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Penguin Books Inc
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First published by Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1972
Published by Penguin Books Inc. 1973
Reprinted 1974,1975

Copyright © Parley Mou'at, Limited, 1972
Printed in the United States of America

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We wish to thank Holt, Rincharl and Wimton, Inc.,
New York, for permission to reprint the following:

Passage from The Outermost House by Henry Beston.
Copyright © 1928,1949,1956 by Henry Beiton.

"The Secret Sits" from The Poetry of Robert Frost,
edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright © 1942
by Robert Frost. Copyright (c) 1969 by Holt, Rinchart and
Winston, Inc. Copyright @ 1970 by Lesley Frost Bdllanlinc.

/ wish to thank Peter Damson and
Angus Mowat who have helped me
with this book more than I can say.

Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated
artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the
glass of his knowledge and sees tliereby a feather magnified
and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for
their incompleleness, for their tragic fate in having taken
form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly
err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world
older and more complete, than ours they move finished and
complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost
or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They
are not brethren; they are not underlings; they are other
nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time,
fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.

— from The Outermost House, by Henry Beston

We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

— from The Secret Sits, by Robert Frost

Chapter 1

A torment of sooty cloud scudded out of the mountainous
barrens of southeastern Newfoundland. Harried by a furi-
ous nor'easter, eddies of sand-sharp snow beat against the
town of Port Aux Basques; an unlovely cluster of wooden
buildings sprawled across a bed of cold rock and colder
muskeg. White frost-smoke swirled up from the waters of
the harbour to marry the cloud wrack and go streaming out
across Cabot Strait toward the looming cliffs of Cape Breton
and the mainland of North America.

January deals harshly with Newfoundland. It had just
dealt harshly with me and my wife, Claire, and the hundred
or so other passengers who had endured the crossing of the
Cabot Strait to Port Aux Basques aboard the slab-sided.
floating barn of a car ferry, William Carson. The passage
from North Sydney, in Nova Scotia, normally takes six
hours. This time the storm had extended it to twelve, and
the Carson, savaged by that surging sweep of wind and
water, had meanly revenged herself on passengers and cargo.
A ten-ton bulldozer, lashed to the deck with half-inch cables,
had been pitched right through the steel bulwarks into the
green depths. Grey-faced and desolate, most of the passen-
gers lay helplessly asprawl in cabins reeking with the stench
of vomit.

When the Carson eventually wallowed into Port Aux

11

Basques harbour and managed to get her lines ashore, there
was a grateful if unsteady exodus down her gangplank. Most
oE the debarking passengers clambered aboard the anti-
quated coaches ot a narrow-gauge railway which dawdled its
way for six hundred miles to St. John's, the island capital,
on the eastern coast. However, for a score of men, women
and children (Clairc and I among them) Port Aux Basques
was not the end of the ordeal by sea. Our destinations were
a scattering of sea-girt fishing villages - outports they are
called - thinly spread along the hundreds of miles of bold,
bald headlands and canyoned fiords of the island's Soii'west
Coast. There was only one way to reach any of these places -
the weekly coastal steamer.

She was waiting for us: small, dowdy, dirty; in sharp con-
trast to the sham grandeur of the Carson. But, unprepos-
sessing as she looked, the s.s. Burgeo was wise in the ways of
the unforgiving world of water. She was a proper scaboat,
not a floating motet. Day in, day out for more than twenty
years, she had shuttled east and west along that iron shore,
furnishing the physical link between the outports. She also
provided the principal contact with the outside world for
some forty fishing villages which clung between wind and
water to one of the least hospitable coasts on earth.

By 1967 more than halt the outports originally served by
the Burgeo had been abandoned - "closed out," as their
forcibly uprooted inhabitants described it. These age-old
settlements had become victims of the cult of Progress even
as the Burgeo herself was soon enough to become such a
victim. In 1969 she was condemned, although still as sound
as ever, and sold for scrap - an unwanted anachronism from
an age now past and rejected. Left lying at a wharf in St.
John's, she was stripped by souvenir hunters, and the cold-
ness of a dead ship spread through her. But she was not
quite dead. One dark winter's night, just before the cutting
torches could start eating into her good Scots iron, she com-

12

mitted herself to her own element. So quietly that not even
the watchman knew what she was about, she settled to the
bottom of the harbour, there to become a monumental em-
barrassment to the authorities and a remembered heroine to
the many thousands of outport people who had known and
loved her during the long years of her service.

However, in mid-January of 1967 the Burgeo was still
very much alive. Her Master, Captain Ro Penncy, wel-
comed us aboard as we scrambled up the gangplank through
a burst of driven sleet.

A small, neat, precise man. Skipper Ro was shy of women.
He flushed and ducked his head as Claire came aboard.
"Well, me dear, you're back again," he muttered, appar-
ently addressing his own feet. "Nip in out of the wet now.
'Tis dirty weather .. . dirty weather ..."

