Mermaid statue at Ganges harbour, British Columbia

The inscription reads "Service Above Self", the motto of the Rotary Club.   The significance of the sea astrolabe in the mermaid's right hand is not known.

The astrolabe

No artist statement about the instrument has been recorded. A mariner's astrolabe — a graduated brass ring with an alidade, its disc cut away to reduce wind resistance — was suspended at noon to measure the altitude of the sun or a star of known declination, allowing a navigator to calculate latitude. It came into sea use around 1470 and the earliest recorded shipboard use dates to a Portuguese expedition down the west African coast in 1481. It remained the preferred instrument for over two hundred years before being displaced by the cross staff and back staff.

On the name

The name Nerissa derives from the Nereids, the fifty sea-nymph daughters of Nereus, the "Old Man of the Sea," and the Oceanid Doris. In Greek myth they were goddesses of the sea's bounty and protectors of sailors and fishermen, surfacing to aid crews in distress, with each nymph representing a facet of the sea — brine, foam, sand, waves, currents — or a skill of the men who worked it.

The mermaid on the coin

In 2007 McPhee adapted the sculpture for the Salt Spring Island Monetary Foundation's first silver coin, a hand-struck half-ounce .999 fine silver $50 piece issued in December of that year as part of the island's local currency.

Damage and Repair

The sculpture sustained heavy damage at one point, but was since repaired. Two refurbishments are recorded since installation. The first, reported in 2013, recoloured the sculpture gold — the finish that earned her the local nickname "the golden mermaid." A second, reported around 2022, gave her the greenish verdigris patina she carries today.

About the sculptor

Thomas Richard McPhee is a Canadian sculptor based on Salt Spring Island and largely self-taught, having studied at the Kootenay School of Arts and the Vancouver College of Art and spent 1976–77 in independent study in London. He is best known internationally as a gem carver — his works include the 1,550-carat "1492" emerald carving and a 302-carat Kitaa ruby from Greenland — and he wrote an eighteen-part technical series on gem carving for Lapidary Journal between 1995 and 2002. His own record of the commission describes the piece as an 8-foot mermaid on a 5-foot base in cold cast bronze, donated to Rotary Marine Park in 2001.

Visiting

Rotary Marine Park sits on the Ganges waterfront in the centre of town and is free and open at all hours. The Rotary Club of Salt Spring Island built the park and its adjacent dinghy dock, which allows visiting boaters to come ashore at the statue. Salt Spring Island is reached by BC Ferries from Swartz Bay, Crofton or Tsawwassen, and by float plane into Ganges Harbour. The Saturday Market runs in adjacent Centennial Park from April to October.