The Christmas Eve of my second Christmas in Vancouver found me at 5 years old waiting with a cluster of children, on Beach Avenue near the pier across the street from Sylvia Court.  The Sylvia, where I lived is now the Hotel.  We were waiting for Joe Fortes, Vancouver's legendary life guard who had taught hundreds of Vancouver children to swim and saved many from drowning.  It was said that he had escaped from a slave ship to land on our shores.  I don't know how true that was of Joe, but I do know there were remnants of a slave colony of coloured people living on one of the Gulf Islands so it could have been true.

But in the winter of my 5th Christmas, he was simply "the Lamplighter", a soft spoken man who taught us to call him Old Black Joe rather than Nigger Joe.  He'd give us a nickel apiece which I'd hurry across the street to spend at a grocery store next door to the Sylvia.  The Christmas candies were in large, slanting glass jars, sold in bulk, not packaged up.  A child could ask for a nickels worth.  After Christmas, our nightly tryst with Old Black Joe ended.  A kindly policeman came along to tell us he was sick and lifted me up to help him light the gas lamp.  Joe Fortes died that winter.  A fountain in a park across from the point on which stood his little home was dedicated to his memory a few years later.  His passing that winter was my first brush with death.  In speaking of it my parents mentioned the song “Old Black Joe” and sang it for me:

"I'm coming,I'm coming
For my head is bending low,
I hear those angel voices calling
Old Black Joe"

For many years I believed that the words were written for my old lamplighter friend.  It is still one of my favourite songs.

Betty McLean
First Published in the Peace Arch News
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