You’re Exactly Where You’re Supposed to Be

“You and I talk about death too much, sorry,” Marcus Paladino says between sniping drone shots of Canadian surfer Pete Devries. The shutter clicks around the same time he says “sorry,” and it occurs to me that he’s really good at multitasking. And yes, given that we’ve both lost parents within the last few years, we do talk about death a lot. We’ve been covering other topics as well, like Paladino’s complicated relationship with Hawaii, his mental health, and how the first time he went surfing, he “fucking hated it.”

A few hours earlier, I’d been sitting in the back of Devries’ Subaru, hoping that he and Paladino would forget I was there. Mobb Deep played quietly in the background as the duo exchanged takeaways from a recent swell that lit up the Vancouver Island coast—who scored, who got skunked, and a few snippets from their own adventure, where six hours of driving and three hours of hiking yielded roughly one hour of surfing.

“If I can go on a mission like that and walk away with at least one photo, I think that’s totally worth it,” Paladino said. “At the end of the day, it’s just gas money.”

We’d been talking hockey when we pulled up to the area’s most iconic break, Paladino’s self-described “happy place.”

It’s easy to see why he likes it so much. The shoreline is peppered with a mix of western red cedar, Sitka spruce, and Douglas fir trees, while the backdrop is made up of small, uninhabited islands and serrated peaks that reach straight into the sky from sea level.

“It’s also the only pointbreak that we can get to without driving five hours,” Paladino says.

Tofino—the small town on Vancouver Island that he’s called home for more than a decade—is known for the kind of shifty, mediocre beachbreaks that only a local could love. But this wave is a boulder-strewn, storm-activated right-hander that, on the right day, offers up multiple barrel sections. And while it doesn’t appear to be doing that today, the boys see workable peaks in the hesitant dawn.

“Pete always tells me to bring a board, but I never do,” Paladino says after deciding to shoot from the water.

In spite of his initial disdain for the sport, Paladino rips on surfboards both short and long. But he’d divulged in one of our earlier conversations that he “knows his place in surfing” and believes he’ll get more out of shooting waves than he ever will out of riding them.

“Marcus is different because he loves surfing maybe more than any other photographer that I’ve worked with,” Devries says of Paladino’s current relationship with wave riding. “He surfs well, and it’s a big part of his life. So it’s something that he’s more passionate about than, say, shooting a beautiful sunset.”

Born to a Canadian mother who brought their father over from Italy, Paladino and his older sister grew up in Nanaimo, a resource-driven city on the (surf-less) east side of Vancouver Island. Like most Canadian surfers, he got his start standing sideways on snow. After he moved to Courtenay to attend North Island College’s photography course, he ended up living close to Mount Washington—the island’s local ski hill—and was on his way to becoming a snowboard photographer. But then, on a trip to Whistler in 2010, he saw Jeremy Koreski’s slideshow at the yearly Pro Photographer Showdown at the World Ski & Snowboard Festival.

As Tofino’s first established surf shooter, Koreski legitimized Vancouver Island’s emerging scene in the late ’90s and throughout the aughts with his images of Devries, the brothers 

Bruhwiler, and visiting pros. “Brian Bielmann was in it too, and his slideshow was really cool,” says Paladino. “But Jeremy’s slideshow was so different. It seemed so much more relatable, seeing trees in the background, people in wetsuits, and a lot of dark, black-and-white imagery. It was totally West Coast. I didn’t know you could do that here, and it blew my mind.”

The impact of that slideshow catalyzed Paladino’s move across the island to Tofino, where, after a couple false starts, surfing consumed his existence. Now 34 years old and blessed with Mediterranean features and a compact frame that belies the strength of a man who holds his own in powerful surf, he speaks in a perpetually cheerful tone, even when the subject matter turns serious—and especially when the conversation shifts to the unconditional love he has for the pointbreak that’s helped make his career.

I watch as he moonwalks—squeegee in one hand, water housing in the other—toward a keyhole in the reef, hops in the drink, and lets the current sweep him into position. If it weren’t for the skeletal shaka sticker on the back of his helmet, you’d easily mistake him for one of his sworn enemies: “I hate sea lions,” he says. “They’re such dicks.”

For the next couple hours, he makes the most of a mediocre session, swimming in the impact zone as Devries, 41, slashes and punts like a human half his age.