He turned more familiarly to me.
"Come on the bridge, Skipper Mowat. We'd best get under
way afore this nor'easter busts its guts!"

During the years Claire and I had known the Sbu'wcst
Coast we had made at least a dozen voyages with Skipper
Ro. We met him first in the gloomy fiords of Bay Despair
in 1961 on a day when I brought my own leaky little
schooner alongside the Burgeo looking for help in repairing
my ancient engine. Not only did I get the assistance of the
Chief Engineer, Captain Ro himself came aboard my little
vessel, having first asked formal permission to do so. He paid
me a high compliment by addressing me as "Skipper," and
he never failed to use the title whenever we met again.

I wish I could still do him equal honour for, like the
Burgeo, Captain Ro is also gone. During a heavy gale - it
was more nearly a hurricane - in Cabot Strait in the spring
of 1970, he took the 10,000-ton train ferry Patrick Morris
out of North Sydney in response to a distress call from a
herring seiner. The seiner foundered before the Morris
could reach her, and while Skipper Ro was trying to recover

I)

tlie body of one of the drowned fishermen, a forty-foot sea
stove in ilie ferry's stern loading door, swamped her, and
the big ship began to go down. Captain Ro ordered the
crew to the boats but three of the engine room crowd could
not be found, and Ro Penney refused to leave without them.
He was a quiet man, and steadfast to the end.

Skipper Ro tugged at the whistle lanyard and the Burgoo's
throaty voice rang deep and melancholy over the spume
whipped harbour. The lines came in and we backed out
into the stream. Once clear of the fairway buoy, the little
ship bent to the gale and headed east, holding close in
against the looming, snow-hazed land to find what lee there
was.

I went below to the old-fashioned dining saloon with its
Victorian, leaded glass windows, worn linen tablecloths, and
battered but gleaming silverware. Most of the passengers
were gathered there, having a mug-up of tea and bread and
butter, and yarning companionably, for on the Sou'west
Coast everyone knows everyone else, or is at least known to
everyone else. Claire was sitting between the owner of a
small dragger and his dumpy, jovial wife. I joined them,
The nor'easter screamed in the top-hamper and the old
reciprocating steam engine thumped its steady, heavy heart-
beat underfoot as we listened to the gossip of the coast.

Had we heard that the government was going to close out
the settlement of Grey River? The dragger owner snorted
into his cup of tea. "Hah! By the Lard Jasus, they fellers in
St. John's is goin' to find they needs a full cargo o' dynamite
to shift Grey River. Aye, and I don't say as even that'll shift
they people!"

Fish landings had been down. "Entirely too starmy all
the tall months. Shore fishermen can't hardly git out at all.
Even us tellers onto the draggers, we has to spend the best
part of our sea time battened down or runnin' tor shelter."

14

But there were compensations, "Niver did see such a
toime for caribou. I tell ye, me son, they's thicker'n flies on
a fish flake, and coming right down to the landwash to pick
away at the kelp. Oh, yiss bye, they's lots o' country meat on
the gol"

He smacked his lips and winked at his wife who promptly
took up the tale.

"They got the new school open to Ramea, me dears. Yiss,
an Lucy Fenelly, belongs to Mosquito Harbour, got a new
baby, and her man away working on the mainland these
past ten months! And that young student preacher, come
just afore you folks went off, he only stayed long enough to
christen the child and then he fair flew off the coast. I don't
say 'twas his fault entirely. Lucy's got thirteen youngsters
now, and they's none of 'em looks no more like her man
than I does meself."

Over the third cup of tea, the dragger skipper, as an act
of politeness, asked where we had been.

"Europe," I told him, and added with something of the
self-conscious pride of a world traveller, "and Russia. Mos-
cow first, and then right through Siberia as far as the Pacific
and the Arctic Coast."

"Roosia, eh? Yiss . . . well now, you'll be some glad to be
getting home to Burgeo ... Me dear man, they's some glut
of herring on the coast this winter. Nothin's been seen the
like of it tor fifty year. . . ."

Burgeo, our destination and the place from which the
little steamer took her name, was the largest settlement on
the coast, and, through the preceding five years, it had been
our home. Now, after six months of kaleidoscopic experi-
ences and exhausting travel, we were yearning tor this home-
coming with its promise of surcease from the grinding irri-
tations of technological civilizations.

Burgeo lies ninety miles to the east of Port Aux Basques
on a shore of such formidable aspect that it remains little

15

known except to the scattering of fishermen and seame
who arc its human inhabitants. The Sou'wcst Coast faces a
vast sweep of waters rolling all the way up from the South
Atlantic. It is a rare day when this oceanic plain lies quiet,
Throughout most of the year onshore gales drive their thun-
dering seas against granite cliffs which rise inland to a high,
barren plateau, the home of the caribou and arctic hares,
the ptarmigan .,. and not much else.

