Fortaleza clears Olympic hurdle in Canada

VANCOUVER, British Columbia—He got bussed by the women a lot. The guys came up to him to shake his hand vigorously in welcome.

Such scene is a snapshot of the public life of Reynaldo “Rey” Fortaleza, ex-Olympic boxer for the Philippines and a “former hospital hockey player.”

Fortaleza has become an influential media pioneer in this rainy, main seaport city of Canada’s British Columbia province because he publishes the well-circulated Philippine Asian News Today and the companion Philippine Show Biz Today.

Fortaleza also produces his weekly periodicals’ popular sister television newscast Philippine News Canada beamed nationwide on cable every Monday and Tuesday by his Reyfort Media Group.

Besides, he is the impresario behind the highly anticipated American Idol-like TV show Pinoy New Talent for top Filipino-Canadian warblers.

No wonder he is much sought-after by the movers and shakers of Vancouver’s establishment and leaders of the city’s 94,000-strong Fil-Canadian community.

I felt Fortaleza’s social and political pull during the launch of a Fil-Canadian’s campaign at the Polish Community Center on Frazer Street here last Saturday night.

Youthful, Aklan-born Jojo Quimpo is in an uphill battle against an entrenched incumbent in next year’s national elections for the right to represent the Vancouver Kingsway area in Canada’s Parliament.

Quimpo greeted Fortaleza as we entered the Center. As we sat down to eat, well-wishers came to say hello, including two provincial senators and Jason Kenney, Canada’s immigration minister.

“Reyfort has political sway but won’t show it,” said local community stalwart Amado Mercado Jr. “He cleared a hurdle of Olympic proportions to make a name here and remains an unassuming guy to this day,” says Mercado, formerly of Minalin, Pampanga.

Indeed, Fortaleza has come a long way since immigrating to Canada from Manila in 1990, and as a naïve 18-year-old bantamweight who represented our country in the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal.

“I kept running in Montreal’s temperate but still cold weather to a tropical person like me in order to lose weight,” Fortaleza recalled. “The boxing team was unaware there was a sauna for that purpose.”

Fortaleza eventually lost his quarterfinal match to Great Britain’s Patrick Cowdell. “I hope today’s national boxers and their trainers are not as uninformed as we were,” he stressed.

As a newcomer to Vancouver 24 years ago, Fortaleza, an accounting major at Far Eastern University, the school that nurtured him and his three other boxing brothers, worked whatever jobs came his way to scratch a living.

For three years he mopped floors at Vancouver General Hospital, thus the description of himself as a “former hospital hockey player.”

Fortaleza eventually prospered in the insurance business. By stroke of fate he became the sole owner of the Filipino News Today newspaper because his partners did not see eye to eye and left to pursue other business opportunities.

By dint of hard work, the publication flourished and has since been renamed to expand its base among Asian Canadians. The weekly, edited by Vancouver-based former Inquirer reporter Carlito Pablo, is earning enough advertising dollars to support Fortaleza’s trailblazing TV ventures.

Fortaleza lives with his wife Cely and their three children in the Vancouver suburb of Surrey, the base of  his Reyfort Media Group.