As a cruise ship approaches the dock, Yellow Cab No. 47 pulls into the parking lot of the waterfront terminal in search of a fare.

The driver, Sanjeev Sharma, who celebrated his 24th birthday last week, takes visitors to Butchart Gardens and other popular attractions. He especially enjoys driving through the bucolic campus of the University of Victoria, where he graduated earlier this year with an economics degree.

Sometimes, passengers ask why a young man is driving a cab.

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He tells them he has student loans to pay off. That's true, but there's more, though he does not share a story with too much painful detail, too much heartbreak.

"I could tell them my situation," he said. "You don't want to put that on their shoulders."

Yellow Cab No. 47, a five-year-old Toyota Prius already on its second engine, was his father's car. A year ago on July 29, Ramesh Sharma rose before dawn for his usual 11-hour shift on what promised to be a routine summer day. Mr. Sharma drove the cab to the airport, where he joined other drivers around a concrete picnic table. The men joshed and snacked and played hands of seep, a demanding card game popular in India.

Suddenly, without warning, a white Pontiac Sunbird plowed through the men without stopping. The picnic table was destroyed, six injured men scattered like fallen cards on the ground. The sedan continued another 40 metres without braking before crashing into a building.

Ramesh Sharma died at a hospital that night. He was 57.

Born in New Delhi, he was the second oldest of a brood of 10 children of a Hindu family. He fell in love with a girl from across the street, a childhood friend whose Sikh parents resisted the interdenominational romance.

Mr. Sharma completed an arts degree at university. His girlfriend left for Canada to join a sister. During their separation, Mr. Sharma wrote more than 100 love letters, which she later had laminated. On a visit to India, the pair eloped. They had a formal wedding after Mr. Sharma emigrated to Canada in 1986.

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Three children – a son and two daughters – soon followed. They were raised knowing both faiths, learned to speak their father's Hindi and their mother's Punjabi, as well as English.

The father supported the family with long shifts behind the wheel, beginning with the purple cars of Empress Taxi, which later changed their name and livery to Yellow Cabs, a name easier for tourists to remember and a colour easier for tourists to spot and flag.

The father discouraged his son from following his path.

"He never wanted me to drive," Sanjeev Sharma said.

After the accident, the cab sat parked in front of the family's home. Insurance cost $600 each month. Other expenses brought the monthly bill to about $2,500.

As he completed his fourth-year studies, the son drove from one to four shifts per week, enough to cover the expenses and to help support the family.

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As he took his father's place behind the wheel, he learned more about the life his father had led.

"He was working really hard," he said. "It wasn't an easy job. Some days you're not making any money at all, although you're out there for 12 hours.

"When you're driving cab, your life is that cab."

People don't afford taxi drivers much respect.

"I didn't know how it was until I started driving cab. How rude some people can be. Lots of racists."

The son has a lean, muscular figure as befits an amateur fighter with a record of three wins, one loss and one draw in mixed martial arts. He has been an articulate family spokesman in the past year, showing grace at a time of unbearable loss.

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"A lot of people tell me how I'm a strong kid and all the things I'm doing I'm doing the right way," he said. "I tell them it's the way I was raised. It all reflects my father, and the things he taught me, and how he treated us, and how he was."

A week after the accident, the other drivers told the son that the father maintained a wad of cash in the cab. This float, about $200, allowed him to provide money to any driver needing to borrow on short notice.

They found the money secreted in a compartment inside the cab. The cash is now kept on hand at the dispatch office, a daily reminder of a driver being remembered as a jokester and a romantic, a fan of Bollywood who can be seen dancing in the family's home movies.

Special to The Globe and Mail