"She had actually been injured," Brett Jones told the Star Friday morning from his home in Perth, Australia. "She had been knocked down by a shield" from the riot police.
"He lay down next to her to comfort her. She was crying and he just kissed her to calm her down."
Even as a young boy, said Brett Jones, Scott demonstrated his "gentle side for other people. I'm not surprised he would comfort Alex."
Thomas graduated with a degree in environmental engineering from the University of Guelph.
The couple had been to the Stanley Cup final earlier that night on which the Vancouver Canucks lost to the Boston Bruins. Within minutes, the city erupted into a riot.
Brett, who with his wife runs life coaching firm Cre8, has spoken to his second eldest son, one of six Jones children, about the couple's new-found international fame.
"I don't think he's come to grips with it. The full force of it is going to hit him today."
Dad's advice "would be to take it in his stride and enjoy it while he's got it."
Scott and Alex started dating shortly after the young Australian actor arrived in Vancouver on a working holiday. Since leaving acting school in Melbourne, Scott has mostly been bartending, as he has been in Vancouver, but he did get one standup comedy gig in the city.Comedy performance is "his passion," said Brett Jones. "He has a natural ability to make people laugh."
Scott Jones plans to leave Canada next week for California and then home.
Alex, who lists "going new places" as an interest on her Facebook page, will travel with him at least as far as California, Brett Jones said. She was born in Coquitlam and lives in Vancouver.
Jones senior can see that the couple's now-iconic photograph may follow them for the rest of their lives, for good or ill.
"Relationships do buckle under that pressure unless you have the ability to be very centred. Even if it wasn't Scott, the guy who took the picture captured a moment in time that is iconic."
Brett Jones has also counselled Scott not to buckle to the doubters, rampant on the skeptical, know-it-all Internet, who say the photograph was staged.
"Tell your story as it happened and there's nothing you can do about them," he told his son. "I think it's amazing."
Scott's sister, Hannah, first identified her brother to an Australian news network.
"It is something he would do, that's our boy," Scott's mother Marie told ninemsn in Australia. "He has always lived in his own world, he's special like that. He doesn't always connect with what's going on around him.
"I knew it was him because he doesn't have a lot of clothes with him and he always puts on the same thing."
He said he is "very surprised" the picture has received so much attention because he did not even realize the couple was kissing until hours later.
"The riot police made a charge, so we were running. I looked back and there were two people lying on the street. At first I thought she was hurt," he told the Star's Jenni Dunning.
