VICTORIA, B.C. — While Adelle Hatch can walk to the water now, she recalls being driven there as a child, thanks to her mom Doreen being the only woman on the street with a licence.
“Every other woman and the kids were stuck at home,” Adelle says. “Unless the husbands took them.”
So, Doreen would regularly squeeze Adelle, her sisters, plus a few of their friends into the back of her Volkswagen Beetle and embark on adventures at the beach.
“She was a fabulous mom,” Adelle smiles. “I would call her a fabulous force of nature.”
During one of those beach days, Doreen discovered a remarkable piece of driftwood, strapped it on the Beetle’s back bumper, and drove it to her garden, where it sat on display for more than 30 years.
“It was like a sculpture,” Adelle says. “It was wonderful.”
After Doreen died, Adele’s showcased the log in her yard for two decades, until she happened upon the work of driftwood artist Tanya Bub and offered it to her.
“And I said, ‘You’ll do much more with it than I will ever do,’” Adelle smiles.
So Tanya gratefully accepted it.
“It was breathtaking,” Tanya says.
And like her previous work, Tanya expected to use it as a component in the construction of some sort of creature.
“But I would sort of look at the thing and go, ‘No. It’s not a bear,’” Tanya recalls. “And then I’d come back two months later and go, ‘Nah. I don’t see a Sasquatch there.’”
It wasn’t until a year later that Tanya finally saw that the driftwood looked like kelp waving in the water. She was inspired to start bending chicken wire into shapes she could perch on top of the stump, and eventually made a massive mermaid. She named it The Fabulous Doreen.
“And I just can’t believe it,” Adelle says of seeing it for the first time. “I just couldn’t believe it.”
Adelle couldn’t believe two things. First, she’d never told Tanya about Doreen’s passion for mermaids.
“My mother loved mermaids!” Adelle says, adding that Doreen made a mermaid statue out of papier-mâché, sketched multiple drawings of mermaids, and painted mermaids to decorate the walls of her daughters’ rooms. “She absolutely loved them.”
And second, Adelle has never shown Tanya any photos of her mom, let alone a specific picture of Doreen perched on a wall wearing a dress that flared out like the mermaid’s tail, and her arm stretched out in a strikingly similar pose to Tanya’s sculpture.
“I can’t believe that was basically my mom in mermaid form,” Adelle smiles.
While it could be a coincidence, and certainly serendipity, maybe — they say — it’s more magical.
“I think (Doreen) inhabited the wood a little bit,” Tanya smiles. “And was a little bit whispering in my ear.”
No matter the explanation, Tanya is donating proceeds from the mermaid’s sale to a charity in Doreen’s name, and Adelle hopes whoever takes the mermaid home after its shown at the gallery, is inspired to be fabulous in the same way her mom was.
“Just find something you enjoy,” Adelle says. “And bring joy to others.”
