Breakwater · Victoria · British Columbia
My Father
Is the Ocean
An evening with Mr. Alfrin
Flying In
Before Victoria, there were the Cascades — a volcano breaking through the clouds, the whole Pacific Northwest laid out beneath the window.
Window seat. The story started before I landed.
The City
Victoria keeps its history in stone. The Parliament stands at the edge of the Inner Harbour, its copper domes turned green by a century of sea air, while the boats below rock as if they have been doing it forever.
I came for the light. I didn’t know I was coming for a story.
Shot from the crack in the pavement — the building had to feel bigger than me.
BC Parliament · 1898
Francis Rattenbury was twenty-five when he won the commission. By 1898 the dome was finished — copper sheeting over stone, designed to age. A hundred and twenty-eight years of Pacific rain turned it green.
Same dome. One in colour, one in time.
Inner Harbour · Victoria
The Lekwungen people fished and traded here for thousands of years before the harbour got its English name. Now a carved Songhees canoe is tied up among the fibreglass — the oldest story on the water, holding a place.
Colour above. Memory below.
The Breakwater
The breakwater runs out into the Pacific like a sentence that doesn’t want to end. At its tip stands a small white light tower. Every evening people walk out along it to watch the sun go down behind the hills across the water.
Long lens, slow water. Everyone on the wall is just a silhouette — waiting for the same thing.
The Stranger
He was the first thing I noticed: a tweed hat with a red feather, a walking stick, a phone held up to the horizon. He was photographing the CSL ship out past the breakwater.
When I showed him the picture I had made of him, he leaned in and smiled. Then he asked what every curious stranger asks.
“What do you do? And where are you from?”
I photographed him photographing it.
The CSL ship he had been photographing, tied up at the pier as the sky burned down behind it — deck lights on, the light tower blinking red across the water.
His subject. My subject. Same evening.
Raipur
to
Calcutta
I told him I was from Raipur, a city in central India. His whole face changed.
“My father was born in Calcutta.”
Of everyone on that breakwater, the man I had stopped to photograph carried a piece of India in his family. Now I had his attention — and he had mine.
Two cities half a world away, and suddenly they were neighbours.
Born in England, he comes back to Victoria often. He has spent his life making documentaries and photographing the world — so we spoke the same language: light, patience, and the habit of noticing.
Two people with cameras, comparing notes on the sky.
Everything at Once
Birds migrate across oceans they have never seen, guided by something older than memory. They cross continents to find a place that feels like life. They don’t ask why — they just go.
Most of us are the same. We are mostly where we didn’t take birth. Somewhere between the leaving and the landing, the ocean became the only constant.
The breakwater doesn’t end.
It just meets the water.
I · The Mountains
II · The Moon
III · The Light Tower
IV · The Sun
And every single drop of the ocean.
Fast shutter, wet lens, no regrets.
It was his father’s death anniversary. He looked out at the water for a moment, and then he said it, quietly —
“My father is the ocean.”
his hand found the name without looking
We walked out toward the lighthouse, to a bench he had installed in his father’s memory. Ewen B. ‘Pip’ Graham — Calcutta 1930, Victoria 2007.
He sat down, rested his hand on his father’s name, and posed for me — laughing as if the evening belonged to both of them.
Grief, it turns out, can laugh.
I came to Victoria to photograph a sunset. I left with a stranger’s father, a city in India, and an ocean big enough to hold them both.
Some places let you feel everything at once. Some people do too.
for Mr. Alfrin — and for Pip
ਮੇਰਾ ਰੋਣ ਦਾ ਚਿੱਤ ਕਰਦਾ à¨
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ਕਿਸ਼ਤੀਆਂ ਦੀ ਉਡੀਕ ਅੱਖਾਂ ਨੂੰ ਜਗਾਉਂਦੀ à¨
ਧੂਪ ਛਾਂ ਦਾ ਖੇਡ ਖੇਂਡਾਂਦੀ à¨
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ਬà©à¨²à¨¬à©à¨²à©‡ ਤਰਦੇ ਨੇ ਮੇਰੇ ਦਿਲ ਦੇ ਦਰਿਆ ਅੰਦਰ
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ਕੀ ਹੈ ਕੀ ਹੋਣਾ ਕੀ ਪਤਾ ਕਿਊ ਕਰਨਾ à¨
ਜਵਾਬ ਨਹੀਂ ਲੱà¨à¨£à¨¾ ਕਿਸੀ ਸਵਾਲ ਅੰਦਰ
Mera ron da chitt karda ae
Kujh hon da chitt piya karda ae
Main samundar lehran to akk gaya ae
Zara mera saun da dil piya karda ae
Kishtiaan di udeek akkhan nu jagaundi ae
Dhoop chhaan da khed khendaandi ae
Jahaaz chhadd vi devaan par chhadd nahi hunda
Lehran di sair murr murr jagaundi ae
Bulbule tarde ne mere dil de dariya andar
Saajan tarda ae isi svabha andar
Ki hai ki hona ki pata kiu karna ae
Javaab nahi labbhna kisi savaal andar
Romanized Punjabi
My heart longs to weep,
something in me longs to become.
I have grown tired of the ocean’s waves —
all my heart wants now is sleep.
Waiting for boats keeps these eyes awake,
light and shadow play their endless game.
I would give up the ship, but I cannot let go —
the walk of waves keeps waking me again.
Bubbles drift in the river of my heart,
the beloved floats in this very nature.
What is, what will be, who knows, why bother —
no answer will be found inside any question.
English Translation
The Ocean.
Photographs & Words · PreetJyot
Breakwater · Victoria · British Columbia
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