Filipino Canadians (French: Canadiens philippins; Filipino: Mga Pilipinong Kanadyense) are Canadians of Filipino descent. Filipino Canadians are the fourth largest subgroup of the overseas Filipinos and one of the fastest-growing groups in Canada. Only a small population of Filipinos lived in Canada until the late 20th century. At the 2016 Canadian census, 851,410 people of Filipino descent lived in Canada, mostly in urban areas. Filipino Canadians are the third-largest Asian Canadian group in the nation after the Indian and Chinese communities. They are also the largest group from Southeast Asia in the country. Between the 2011 and 2016 censuses, the Filipino community in Canada grew from 702,200 to 820,100, a growth of about 7%, compared to the rest of Canada, which grew by 5% during the same time period. By the 2021 census, Filipino Canadians enumerated 957,355, or 2.58% of the total population, further displaying the community's rapid growth. Early Filipinos in British Columbia Filipino migration to North America began with Philippine-made ships crossing the Pacific Ocean during the Manila galleon trade. As early as 1565, Spain began sending vessels northeast from the Philippines, riding the Kuroshio Current in a sweeping circular route across the northern part of the Pacific. Filipino servants, stowaways, and mariners arrived in parts of the west coast of North America, from what is now Mexico to as far north as Alaska. By late 1700s, "Manila men" were recruited in naval operations, aboard the ship San Carlos el Filipino sent to support the short-lived Spanish settlement of Santa Cruz de Nuca and Fort San Miguel, Nootka Island, off the coast of Vancouver. Canada's earliest documented Filipinos coincided with North America's first wave of Asian immigration in the 1800s. At least nine male Filipino sailors, aged twenty-four to forty-two, appeared on the 1881 census of British Columbia. Living on a vessel in New Westminster, they were recorded ethno-racially as "Malay" [a loose term to describe Austronesian people] and listed as "Mahomitan" [an archaic term for Muslim]. A small Filipino community resided in Bowen Island, British Columbia in the 1880s. They probably engaged in both fishing and farming. It included Fernando Toreenya, a fisherman who came to Canada from the Philippines in 1886 at the age of 20 years old with his First Nations partner Mary/Marie Adams. They lived in Snug Cove and had three other Filipino boarders living with them, William Matilda, Antoni Bentorre, and Ricardo Castro.