Once the sets slow down, I join Paladino on a log in the sunshine to—again—talk about death too much. He tells me about the “Laura swell” that arrived the day after he lost his mom, Laura Eaton, to breast cancer.

“I saw it on the forecast while she was in the hospital, and I thought, ‘This could be the day.’ And I was trying to figure out how I could justify it.”

He’d spent the previous year at her side as she faded away.

“At the time, they thought she had a few weeks.…But she died the day before the swell, and then it was like, ‘I guess I can go…’”

The ocean delivered exactly what Paladino didn’t know he needed.

“I was so happy shooting barrels with my good friend Michael [Darling]. And I kinda forgot my mom had just died,” he says. “At one point, Michael was paddling back out and I just started crying. He got off his board, hugged me, and said, ‘You’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.’”

Paladino swam and shot for almost every available moment of January 9, 2024’s fleeting supply of daylight.

“I feel like I left a lot on the table professionally that year,” he says. “But I don’t regret any of it, because I spent a lot of time with my mom, which, in hindsight, was the most important thing.”

As a result of the inner turmoil that he’s clearly open about, Paladino is an advocate for mental health. When asked what he’d do if he weren’t shooting photos, he says he might become a counselor.

“I think most counselors and therapists are damaged people who know that their experience and understanding can help people,” he says. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m qualified.”

He describes himself as an “anxiety-fueled perfectionist,” which sounds almost like a good thing. But that same anxiety has, at points, gotten so bad that he “couldn’t get out of the car.” With the help of cognitive behavioral therapy, medication, and monthly men’s groups, he’s managed to steady his keel.

“It’s nice to know that things are actually things, and that you’re not just losing your mind,” he says.

Anxiety’s not the only affliction that fuels Paladino’s perfectionism.

“He has full-on fear of missing out when he knows the waves might be good or somebody’s shooting and he’s not there,” says Devries. “He definitely freaks out a little bit.”

And even though he’s published a book, 2021’s Cold Comfort, and long since established himself among Canada’s top shooters, Paladino has been nagged by imposter syndrome. Others, however, clearly disagree on that account, in far more objective and analytical ways: After seeing the steady income that Paladino has generated through surf photography for the last 10 years, the bank recently confirmed that he is indeed the real fucking deal, and approved a mortgage for a two-bedroom condo in Tofino.

He’s found the place where he’s supposed to be—a sense of belonging evident in every photo he takes. “I think it’s just the general surroundings: mountains, trees—all that sort of stereotypical Canadian stuff,” Paladino says when asked what draws him to the community. And while the water temperature’s not for everyone, it’s a huge part of his success as a photographer. “It’s this weird cold-water novelty thing,” he says. “I feel like the majority of surf culture is warm water, and anything that’s cold water is sort of just like, ‘Oooooh, look at this. Brrrr!’”

Conversely, Paladino has paid the warm-water taxman as well. He’s been caught inside shooting fisheye at Teahupoo and, back in 2018, weathered a two-wave hold-down shooting Backdoor on Oahu’s North Shore.

“All of a sudden, you stop thinking and everything goes calm, and you’re like, ‘Oh fuck, is this how I die?’ I had one of those moments. Thankfully, it didn’t last very long,” he says.

He’s been back to Hawaii twice since then, once right after his mother died and again in January 2025. But he’s the first to admit that his brain gets in the way of a good vacation. His time away from home, if nothing else, reminds him of his own niche—except Tofino’s more than just a niche. It’s where his mother’s ashes are scattered, on the point that overlooks Cox Bay, the wildly imperfect beachbreak where he honed his craft.

“That’s where she asked for them to go,” he says.

He then describes being surrounded by her presence after watching a technicolor sunset from the bay’s south end.

“What’s the most important thing you learned from her?” I ask.

“No one’s ever really asked me that,” he replies. “Even through her diagnosis and her treatment, she was always optimistic. I think that’s where I get my positive attitude.”

It occurs to me that interviews are a funny thing. You get to be slightly invasive. And if your subject is a good listener, like Paladino is, you might even work through your own bullshit as well.

When you talk about death too much, you get to talk about life too much too.

[Feature image: Mathea Olin has found her footing in waves of consequence over the last few years. We first went to this slab when she was 16 and just starting to gain confidence. Now she’s in her early twenties, and she set up this barrel perfectly. The progression of women’s professional surfing as a whole continues to motivate her. Also, this photo screams “Canada.”]