I think you might be having the same issue I had a while ago [1] Both the layout and the component are defined by the page. It's a bit counter intuitive but the layout is not the component's parent so events will not bubble up to it. The page is the parent to both.
[1] http://apache-tapestry-mailing-list-archives.1045711.n5.nabble.com/Event-Bubbling-not-working-td5722372.html
