I got my first holds from our local branch library located on Denman. Interesting that Joe Fortes taught my mom and all sorts of poor urchins how to swim and probably saved many from drowning because they knew how to swim and he was around to protect them. Lots of kids in those days on their own on the beach while their parents tried to cobble together a living. I love the story my mom tells about how her and her friends and siblings spent their nickel return carfare on chips and told the driver they lost their money in the sand. They always got home.
From Wikipedia:
Seraphim “Joe” Fortes (b.?-4 February 1922) was a former sailor, originally from Barbados and then Liverpool, and a legendary figure in the early history of Vancouver, Canada.[1] After moving to the city in 1885 (the year before it was incorporated), he worked as a labourer and bartender (at the Sunnyside Hotel on Maple Tree Square in Gastown), then became a fixture at English Bay Beach, where he lived in a small cottage, 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 20th 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 21st 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.
