

The magazine has been published without interruption since. Its print issues are circulated as complete digital editions — issues dated 16 February 2023 and 1 October 2023, for example, are preserved in online document archives — and during the COVID-19 pandemic it carried Dr. Rey Pagtakhan's bi-monthly health column Medisina at Politika, which kept readers informed through the crisis. Joaquin's decades of media and community service have been recognized with all three of Queen Elizabeth II's jubilee medals open to Canadians: the Golden Jubilee Medal in 2002, the Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012 and the Platinum Jubilee Medal in 2022.

Content and Coverage

Pilipino Express organizes its journalism around the life of Manitoba's Filipino community while keeping one eye on the Philippines. Its news pages cover community organizations and events in Winnipeg — the Philippine Canadian Centre of Manitoba, Pinays Manitoba, seniors' groups such as the Filipino Seniors Group of Winnipeg, and institutions like the FILCASA housing co-operative — as well as Manitoba and Canadian politics of direct interest to readers. A sitting Manitoba cabinet minister, Labour and Immigration Minister Malaya Marcelino, has contributed articles at the magazine's invitation, and its political coverage extends to items such as the nomination of Filipino Canadian lawyer Rachel Punzalan as a Progressive Conservative candidate in Kirkfield Park.

Philippine coverage is a second pillar: the magazine reports on national politics in the Philippines, including the impeachment proceedings against Vice President Sara Duterte and the record-breaking Traslacion procession of the Black Nazarene in Quiapo, alongside travel and tourism features. Arts, culture and food fill out the mix — Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre and Manitoba Opera productions, the Ukulele Filipino Club, and Winnipeg's Filipino chefs, including Marie "Nikki" Mallari and Jerome Castro's Food Network Canada Bake Master Battle victory.

The magazine's columns give it a distinctive voice. Editor-in-chief Emmie Joaquin writes opinion, and the Tagalog column Eh Kasi, Pinoy! is contributed by a rotating cast including chef Alex Canlapan, Gerry Gamurot, Pastor Junie Josue and Noel Lapuz. Philippine entertainment is covered in the Showbiz-Showbuzz column by veteran Manila columnist Cristy Fermin. Associate editor Paul Morrow — a baybayin scholar whose fonts for the pre-colonial Philippine script are used on Philippine peso banknotes and passports — writes the In Other Words column on Filipino language and history. Dr. Rey Pagtakhan, Canada's first Filipino member of Parliament and a former cabinet minister, has contributed the Medisina at Politika column on medicine and politics.

Audience and Reach

Pilipino Express serves the same community that sustains Winnipeg's Filipino press generally: one of Canada's oldest Filipino settlements, begun before 1950 and grown through the garment workers and professionals who arrived from the 1960s onward. Figures from the 2011 National Household Survey reported in Manitoba History put Manitoba's Filipino-origin population at 61,270, with roughly a quarter of the province's annual newcomers arriving from the Philippines. In Winnipeg, Filipinos are the largest visible-minority group, at roughly 8.7 per cent of the population — proportionally the largest Filipino community of any major Canadian city — concentrated in the West End and North End districts along Sargent Avenue.

No audited circulation or readership figures for Pilipino Express are published in the sources consulted for this profile, and none are claimed here. Its reach is visible in other ways: the magazine is a venue Manitoba public figures use to address Filipino readers directly, its contributors include nationally known figures in Filipino Canadian public life, and its articles are indexed by the Muck Rack journalism database, which tracks the bylines of its editor and contributors.

Digital Presence

The magazine's website, pilipino-express.com, functions as a full online edition rather than a print archive. When reviewed for this profile it carried current material across all of its beats: community features and opinion from its regular columnists, coverage of events from late 2025 such as the Pinays Manitoba annual general meeting and the FILCASA anniversary, a "Happy New Year 2026" issue front, and 2026 content including Pinays Manitoba's Trailblazer awards and Philippine national news. Complete print issues are also distributed digitally as page-for-page PDF editions, dated the 1st and 16th of the month in the issues archived from 2023. The magazine maintains an email contact for readers and advertisers at info@pilipino-express.com.

Ownership and Organisation

Pilipino Express is published in Winnipeg by The Pilipino Express Inc., the company established by Emmie Joaquin with Rey-ar Reyes and Paul Morrow. Joaquin is the company's president and the magazine's editor-in-chief, roles she has held since its founding; profiles of her by Canadian Filipino Net and Pinays Manitoba in 2022 and 2023 describe her as continuing to manage the magazine alongside her work as a financial advisor with WPG–The Wealth Planning Group. The masthead of recent issues lists Paul Morrow as associate editor, Rey-Ar Reyes as art director, JP Sumbillo as graphic designer and photographer, and Alex Canlapan as contributor and photographer, followed by a long roster of contributing writers that includes community figures such as Perla Javate, Pastor Junie Josue, Noel Lapuz and historian Jon Malek, plus youth contributors.

Contact and Availability

Pilipino Express is published in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and appears twice a month in print, with its full online edition at pilipino-express.com updated on an ongoing basis. The magazine can be reached by telephone at 204-956-7845 and by email at info@pilipino-express.com, the contacts printed in its masthead. Readers outside Winnipeg can follow the magazine through its website and its digitally distributed complete issues.