“I realized that if I wanted to write truthfully, I would need to let go of the desire to protect his legacy”: Interview with Ruby Smith Díaz

Note from the author: I will be using Serafim Fortes’s name in my responses below, to affirm his given name.

All Lit Up: In Searching for Serafim, you write “In telling his story, I reveal a part of my own.” Can you tell us a bit about your personal connection with Joe Fortes’s story, and how your perspective on identity and displacement perhaps expanded as you wrote the book?

Ruby Smith Diaz: My connection with Serafim’s story exists on many levels, but where I first felt the biggest pull was around the places that we have both called home. One of those places is on Unceded Musquam Squamish and Tsleil Waututh territory (Vancouver)—a place that I called home for over a decade, and a place that he called home for more than half his life. 

Finding out that Serafim was Afrolatino compelled me to know more about his life, as I know from lived experience that I often feel that I am neither from aquí ni allá., Like Serafim, my ancestry is also a mix of African and Latine heritage, with my mother being from Chile, and my father being from Jamaica. Being of these mixed origins, from a lineage of stolen people, living on stolen Indigenous land, becoming in some ways a part of settler colonialism and in others, a non-consensual agent in it, there is a lot that I question and think about every single day around my identity and my place in the world, and that I wondered if he did, too.

Serafim felt close to me throughout the entire writing process, almost as if he was an uncle. In the very beginning, that familiarity influenced my writing to the extent that if I came across something unfavourable for him, I would try to ignore it, or even excuse it. But as I continued my research and learned more and more about the ways in which he let white supremacist narratives influence his views and harmful behaviours towards AAPI communities, I realized that I would be repeating the same century old pattern that countless reporters and Joe Fortes fans had fallen victim to—to try to change his story and who he was, just to fit their own liking. I realized that if I wanted to write truthfully, I would need to let go of the desire to “protect” his legacy.

ALU: Joe Fortes is often remembered as a hero, but your book delves deeper into how he navigated racism and displacement. What were the most surprising or challenging aspects you uncovered about his life?

RSD: I think the most surprising aspect I learned about Serafim Fortes’s life was how white settler society made him the exception to the white supremacist rhetoric that was being pushed at the turn of the century in Vancouver. Racial segregation in public spaces like Íy̓el̓shn (English Bay) where he worked and called “home,” was present since Vancouver’s founding. Although it was not enshrined in law in all institutions or public spaces in Vancouver, it was certainly enforced informally through acts of violence and social taboo throughout greater Vancouver. So there Serafim was, a Black lifeguard at English Bay beach, at a time where the “Stand for a White Canada” campaign was gaining substantial support, and when many of the prominent politicians and citizens backing this campaign would likely have visited English Bay and learned to swim from him, or were even rescued by him. What surprised me is that this isn’t something that has been reflected upon by the vast majority of people who have written about him. It seems that it is much more convenient for Vancouverites to erase the social context that threatened Serafim’s very existence, and instead fetishize him and talk about how much he was loved, so as to not have to face ourselves and our uncomfortable histories. As bell hooks said, love is an action, never simply a feeling. And this to me must always be considered when thinking about Serafim’s story. I don’t believe that it is possible to claim to love somebody and at the same time, exploit them, restrict their movement, and instill laws and policies that lead to their premature death. [1] In many ways, the contradictions that he survived, are no different than the ones that I am surviving today.

ALU: How did you balance the factual historical research with your personal reflections and passages of poetry in the book?

RSD: The most important part to me in writing this book was to not write a biography!! The idea of writing a biography honestly bored me, especially since there’s already one written about him. So as much as I researched his life, I would often take in what was written about him and sit with feelings of sadness or anger and disgust. After sitting with these feelings, I would need a way to process them and get them out of my mind and body. This is often where poetry would emerge. I used poetry to communicate my innermost feelings in a way that a simple retelling of historical events could not achieve. 

In other moments, I would read a newspaper article and be reminded of something that I had experienced or witnessed, and I couldn’t ignore how deeply interwoven all these stories were. And I guess that’s just how I see the world and the land around me—layers of stories and layers of time and layers of ancestral realms that live through us and surround us always, in the ether. I can’t separate those layers in my mind’s eye. They are always there, and so I just write what I see.

ALU: Were there any gaps in the archival records that you found difficult to navigate, and how did you work around them?

RSD: There were SO many gaps in the archival records. These gaps in archival information are unfortunately an all too common theme for Black communities in so-called Canada, the United States, and the Caribbean, as often records are missing, incomplete, incorrect, or only available through policing institutions (See Nya Lewis, An Insufficient Record: The Photo Ethics of Preserving Black Vancouver) or insurance documents.

At first, I felt a lot of grief about it, but after some thought, I decided to use these gaps as doorways, or portals. I found the Latin American tradition of magical realism especially helpful, which in some ways, mirrors the work of speculative archiving, coined by Marie-Claire Graham. Through these influences combined, I was able to transform a large part of my grief for missing archives, into possibility, power, and afro-futurism.

ALU: Were there any moments in your writing process where you felt especially connected to Fortes’s experiences?

RSD: The part in my writing process that I felt the most connected to Serafim’s experience, was sitting at Íy̓el̓shn at the spot where his cabin once stood, and spending time on the land there. It felt like an integral component to understanding the world that he was immersed in over a century ago. 

Although so much of the physical structures and forests have changed in that area since he was alive, and the homes of the Squamish nation on Sen̓áḵw across the water were destroyed by the city of Vancouver, the water and the shoreline still remain. I strongly believe that land and water hold memory, and so it is the land and the water that I let guide me.

ALU: If you could ask Joe Fortes one question about his life, what would it be?

RSD: I would ask Serafim: “What did you do with that little book that you were writing?”

[1] After Ruth Gilmore Wilson’s definition of racism.

About Searching for Serafim: The Life and Legacy of Serafim “Joe” Fortes

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.

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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).