Anthony "Tony" Martin was a Canadian Catholic Priest who was sent to the Philippines in 1958.

Stunned by the poverty that surrounded him, he spent the last 36 years of his life trying
to save the livelihood of thousands of poor Filipinos.

Born to a Protestant father and Catholic mother, Tony Martin's experience in the
Philippines changed his view that neither religion would bring an end to human suffering.

He resigned as a priest and left the Catholic Church in 1972 to spend more time promoting
Credit Unions in the Philippines.

Credit Unions, which started in Europe in the 19th century, had been used to great effect
in bringing Canadians out of poverty in Atlantic Canada. He took the lessons he learned
from that area and brought it to the people of Southern Leyte.

But in doing so, Tony Martin ran into opposition from powerful political clans and money
lenders who profited from the poor. The "American from Canada", as he was mistakenly
called, fell into their radar and became a person they viewed with suspicion.

They considered his work of bringing social justice to the poor a threat to the current
economic and political order and wanted him deported back to Canada.

In response, Tony Martin renounced his Canadian citizenship and became a Filipino citizen.

For nearly 4 decades, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Tony Martin's work in the Philippines
went largely unnoticed - but it would go down as one of the most remarkable feats of any
Canadian in Canadian history.



But Tony Martin's leadership of the Filipinos would come at great personal cost. By
sealing his fate with the country and its people, Tony Martin charted a course that
would lead to his downfall in 1982.

Born on August 28, 1926 in Bishop's Falls, Newfoundland, Canada, Tony Martin's life
was shaped by his German-Dutch Protestant father and his Irish-Catholic mother.

Not wanting to join his father in the forests of Newfoundland as a "lumberjack", he
became a Catholic Priest after succumbing to his mother's domineering influence.

Wanting "to see the world", he joined the Ontario-based Scarboro Foreign Missions
and was sent to the Philippines in 1958.

There, in the island of Leyte, he witnessed crushing poverty where farmers and their
families were in continuous cycle of debt.

Malnourished children and destitute families wandering the towns begging for food
destroyed Tony Martin's notion of the Philippines as a "Pearl of the Orient" island
paradise.

Wanting to break this cycle and alleviate the suffering of the poor, Tony Martin
mobilized his Catholic missionary group, the "Scarboro Missions", into creating 5
Credit Unions in 5 towns in Southern Leyte.

Credit Unions would help Filipinos break out of poverty by pooling their meager
financial resources together and through patience, discipline, and strict fiduciary
management, provide its members with low-interest loans. These loans, if handled
productively, were a ticket out of poverty.

Credit Unions were also a "force multiplier". By Using the concept of "strength in
numbers", the poor could save on items such as fertilizer, food, and medical insurance
by buying as a group. Credit Unions greatly reduced the cost of these items and allowed
the poor to have a fighting chance of improving their standard of living.

Tony Martin's message to the poor of Southern Leyte was : "The only way out of poverty,
is through each other".

Starting in 1962, with the backing of Scarboro Missions, Tony Martin went about recruiting
poor Filipinos and trained them to run credit unions. From the 1960s and 1970s, other
credit unions would sprout up in the central region of the Philippines - mostly under the
auspices of Tony Martin.

Canadians, through their donations to Scarboro Missions, helped sustain the development of
these early credit unions - all of which were fragile.



Filipinos, with their delicate temperaments, fragile egos, passive-aggressive approach to
dealing with conflicts, low self-esteem, a defeatest mentality, and a penchant for
infighting & crab-mentality, were not an easy group to organize. But through a combination
of sheer will, force of personality and the promise of financial wealth, Tony Martin kept
these early credit unions from imploding.

While the success of the Canadian-led credit union movement in Southern Leyte became a
powerful asset in the Philippine Catholic Church's fight against poverty, some saw it as a
tool to recruit more Filipinos into the Catholic Religion. Tony Martin rejected this.