Lying offshore from the fiord-riven cliffs arc clusters ot
low islands, many o( them sea-swept; and seeded-among
these, like dragon's teeth, lie innumerable underwater reefs
and rocks which the coast dwellers call - with chilling sim
plicity - "sunkcrs." The number o£ ships they have wrecked
is legion and even in these days of electronic navigational
magic, they remain a thing of terror on black and storm-
swept nights, or when the corpse blanket of fog smothers

land and sea alike.

The Burgeo Islands comprise one such cluster. They were
"discovered" by Western man in 1520 by a Portuguese ex-
plorer, Joaz Aivarcz Fagundez. He called the archipelago
"Ilhas DOS Ome Mill Vierges" in tribute to St. Ursula of
Cologne who, in the 14th century, with a naively which
must be unique in human annals, led 11,000 virgins against
the heathens in the Holy Land. Fagundez may have had a
sardonic sense of humour for it those wind-swept, rocky
islands, surrounded by foaming reefs, were not precisely
virginal, they most assuredly were barren.

But the seas around the islands were anything but bar-
ren. They teemed with life. Seals, whales, even walrus, lived
in multitudes in the plankton-rich waters along the abrupt
coasts and over the off-lying banks. As for fish! Salmon, cod,
halibut, haddock, sole and a dozen other species were so
abundant that men standing on shore could spear them by
the boatload. Although a hellish place in bad weather, the

16

Sou'west Coast had good harbours, and brave men who
would take a harvest from the sea could do so here if they
dared the risks,

From Fagundez' time, and ^doubtless long before, Euro-
peans had dared. By the beginning of the 16th century
Basque whalers were on the coast, harpooning leviathan off
shore and hauling the giant corpses to the land where the
blubber could be rendered into oil. Traces of their try-
works still remain. The French were not long after them.
They built summer codfishing stations and, over the years,
runaways (deserters from the fishing vessels) hid in the more
remote coves and sea-gulches. Here they lived a life almost
as primitive as that of the Mic Mac Indians from Nova
Scotia who replaced Newfoundland's aboriginal Beothuks
when these were hunted to extinction by the encroaching
Europeans. The French bred with the Mic Macs, and when
a trickle of English and Irish runaways, fleeing the slave
ship conditions of the English fishing fleets which came an-
nually to eastern and northeastern Newfoundland, also
began to drift along the coast, they were in turn absorbed
by the earlier arrivals, and a ne'w breed of men was born.

They were hard and self-sufficient people, as they had
need to be in order to survive at all. Because they were out-
laws, they dared form no large communities. Dispersal in
small groups was also necessary because they possessed only
oared boats, in which they could not venture far from home;

and too many fishermen working in one place meant
crowded grounds.

They clung, limpet-like, to this rock-walled rim of ocean,
one or two families together, wherever they could find a
toe-hold for their cabins and shelter for their boats. By the
late 19th century there were over eighty such clusters of
humanity along the Sou'wcst Coast. Each consisted of from
half a dozen to a score of square, two-storey frame houses

.7

hugging the foreshore of some stony little hole-in-the-wall
where coveys of lean dories and fat-bellied trap skiffs floated

at their collars like resting seabirds.

Clinging to the landwash, often at the very toot of a tower-
ing cliff, these sparse encrustations of human life were separ-
ated one from the other by many miles of unquiet waters,
yet united by the sea which was the peoples' livelihood . . .
by the sea which was their highway ... by the sea which was
their mistress and their master . . . the giver, and the taker-

away.

Inland, the treeless granite hills rolled starkly naked, but

in some of the river gorges there were stands of spruce and
larch, and the outport people fled to these protected places
during the white months of winter, living in log "tilts"
until spring sent them back to the calling sea once more.

It was a rock-hard land, and an ice-cold sea, and together
they winnowed the human seed through generations of ad-
versity until the survivors themselves partook of the primal

strength of rock and ocean.

Life is easier now, but they are still a breed apart. As late
as 1950 they knew little and cared less about the new breed
of technological men who had come to dominate the planet.
They continued to live in their own time and their own
way; and their rhythm was the rhythm of the natural world.
. When, in 1957,1 first visited the Sou'west Coast, men and
boys were still fishing in open, seventeen-foot dories in win-
ter weather of such severity that their mittens often froze to
.the oars. Some had larger boats driven by antique single-
cylinder engines, but these were still open to the sea and sky.
Almost all the fishermen brought their cod home to their
own spruce-pole wharves, called "stages," and split them in
their own fish sheds or "stores." Women and girls still
spread the split and salted fish to dry on spidery wooden
scaffolds known as "flakes." Salt cod was still the main prod-

18

uct of the coast, as it had been for better than three hundred
years.

They were truly people out of time, but it was pot that
alone which drew me to them. Being a people to whom
adversity was natural, they had retained a remarkable capa-
city for tolerance of other human beings, together with
qualities of generosity toward one another and toward stran-
gers in their midst which surpassed anything I had ever
known before except, perhaps, among the Eskimos. They
were the best of people, and I promised myself that one day
I would come and live among them and escape from the
increasingly mechanistic mainland world with its March
Hare preoccupation with witless production for mindless
consumption; its disruptive infatuation with change for its
own sake; its idiot dedication to the bitch goddess, Progress.

