An Easter Find
From the Fortin Family Scrapbook

By Cherie H. Fortin-O’Grady and Ashton Sea O’Grady

MAE FORTIN'S EASTER SCENE ON CHINA.

Mae E. Fortin first visited Laguna Beach on her own around 1937, when she was in her early 20s. Over five decades, the family crossed paths with some of Laguna Beach's iconic characters and captured on film and on canvas scenes now obscured by the town's development.

An artist since the age five, Fortin painted art her entire life, a body of work that documents her travels through Europe and Mexico, as well as the beach, foothills and interesting architecture of her hometown. Mostly she painted colorful, watercolor landscapes, but she applied her brushes to several mediums, including collectible china, oil and tile.

Fortin displayed her work in her own gallery at Main Beach, located upstairs above an A&W Root beer fountain located along the boardwalk, which was dismantled in late '60s. Her work also hung in Hotel Laguna. She signed her paintings under the name of Nina Badour, her maiden name. Over the course of her life, she also painted portraits and was also an avid photographer. She was one of the original artists in the early years of the Sawdust Festival, before it put down roots in the Laguna Canyon.

Born in Bay City, Mich., to Lavina and William Badour, she was raised on a large farm in Essexville. Fortin was an accomplished swimmer, archer, and rifleman or sharp shooter. Over the course of her life, she ran a dancehall, an art gallery, an antique store, and a bar.

She told me that Laguna was much like the French Riviera and that she had planned to live here permanently one day. After traveling the entire world, she felt that Laguna was the only place she would call home.

In the early 1940s after she married, she and her husband, Ernest, moved to Laguna with their two small children, my older siblings, Lona, Mae and Danny. My sister attended the Park Avenue School, Laguna's earliest elementary school. It was located where the swim center is now. At the time my sister was about five years old, and she attended kindergarten and first grade in Laguna. It was during this time that my father began building a home in Laguna Canyon, now the location of Randy Bader's Wood Gallery. While my father completed the house in the canyon, the family lived on Glennerye Street in a small yellow cottage.

One of Mae Fortin's watercolors in North Laguna of the "Belgium House." Pictures courtesy of Cherie H. Fortin-O'Grady

My father, Ernie Fortin, was a builder, welder, and auction house proprietor. He also bought many houses and became a landlord in town. He worked for John Irvine as a builder. He also worked with the wild and crazy character Petty Cort, who had a collectible junkyard in the canyon, which is now a storage area.

The scrapbooks of the Fortin family, now in its third generation in Laguna, mirrors the town's own evolution.

LONA FORTIN, LEFT, AND HER BROTHER, DANNY, ALONG WITH AN UNIDENTIFIED FRIEND, NEAR ST. CATHERINE'S CHURCH ON EASTER MORNING IN 1946. Mae and Ernie Fortin A relatively undeveloped Laguna Beach, as seen from north of town in the 1940s. DANNY FORTIN SURVEYS WHAT WOULD BECOME THE FAMILY HOME IN LAGUNA CANYON, UNDER CONSTRUCTION IN 1947.