The Breakwater

One morning in Toronto, Cathy Matsumoto’s father, Yasuo, calls to announce he intends to visit a dying cousin in British Columbia. Cathy’s never heard of this mysterious relative before, but she begrudgingly agrees to plan a family trip with her father and daughter, Tessa, to Victoria, the hometown Yas was forcibly evicted from when Japanese Canadians were interned during World War Two. It's only in BC that Cathy learns this “cousin” is actually Yas’s younger brother, Stum, who’s been languishing in psychiatric care, abandoned, ever since Yas committed him to Essondale Asylum before the war. Yas tries to fend off probing questions from his daughter and granddaughter, but revisiting old haunts brings back memories of the brothers’ boyhood rivalry and coming-of-age near Victoria’s Chinatown, when Yas’s resolve to hold their fractured family together clashed against Stum’s troublesome turn toward a life of gambling, crime, and consorting with prostitutes. In this heartbreaking family story, two brothers, both old men not far from death, must at last confront long-buried family secrets — and their lingering effects on subsequent generations. Read more