In 1961 I did return, blundering along that fearsome
coast in my decrepit little schooner; staying afloat and alive
not due to the grace of God, but due to the grace of the out-
port men who, with a subtlety which enabled me to save
face, saw to it that I did not pay the usual price demanded
by a harsh environment of fools and amateurs.

The following summer Claire and I coasted westward out
of Bay Despair and, by summer's end, neither of us felt any
real wish to return to mainland Canada. We began to con-
sider the possibility of roosting for the winter in some small
community along the Sou'west Coast, but by late August we
had made no decision and were still aimlessly drifting west-
ward.

We were approaching Burgeo, but had no intention of
putting in there, for we had heard that the construction of
a modern fish-packing plant had radically changed the out-
port nature of that plac . Instead our course was set for the
liny village of Grand Bruit, some miles farther west. How-
ever, as we came abeam of Boar Island, which marks the

19

entrance to the intricate maze of runs and tickles between
the Burgeo Islands, our engine failed. The runs seemed too
hazardous to attempt under sail alone so we reluctantly put
in to Burgeo for repairs. By the time the schooner was again
fit for sea, the weather had turned foul and we were harbour-
bound.

Burgeo, or at any rate the eastern part of it where we lay

moored, was not a thing of beauty. The fish plant dominated
the scene. The roar of its dicsel generators deafened us, and
the stench of the place was an abomination under God.
Nevertheless, most of the people we met seemed relatively
uncontaminatcd by the arrival in their midst of the indus-
trial age, and they were friendly and helpful. One morning
we casually mentioned to one of Ehcm that we were thinking
of wintering somewhere on the Atlantic seaboard, and al-
most instantly found ourselves being whisked off to the
western end of the attenuated settlement to a little, semi-
isolated community called Messers Cove. Even at first glance
Messers seemed like everything an outport should be, and
nothing it should not be. It consisted of fourteen families of
inshore fishermen whose gaily painted houses lined the
shores of a snug little harbour. Perched high on a great gran-
ite boulder was a small, half-completed, white wooden bun-
galow whose windows looked south over the islands and be-
yond to the endless sweep of open ocean.
The little house was for sale.

We offered to rent it but the owner, a young fisherman
who wished to become an hourly labourer at the fish plant,
refused. He would only sell. The season was late, and there
was nowhere else in the world we particularly wanted to be.
We liked Messers Cove and its people. We bought the house.

Captain Pcnney laid his ship sweetly alongside Burgeo's
snow-dusted government wharf. He waved goodbye from
the wing -of the bridge as we came down the gangplank to-

20

, ward a knot of people who had gathered, as generations
before them had habitually gathered, to meet the coastal
boat. An agile little man in his late thirties separated him-
self from the group and trotted up to us. His dark, sharp-
featured face was lit by a smile of welcome.

"Got your wire you was on the boat. Was a wonnerful glit-
ter starm last week and the road's not fitten tor nothin' only
young 'uns on skates. So I brung me dory tor to fetch you
home. Where's your gear to? I'll get it tor you."

Simeon Spencer, proprietor of a tiny general store which
occupied the back kitchen of his house, was our closest
neighbour at Messers, and perhaps our closest friend. With
great solicitude he saw us aboard his powered dory, stowed
our luggage, and cast off.

It was a bitterly cold evening and, despite the wind-lop,
a rubbery film of cat-ice was forming over the runs between
the islands leading past Firby Harbour, Ship Dock and
Muddy Hole, and westward to our own cove - Messers.
Spray froze on the backs of our coats as we hunched forward
on the thwart facing the diminutive figure of Sim who stood
erect and bird-like in the stern. Unexpectedly, he shoved the
rudder hard down and the dory lay over so sharply that
Claire and I slid sideways on the thwart. Sim was waving an
arm seaward, and over the clatter of the engine I could just
make out the word he shouted.
"WhalesI"

He was pointing toward Longboat Rocks, a line of blacK
reefs glistening with the salt seas breaking over them. Just
beyond the Longboats was something else, also black and
glistening, that surged slickly into view, then sank smoothly
from sight leaving behind it a plume of fine mist which was
quickly blown away by the nor'caster.

That blurred, elusive glimpse of one of the Great Ones of
the oceans was a fine homecoming gift. I have always been
fascinated by the mysterious lives of the non-human animals

21

who share this world with us, but until I went to live on the
Sou'west Coast the mystery of the whale had scarcely come
my way, although it is perhaps the greatest mystery of all.
Burgeo had given me the chance to approach that mystery
when, each winter, a little group of Fin Whales took up
seasonal residence tor a few months in the waters of the

archipelago.