Although a Catholic priest, Tony Martin was not a zealous defender of the Catholic Faith.
The memory of his Protestant father, which he greatly respected, was still embedded in
him. Tony Martin was partial to all things Catholic.

He stated in 1969, in an article in Scarboro Missions magazine, that his drive to create
credit unions "was not a trick to bring people to church". This flew into the face of
hardlined conservative Catholics who thought that Catholic Priests were duty-bound to
recruit more Filipinos into their brand of religion.

His mantra "God does not intervene in human affairs" and "Only man can solve man's
problems" drove him to promote social action over religious pageantry to fight economic
inequality.

In 1972, he resigned as a Catholic Priest and left Scarboro Missions to free himself from
the constraints imposed on him by his Catholic superiors - both in Canada and the
Philippines - and to dedicate himself fully to establishing credit unions in the Philippines.

That same year however, the Philippines began to fall apart. Martial law was declared
after a growing communist insurgency disrupted the peace and order situation in the country.

The cold war between the Soviet Union and the United States was still brewing and the
Philippines, being under the influence of the United States, morphed into an extension of
the Vietnam war.

Assasinations, kidnappings, and atrocities were committed on both sides of the conflict.
Added to this, the Philippine economy began to stagnate and crumble under the weight of a
burgeoning dictatorship.

Unfazed by the chaotic environment, Tony Martin decided to share the fate of the Filipinos
by becoming one of them. Tony Martin applied for a Filipino citizenship in 1976, claiming
it to be essential to his work of establishing credit unions in the Philippines.

The civilian-military establishment however, had considered his work of organizing poor
Filipinos into credit unions as tantamount to organizing the people along the lines of
socialism and communism - two idealogical enemies of the Philippine government.

Despite this suspicion, the Philippine government conceded that credit unions were
essential to rebuilding the economy - which was now imploding - and granted Tony Martin
Filipino Citizenship on April 26, 1976.

After 18 years in the Philippines, Tony Martin was no longer returning home to Canada.



The 1970s was pivotal in Tony Martin's career. In that decade, he would create two iconic
Philippine institutions - VICTO (The Visayas Cooperative Training Organization) & NATCCO
(The National Training Center for Cooperatives).

Partnering with agencies such as Canada's Development & Peace & CIDA (Canadian
International Development Agency), the United States' USAID (United States Agency
for International Development) , and Germany's MISEREOR (Mercy) and FES (Friedrich
Ebert Stiftung), Tony Martin would funnel thousands of dollars of foreign aid money
into VICTO and NATCCO.

In 1982 however, the Filipino culture reared its ugly head after the financial successes
of these institutions, which were now running into the hundreds of thousands of dollars
(a substantial amount in a poor country), changed the nature of the relationship Tony
Martin had with the Filipinos. Tony Martin was struck down from his post as leader of
VICTO and NATCCO after charges of accounting irregularities were thrown against him.

Blindsided by the betrayal of a handful of his colleagues @ VICTO, Tony Martin tried as
best he could to fight back against the accusations of mismanagement. He realized, much
to his horror, that they had effectively barred him from defending his case to the
shareholders of VICTO.

Adding to his difficulties, and one that eventually crushed his spirit, was the
consequence of severing ties with Canada.

No longer a priest with the Scarboro Missions, or under the protection of the Canadian
government, Tony Martin realized that he was alone and powerless to do anything.

After realizing that the Filipinos who had taken over VICTO had gained the upper hand
through cunning legal means, Tony Martin gave up the fight and succumbed to the Filipino's
crab-mentality. He withdrew from the credit union movement and spent the last 14 years of
his life barely scraping by in the Philippines.

His struggles during this period is covered in great detail in his upcoming biography.

Despite a stellar and exemplary contribution to the country, Tony Martin's final years in the Philippines were crowned with this defeat.

After 36 years of service to the Filipino people, Tony Martin died on October 21, 1994 and was buried in Cebu City, the Philippines.