Enrico Miranda was a trim man with a kind smile who spent two decades working abroad to support his family. After 20 years of separation — Miranda in Dubai, his wife and two children in the Philippines — moving to Canada represented a simple aspiration: to finally be together.To support that dream, Miranda would spend 10 years as a temporary employment agency worker in Toronto, about five of them at North York industrial bakery Fiera Foods. He would never have the chance to land a permanent job, to put his lengthy experience as an engineer to use, or most importantly, to see the birth of his second grandchild.Instead, he was crushed to death by a machine as he cleaned it. He was the fifth temp agency worker to die at Fiera or one of its affiliates since 1999.“Our dream was for our kids, our children, that’s why we are here,” says his wife Tay. “It is hard to believe, you know.”Tay and Miranda met at Holy Angel University in the Philippines in their early 20s; she was studying business administration, he was a civil engineering student. Miranda’s first job was with the Filipino National Irrigation Authority, a job he loved but that paid poorly. So in 1988, when his first born was 3 years old, Miranda moved to Dubai to work as an engineer.Tay was determined they would one day unite. In 2004, she came to Canada as a migrant caregiver so she could eventually sponsor Miranda and their sons Richard and Patrick. They followed her to Toronto in 2009.“I was happy because I reached my goal,” she says. “We all lived together.”Now, as the family prepares to take 57-year-old Miranda’s body back to Pampanga province, they are still grappling with what to tell his mother and siblings — mostly due to what they call a maddeningly slow quest for answers.The family says the Ministry of Labour has not reached out. The police have told them Miranda’s chest was fatally crushed in the accident, b ...
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