My name is Bert Monterona.

I am a Filipino Canadian artist.

I have an interview today with an independent journalist and writer in Toronto who wants to talk to me about my work. He is particularly interested in one of my paintings, Migration IV.

It is almost six in Vancouver.

I sit in front of the mirror, trying to decide where the story begins.

With Migration IV? With Canada? With the Philippines?

I look at the man in the mirror. Sixty-nine years.

There are lines around my eyes that were not there when I began painting. Grey hair. A face that has travelled farther than the young man who once owned it could have imagined.

Then one of the wrinkles disappears.

I blink.

Another fades.

I lean toward the mirror.

The lines around my eyes are slowly dissolving. My skin tightens. The grey retreats from my hair as though someone is pulling time backward strand by strand.

I touch my face.

The man in the mirror does not. I freeze. He is younger than me now.

Much younger. Dark hair. Smooth skin. Familiar eyes.

I have not seen them for decades. “Where are you?” he asks.

“Vancouver.”

“Canada?”

“Yes.”

“You left the Philippines?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“For my children,” I say. “I wanted them to grow up somewhere different.”

“And?”

“I was tired.”

“Of what?”

“Corruption.”

Now he smiles. That answer he understands.

He still lives in Mindanao. He still carries the world of my childhood inside him: my mother’s tribal background, my father’s Christian background, the arts and crafts around us, the stories I heard in radio dramas and tried to turn into drawings.

He does not yet know what will disappear.

“Do you remember the forest?” he asks.

“Of course.”

“The forest near our grandmother’s hometown.”

He nods.

The forest gave people food. Medicine. Shelter. Life.

And then, little by little, it disappeared.

Illegal logging. Exploitation.

By the time I was at university, much of the forest I remembered from childhood was already gone.

“That’s when we started asking questions,” he says.

“Why are Filipinos poor when the Philippines is so rich in natural resources?”

I remember that question.

“Why does corruption continue?”

“I want to change the system,” he says.

For a moment I say nothing.

“You don’t believe me?”

“I believe you completely.”

“Then why are you looking at me like that?”

“Because I remember how certain you were.”

“Were?”

There is anger in his voice now.

“You don’t want to change the system anymore?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But you left.”

“Yes.”

The young man looks disappointed.

I want to explain to him that leaving does not always mean abandoning something. Sometimes it means carrying it somewhere else.

“So what happened in Canada?” he asks.

“I started again.”

“From nothing?”

“Almost.”

I had already established myself as an artist in the Philippines. I had collectors. I had a name. Then I came to Canada and discovered that a name does not always cross an ocean with you.

Entering the art market was difficult, especially as an Asian artist.

“What did you do?”

“I worked.”

“As an artist?”

“Not always. Landscaping. Other jobs.”

“And painting?”

“I never stopped.”

I tell him about Richard Appleby, who helped me during those early years. I tell him about working to support myself and continuing to make art, whether people bought it or not.

Behind his reflection, something begins to appear.

Then I recognize the faces.

Migration IV.

The painting seems to be hanging somewhere behind the young version of myself, although there is no painting behind me in the room.

He turns toward it.

“Who are they?”

“Migrants.”

Through my community work, I met Filipino caregivers and migrant workers. Women who crossed an ocean to care for other people’s children while their own children remained thousands of kilometres away.

“For how long?”

“Sometimes years.”

“And when they see their children again?”

“Sometimes the children hardly know their mothers anymore.”

Now he understands the darkness in the painting.

“What did you want when you painted it?”

I painted it in 2013.

Thirteen years ago.

“A society where families would never have to be torn apart simply because they needed to survive.”

He smiles. “That sounds like me.”

“It was me.”

“No,” he says. “It is you.”

He points toward the painting.

“Do people still leave the Philippines?”

“Yes.”

“Families are still separated?”

“Yes.”

“Corruption?”

“Yes.”

“Then what changed?”

“Me.”

He comes closer to the glass.

And suddenly another image appears between us.

A coin.

“What is that?”

“A Canadian coin. I designed it.”

“You?”

“Yes.”

“The Canadian government put your art on a coin?”

“The Royal Canadian Mint selected my design.”

He looks at me as if he is trying to decide whether his older self has become a liar.

I tell him that the design celebrates Filipino Canadian culture, resilience, and unity.

“For me,” I say, “it wasn’t only about having my art on a coin. My art comes from my culture and my people. When that identity is recognized, you begin to feel that you belong.”

“So Canada becomes home?”

“Yes.”

“And the Philippines?”

“Yes.”

“You can have two homes?”

I smile.

“You’ll understand.”

“I hate when older people say that.”

“I know.”

Then he turns again toward Migration IV.

“If you painted it today, would it look the same?”

“No. It would be more colourful—bright colours.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m not the man who painted it anymore.”

“What happened to you?”

“I got older.”

“That’s not an answer.”

I laugh.

“You really are me.”

“I’m sixty-nine.”

“Sixty-nine?”

“Yes.”

“That’s old.”

“Thank you.”

He smiles.

But I do not.

“I don’t know how much time I have. Ten years. Fifteen. Maybe more. Maybe less.”

“So?”

“So I want to enjoy it.”

His smile disappears.

“What about changing the system?”

There it is again.

The question that has followed me from a vanished forest in Mindanao all the way to this room in Vancouver.

“I’m tired of fighting,” I tell him. “I’m tired of protesting.”

“So you gave up?”

“No.”

“It sounds like you gave up.”

“I still care.”

“I still make art.”

“Art doesn’t change everything.”

“I know.”

He stares at me.

At his age, I wanted answers.

At mine, I have accumulated questions.

“I’m more realistic now,” I say.

“I never want to become realistic.”

“I remember.”

“I want things to change.”

“I remember that too.”

“Then what do you want?”

For a moment, I stare deep into his eyes.

“I want to live.”

He says nothing.

“I want to be happy. I want to enjoy the years I have. I want to embrace the life that is here instead of spending all of it fighting the life that isn’t.”

Then the computer makes a sound.

I look at the clock.

Six o’clock.

The interview.

The journalist in Toronto is waiting to ask me about Migration IV.

I turn toward the computer.

Only for a second.

When I look back at the mirror, the young man is gone.

The wrinkles have returned.

I touch the glass.

This time, the man in the mirror touches it too.

For a moment I wonder which of us was the reflection.

Then I hear the interview notification again.

I look at the sixty-nine-year-old man in front of me.

He is about to talk about forests that disappeared, a country he left but never entirely left behind, migrant mothers separated from their children, a painting filled with darkness, and the brighter colours that have slowly entered his life.

I take one last look at myself.

Then I join the interview.

YF, August 14, 2026

Note: This narrative is based on an interview with Filipino Canadian artist Bert Monterona. In shaping its fictional structure, the writer was inspired by Jorge Luis Borges’s short story “The Other.”