Joe Fortes

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Not to be confused with Joseph Xavier "Joe" Forte, the American professional basketball player or Joe Forte, the American writer and painter.

Seraphim “Joe” Fortes (???-1923) was a former sailor, originally from Barbados and then Liverpool, and a legendary figure in the early history of Vancouver, Canada. After moving to the city in 1885 (the year before it was incorporated), he worked as a labourer and bartender, then became a fixture at English Bay Beach, where he lived in a small cabin, acted as unofficial security guard, and taught hundreds of children how to swim. The city appointed the burly, friendly man, who had been a competitive swimmer in England, as its first official lifeguard at the turn of the twentieth century.

When he died in 1922, Vancouver held a record-breaking funeral procession for Fortes, which was especially unusual because he was one of the city's few black citizens at the time. Even in the twenty-first century, Vancouverites remember him with a monument near the site of his home, a branch of the Vancouver Public Library, and a well-known downtown restaurant, named after him when it opened in 1985, one hundred years after he arrived in Canada.