Sim had turned the dory into Messers Cove. He cut the

engine as we approached his stage.
"When did the whales come back?" I asked as the dory

drifted toward the wharf.

"Like always. First part o' December . . . along of the her-
ring scull. They's five . . . maybe six cruising midst the is-
lands, and they's the biggest kind! - . . Here now. Missis.

watch the ice!"

Together we helped Claire up the slippery front of the
Stage and in the excitement of this long-anticipated arrival
the whales were temporarily put out of mind. None of us
could then have guessed the momentous changes in all our
lives which was to follow from their presence.

All the lights in our house were burning. When we
stamped across the storm porch and entered the kitchen we
found the stoves all roaring. Sim's fourteen-year-old daugh-
ter, Dorothy, had swept and polished every inch of every
room. Old Mrs. Harvey had sent over two loaves of home-
made bread, still oven-hot. And bubbling fragrantly in a pot
on the oil range was a boiled dinner: cabbage, turnips, pota-
toes, onions, salt beet and moose meat.

The little house which had stood empty for six months
was as warm and welcoming as it we had never left it. Our
delight was also Sim's delight as he sat unobtrusively nurs-
ing a glass of rum in front of the Franklin stove. His self-
imposed duty was not yet completed. It was now his task
to bring us up-to-date on the really vital events which had
taken place during our absence.

22

"They was talk of a strike down to the plant, but the owner,
he put an end to it right quick. Said he'd close her up and
move clear of Burgeo and left the people lump it if they
didn't care to work to his wish. Don't know where he fig-
gered on going, but they's plenty folk here could name a
place proper for the likes of he! . . . Curt Bungay, he's
boughtanewboat.alongliner from down Parsons Harbour
way .. . Your schooner's hauled up clear, and Joe, he found
her leak ... one of 'em anyhow ... They's a new nurse to the

, hospital; chinee they says she is. but she's good for it. Comes
out the dirtiest sort of weather to take care of folks .., Good
run o' fish this winter, but nothin fit to call a price . . ."

And so it went, in rapid fire bursts, until, a decent time
having been allowed for us to have our dinner and settle in
a bit, other visitors began clumping over the porch and un-
ceremoniously letting themselves into the kitchen. A bevy
of teen-age girls led the way. They sat in a tidy row on the
kitchen day-bed and said nothing; only beamed, giggled and
nodded as we tried to make conversation with them. Then,
with familiar uproar, Albert, our big, black water dog, came
gallumphing into the kitchen bearing a dried codfish as a
homecoming present. Close behind him came his, and our,
friend, eighty-year-old Uncle Job; gnome-like, ebullient and
grinning thirstily as he spotted the rum bottle on the kitchen
table. During our absence Albert had lived with Uncle Job
and his wife and, according to what Sim told us later, dog

; and man had spent most of their time engaged in acrimoni-
ous debate as to whether they would, or would not, go fish-

, ing, go for a walk, go for a swim, go to bed, or get up in

. the morning. They were both inveterate argufiers.

"He'll miss that dog some bad," Sim said. "Wuss'n he'd
miss his woman. She never says a word. and it drives he fair
wild when he can't get an argument."

Rather reluctantly Albert delivered over the cod - a fine
one it was too, for Uncle Job was one of the few Burgeo

2S

people who still knew and practised the age-old art of drying
and salting fish. Albert then sniffed in a perfunctory way at
our luggage with its stickers from Irkutsk, Omsk, Tbilisi
and other exotic places, barged into the livingroom, climbed
up on the sofa, grunted once or twice, and went to sleep.
The homecoming was complete.

24

Chapter 2

The storm blew itself out that night and in the morning the
sun shone white and harsh upon the ice-capped offer islands.
The sea had an ebony sheen to match the glitter left on the
land by the recent sleet storm. Taking advantage of what
would surely be an all-too-brief spell of fine weather, the
inshore fishermen - those who fished the local grounds with
gill nets, trawls and handlines - were early at work, their
small boats no more than distant motes on the metallic mir-
ror of the sea.

Leaving Claire to get on with the unpacking as best she
might under the solemn eyes of the neighbourhood children
who drifted in and out of the kitchen like voiceless wraiths,
I took Albert and set out to collect the mail. Since the trail
(it could only be called a road out of courtesy) leading to
the eastern end of Burgeo was still impassable because of its
skin of ice, I borrowed Sim's dory and took the water route
instead.

It was marvellously exhilarating to be on the sea. The day
was calm and the sky blindingly clear. As usual, Albert
rode standing up in the bows, leaning far forward so that he
looked like a pagan totem. When occasional dovekies and
sea piqeons rose heavily nhcad of us and skittered off to the
sides, he eyed them with disdain.

