Searching for Serafim is a layered exploration of the life of Vancouver's first lifeguard, Serafim "Joe" Fortes. A Trinidad native who arrived on the shores of Canada in 1885, Fortes was heralded as a hero in Vancouver for saving dozens of people from drowning, and his funeral drew the largest crowd ever recorded in the city's history. Since his passing, Fortes has been commemorated with a Canada Post-issued stamp and local buildings named in his honour. Yet, little has been discussed about how he navigated an openly white supremacist society as an Afro Latino man.
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Historical documents about Serafim’s early life are sparse, and his own writing, rumoured to be an autobiography, has never been found. Over a century has lapsed since his death, and sparse historical documents are all we have to glean details from. His identity as a Trinidadian-born Afro Latino man is what made him the man whom Vancouverites came to know and love. But for the most part, his Caribbean identity and all the cultures within it—the foundation of his life—have not been given much consideration in the accounts that have been written. I argue that it has been difficult, if not impossible, for the non-Black people who have written about his life to accurately reflect all the aspects of Serafim’s life.
For me, as an Afro Latina, my roots are intertwined with my identity. My roots shape how I see the world. My roots allow me to reclaim my own narrative when it is seized by the gaze of the other. Even as an Afro Latina, my identity has always been constantly scrutinized by white Latine people in Canada. I can’t recall being immediately addressed in Spanish at any Latine event that I’ve gone to. Instead, it is almost always assumed that I speak only English, despite Latin America and the Caribbean having the largest concentration of people of African descent outside of Africa due to the transatlantic slave trade.1
And so, I imagine Serafim’s experience through my own stories. Our melanin and Latinidad are gifts of ancestors’ dreaming, and nobody can take that away from us.
As a child, I recall penas that I would look forward to attending all year round—being able to eat empanadas and listen the sounds of the charango, zampona, and tambor in the company of my community was like a dream come true. At the same time, the experiences became incredibly dissociative for me; my mom would be asked if I was adopted or “.La nina habla Espanol?” while I was standing right beside her. Jumping to the challenge, I would introduce myself in Spanish and speak as clearly and articulately as I could, determined to impress the other Latines who were questioning my identity. Every single time, they were amazed, and often, I would be led around the room to meet others and demonstrate my Spanish [“y sí, tiene acento chileno también”]. As a young child I would feel proud, seeing how pleased my mom was when I captivated the other Chileans in the room, knowing that other Latine kids born and raised in Canada could not speak as proficiently as me because their parents had told them to speak only English at home in hopes of assimilating to have a better life. But as I grew older, I found the experience of being led around the room to be anxiety inducing; I felt I had to prove my mastery in Spanish in order to be truly accepted as a Latina. It is only as an adult that I have been able to learn and understand that the only reason I ever had to prove myself was to rise above the scrutiny of the white supremacist gaze.
[I will not be crunched into other people’s fantasies and eaten alive.2)
In my schooling experience in amiskwaciy, I was almost always the only Black student in class and one of a handful of Black students in the entire school. Most of the other students were white and of Polish or Ukrainian descent. To my gym teachers’ dismay, I failed miserably at basketball and track, crushing their dreams of me embodying the Black athlete stereotype.
I yearn to hear his voice through a decolonial lens, separated from white colonial values and desires.
To make matters worse, I wasn’t thin, I couldn’t afford the trendiest clothes, and I wore glasses, making me seriously uncool. So, in junior high, when other students excitedly found out that I had Jamaican lineage, I saw my opportunity to rise above my plight. “Of course my dad smokes marijuana all the time. Of course my dad wears Rasta hats. Of course I have every single Bob Marley album.” None of it was true. But I leaned into it. I left my Chilean identity behind. It was finally my chance to be cool. It failed.
[I will not be crunched into other people’s fantasies and eaten alive.]
And so, I imagine Serafim’s experience through my own stories. Our melanin and Latinidad are gifts of ancestors’ dreaming, and nobody can take that away from us. I yearn for complication and stories untold. I yearn to hear his voice through a decolonial lens, separated from white colonial values and desires. And in this yearning, I must also accept the perhaps inevitable truth that even within my own community, there are no heroes. What has happened to Serafim’s story highlights the importance of Black communities writing our own stories, in our own words. If we don’t do it, we run the risk of having our lives written for us, with parts of ourselves edited and erased to fit into colonial fantasies of terra nullius and peace.
[We will not be crunched into other people’s fantasies and eaten alive.]
1. Black in Latin America, PBS, accessed June 27, 2024, https://www.pbs.org/wnet/black-in-latin-america/about/.
The life and legacy of Serafim "Joe" Fortes, a trailblazing Black lifeguard, who became a cultural icon in a racist society.
In Searching for Serafim, author Ruby Smith Diaz seeks to unravel the complicated legacy of a local legend to learn more about who Fortes was as a person. She draws from historical documents to form an insightful critique of the role that settler colonialism and anti-Black racism played in Fortes's publicized story and reconstructs his life, from over a century later, through a contemporary Black perspective, weaving poetry and personal reflections alongside archival research.
The result is a moving and thought-provoking book about displacement, identity, and dignity. Searching for Serafim conjures a new side to one of Vancouver's most beloved—and misunderstood-public figures.
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