Join us on Thursday July 23rd at 6pm for a special virtual event with Ruby Smith Díaz, author of Searching for Serafim: The Life and Legacy of Serafim “Joe” Fortes. Join the event by clicking on this link.
Then, come meet Ruby Smith Díaz in either Ladysmith or Nanaimo at an outdoor, in-person meet and greet:
- Sunday July 26th 12pm, Nanaimo Harbourfront Library, 90 Commercial Street
- Friday July 24th at 2pm, Ladysmith Library, 740 1st Ave
Searching for Serafim: The Life and Legacy of Serafim “Joe” Fortes was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award. The book explores the life and legacy of Serafim “Joe” Fortes, a trailblazing Black lifeguard, who became a cultural icon in a racist society.
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.
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 She draws from historical documents to form an insightful critique of the role that settler colonialism and anti-Black racism played in Fortes’s publicized story and reconstructs his life, from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.
Ruby Smith Díaz is an Afro Latina multidisciplinary artist, educator, and award-winning body-positive personal trainer. Her experiences growing up in a migrant, poor, single-parent family in amiskwaciy (Edmonton, AB) have inspired her to dedicate her life’s work to exploring and addressing issues of equity and social justice. Ruby currently resides on the unceded territories of the Stz’uminus peoples (Ladysmith, BC).