25

We puttered along close under the land - close enough to

sniff the iodine tang of kelp exposed at ebb tide; close
enough to recognize and be recognized by people in the
shoreside houses. Sim Spencer's wife, busy hanging out the
wash, gave us a welcoming wave. Josh Harvey's calico dog,
Jumbo, barked insults at Albert from a stage head, and
Albert richly returned them. I shouted a greeting at Uncle
Matt Fudge, ninety-one years old, but still young enough
to be mending a cod net in the sunny shelter of his grand-
son's fish store. (Everyone above the age of fifty in an out-
port is known to everybody else as "Uncle," or as "Aunt.")

From Messers as tar as Frank Island the shore we were
coasting was encrusted by a fringe of sturdy houses which

' had been occupied for generations. They were the "old"
Burgeo, and they were a joy to behold. They looked married
to the rock on which they stood, a neat but unobtrusive
frieze along the shore. Yet each home stood in quiet sing-
ularity. No two faced in the same direction. No two were
on the same level nor were of quite the same construction,
even though most were of the venerable two-storey, low-
peaked pattern common to Newfoundland outports. They
gave the impression of a kind of unpretentious and non-
aggressive independence. However, when the dory slipped
through the tickle north of Frank Island, the scene changed
abruptly. This was where the New Burgeo, creation of

modern times, began.

In 1949, when Newfoundland became a reluctant part of
Canada, Burgeo was not a single community but a patch-
work of dispersed little settlements. Along the shoreline of
Grandy Island - which dominates the archipelago as an
anchored battleship dominates a fleet of lesser craft - lay
the hamlets of Messers Cove, Muddy Hole, Firby Cove, Sam-
ways, The Harbour, and The Reach. Clinging to the off-
lying and much smaller islands, or strung along the adja-
cent mainland shores, lay Seal Brook. Kings Harbour, Our

26

Harbour, Hunts Island, Sandbanks and Upper Burgeo. Al-
though none of these held more than two dozen families,
each had preserved its own identity through a century and
more-

Confederation with Canada put an end to all that. In
1948 Newfoundland was still nominally a self-governing
Dominion in the British Empire; but in 1949, goaded and
harried by a messianic little man named Joseph Smallwood
(some called him satanic), Newfoundland was stampeded
into joining Canada. Smallwood won the decisive vote by

• the slimmest of margins as islanders of all classes fought
, desperately for the retention of their independence, im-
poverished as it was. For these dissenters, independence
was of greater worth than flash prosperity. Smallwood, on
the other hand, regarded independence as an insufferable
barrier to progress. Most Newfoundlanders, he once con-
temptuously said, did not know what was good for them
and would have to be hauled, kicking and screaming, into
the 20th century. He was just the man to do the hauling.

He became the island's first provincial Premier and
during the next twenty-two years ran Newfoundland al-
most single-handedly, according to his personal concept of
what was good for it. It was a simple concept: industrialize
; at all costs. This meant that all the island's mineral, forest
and human resources were to be made available, virtually
as gifts, to any foreign industrial entrepreneurs who would

•', agree to exploit them. Smallwood demanded that New-

• foundland turn its back on the ocean which had nurtured

. the islanders through so many centuries.

"Haul up your boats . . . burn your fishing gear!" he
shouted during one impassioned speech directed at the out-
port men. "There'll be three jobs ashore for every one of

•:' you. You'll never have to go fishing again!"

Many believed him. for he was a persuasive demagogue,
and he had the silver tongue.

27

One of the first hurdles he had to overcome was to find
means of concentrating the "labour resources" (by which
term he described the people of the outports) who were
dispersed in about thirteen hundred little communities
scattered along some five thousand miles of coastline. Small-
wood's solution was "Centralization" which, translated,
meant the forced and calculated merger of the outports so
that labour pools could be formed from the transported
occupants. The methods used to destroy the small outports
were dcvibus, usually deceitful, sometimes brutal . . . and

almost always effective,

Along the Sou'wcst Coast the "moving [ever," implanted

and cultured by the Smallwood men, soon began to take
effect. One by one the outports sickened and died. Even in
the Burgeo archipelago, where everyone already lived with-
in a tour-mile radius of everyone else, the fever raged with
. such fury that in a few years all the off-lying communities

had moved to Grandy Island.

Although Smallwood rejected the sea and scorned fishing
as a way of life, his was not an absolute rejection. Even in
his most sanguine dreams he appears to have realized that
there were parts of Newfoundland which could not be
turned into facsimiles of Detroit or Hamilton. The Sou'west
Coast was such an area. Smallwood's answer to how best to
exploit its labour potential was to heavily subsidize con-
struction of a fish-freezing plant on Short Reach, at the
cast end of Grandy Island. This plant was "sold" for a ridicu-
lously small sum to the son of a St. John's merchant prince
who found himself in the happy position of being able to
pay what he chose for labour while setting his own price for

the fish he bought.

There were some initial difficulties- Not many men could
be persuaded to abandon their way of life in order to be-
come wage employees at as little as ten or twenty dollars a
week. However, as the people of the neighbouring outports

28

began to converge on the "growth centre" of Burgeo, a sur-
.plus labour force developed. It consisted of people who had
always hated the very thought of welfare - the dole, they
called it - and were willing to work at almost anything, for
almost any wage, rather than accept relief.

