| Joe Fortes |
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Information AboutJoe Fortes |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT JOE FORTES | |
| 1865 births | |
| 1922 deaths | |
| british expatriates in canada | |
| barbadian-english people | |
| people from liverpool | |
| people from vancouver | |
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Seraphim “Joe” Fortes ( 1865 - 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. EXTERNAL LINKS
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