The heaviest concentration of immigrants settled close
to the fish plant. When all the available shoreline was oc-
cupied, newcomers were forced to build away from the sea
on barren rocky ridges or on peaty muskegs. They built
hurriedly and, contrary to their wont, many built badly.
They had no money with which to buy materials and, since
they were wage slaves, they had no time to do as their
fathers had done and go into the country to cut and whip-saw
their own lumber. All too many of the new residents, who
liad been forced or deluded into abandoning comfortable
and well-built houses in the now deserted outports, were
reduced to living in unsightly shacks. These proliferated
until they produced the first true fruits of Centralization ...
the Sou'west Coast's first slum.

:    The eastern end of Grandy Island turned into a wascc-
.-, land of rusting cans. broken boftles, spilled garbage, and
human sewage. The surrounding waters were further de-
filed by the vast volume of effluvia from the fish plant which
discharged all its wastes and offal directly into Short Reach.
-\ 'Much of the shoreline was befouled by a belt of black
sticky muck several inches thick and six to ten feet broad
which, particularly at low tide, stank to high heaven.

^    Apart from the physical degradation of what had once
^ been a wholesome and natural environment, centralization

also degraded the people who were its victims. The delicate
, interdependence of give and take was disrupted. As Sim
Spencer once explained it to me:

"Afore the plant come here, every little place was on its
own. Every settlement was like a family; and all the fam-
ilies, all along the coast, they got along good, never rubbed

29

nobody the wrong way. Every man looked after his own, but
he looked to his neighbour when times was hard, and for
certain sure he'd be quick enough to give a hand when any-
one else was needy.

"Now that's all gone abroad. Shovin' all hands into one
big lobster pot done something to the people. Started filtin'
them up with badness. Turned them one agin the Other.
Started them wheening and growling like a pack of crackie
dogs penned upon some little pick of an island.

"These times, everyone's jealous of t'other, and 'twas never
that way before. People is uncontented. They don't want
nobody to get nothin' unless they gits it too, and more of
it. Truth to tell, people is turning right hateful in Biirgeo,

these times."

The independent people, and the egalitarian way of life,
could not survive the tides of change as more and more
people came to Burgeo from more and more "closed out"
outports. There was not nearly enough wage work to go
around. The new men could not fish successfully for them-
selves because the local grounds were foreign to them and
were by now seriously overcrowded and overfished as well.
Consequently, scores of men, both young and old, were
forced to leave their families behind and seek work, not
only outside Burgee, lint outside Newfoundland where the
grandiose industrial schemes of Premier Smallwood had
come to nothing. Some men worked seasonally in Nova
Scotia; others spent eight months of each year manning
Great Lakes freighters - eight months away from home.

As if this were not enough, compulsive consumerism,
the universal sickness of modern society, infected the dis-
possessed outport people. Men, women and children who
had never cared much for material possessions became
greedily acquisitive. They began to thumb avidly through
the shiny mail order catalogues. The solid, hand-made fur-
niture they had brought with them from the outports was

30

now "condemned" - thrown over the ends of the stages to
float away on the tides. It was replaced with chrome and
arborite.

The plant owner, ever anxious to develop consumer atti-
tudes and appetites, opened a supermarket. Some of the
befuddled victims of the new disease actually bought tele-
vision sets even though there was no transmitter which
could reach them.

Electricity and roads spread their web through the in-
creasingly congested maze of houses. Two miles of incred-
ibly rough trails were hewn from the living rock and, in

-1962, the first two cars were unloaded from the coastal boat.
They met a happy fate a few days later when they collided
head-on and both were reduced to junk.

During the five years Claire and I lived in Burgeo, Pro-
gress made further stunning strides. By 1967 there were
thirty-nine cars and trucks rattling themselves to pieces on
the stony goat tracks which led nowhere, and never would.
The first snowmobile had gone snarling out into the bar-
Tens, where it fell into a crevice; but the following year
,saw five more on order. The non-returnable pop and beer
bottle arrived. On sunny summer days the rocks which
made up most of the physical surroundings gleamed and
glittered in fairy colours from the layers of glass shards
'- which littered them. In 1961 there had been no welfare

• officer and no unemployment. But by 1967 Burgeo had

' thes.e modern advantages as well as a new fish meal reduc-
tion plant to spread its oily, nauseous fumes like a miasma

' over the entire community.

It had also acquired a town council. It had a Mayor - the
owner of the fish plant. He was a man after Smallwood's
,own heart, and one whose motto might well have been:

"What's good for me is good for Burgeo." Since the town
council was chosen for the most part from among his em-

„ ployees, or his sycophants, he encountered little opposition.

31

There was also a fine new school built to mainland stand-
ards and staffed with "modern" teachers who were skilled
at denigrating the old ways, rejecting the past, and arousing
in their students the lust tor the golden dreams of the indus-
trial millennium.

The people of the Sou'west Coast, and of Burgeo in par-
ticular, were "hauled into the 20th century" so speedily that
few of them had any understanding of what was happening
to them. The age-old patterns of their lives collapsed in
rapid succession. The inner certainties which had sustained
them in past generations were evaporating like water spilled
on a red-hot stove. But not all Burgeo people failed to grasp
the significance of what was happening to them. Some of
them understood.

There was Uncle Bert, tor example. He lived with his
"Woman," as he always referred to his wife, in a tiny but
impeccably neat little house a stone's throw from us at Mes-
sers. In the evenings Uncle Bert would sit at his oilcloth-
covered kitchen table listening disdainfully to a squalling
transistor radio as it yammered out the daily tale of hate
and horror, of suffering and disaster, which it offered as the
news of the world.

When the tale was told. Uncle Bert would switch off the
radio, pour himself half a glass of straight alcohol (smug-
gled in from the offshore French island of St. Pierre), top it
up with boiling water, add a spoonful of sugar, and toss the
mixture down in a couple of gulps. Then, bald head shin-
ing with sweat from the effect of the "alky," big, twisted
hands gesticulating in the light of the oil lamp, he would
bellow out his derision.

"By the Lard livin' Jasus, dem mainland fellers is gone
altogether foolish! Foolish as a cut cat, me son! And de
great joke onto it ... dey don't know iti Dey got to tinker
wit' every goddamn t'ing dere is ... and everyt'tng dey

32

tinkers wit' goes wrong! And dat, me darlin' man, dot's what
dey calls pro-gress!

"Dey says dey's makin* a heaven on dis eart' for we. But de
troot onto it is, dey's headin' dereselves and all of we for hell,
in a hoopin hurry-all. Smart? Oh yiss, dey do believe dey's
de smartest t'ings God put on dis old cart' . . . dem poli-
ticians and dem scientists, and all dem fine, big-moneyed
fellows. But I'm tcllin-' ye, byes, de codfish and de caribou,
dey's ten t'ousan' times smarter in de head. Dey got de
sense to lave well enough be. Dey'll niver blow up de world;

no, nor pizzen us all to deaf' . . . BeJasus, byes, I t'ink de
heak's gone right out of we!"

It was not gone out of Uncle Bert. At seventy-six he still
went. fishing single-handed in his dory, winter or summer,
whenever the fish "were on the go," even though be and his
Woman between them had an ample income from their old-
age pensions.

"I goes because I got to fish! 'Tis what I wants to do. 'Tis
out dere, on de seaydat's where I wants to be. Dat's where
I knows what I is, and who I is... a damn good man, and
I ain't feared to tell it!"

He minced no words in describing what he thought about
the new way of life in Burgeo. "Dem poor bloody bastards
as works to dc plant! Workin' for wages and t'inking dey-
selves some lucky! I'll tell ye what dey is, me sons . . . dey's
slaves. No better dan slaves! And de wors kind of slaves,
'cause dey's grateful for a chance to work for de owner in
dat stinkin' shithole down to ['Reach for dc rest of dere
lives, so's dey can buy some goddamn t'ing is no more use
to dey dan legs is to a fish! Cars, byes, and tely-veesion-
Sewry poipes and houtboard ingines' Dem fellers don't
know who dey is no more . . . dey only knows what dey
wants! And what dey wants is enough to bloat a hog until
he busts. Dey's comin' out no different from all de people

SS

up along in Canada and America. Dey wants it all\ And so
dey gets de chance, dey's goin' to take it all. And den, by
de Lard livin' Jasus, dey's goin' to choke dereselves to deat'

on dere own vomit!

"Sometimes I t'inks de lot o( "em should be in de Mental.*
Whatever dai plant owner fellow tells 'em, dey eats down
as slick as cold boiled pork. But he don't give a bloody
damn for dey. One marnin' dey'll wake up wit' iiothin' left
'cept a razor for to cut dere t'roats."+

Preferring not to face the stench of Firby Cove, I landed
at the slightly less malodorous Ship Dock and, leaving
Albert to look tor rats among the accumulation ot garbage
on the shore, made my way through a crowded and slovenly
collection of shacks and shanties to the brand-new post
office which had become the prime symbol of Burgeo's new
goals. It was box-square and ultra-modern, built of brick
and glass and chrome - the only such building on the entire
Sou'west Coast. It had been built during my absence
abroad, replacing a cosy, crowded room in one of the old
wooden houses where the mail had been sorted and dis-
tributed tor thirty years by Uncle Ted Banfield.

I was going to miss Uncle Ted, who had been forcibly
retired when the new post office opened. He knew more
about the Sou'west Coast than any man alive and he was
free with his knowledge. On cold winter days he was free
with his hospitality too. The long walk from Messers against
a winter gale was something to chill the blood of an
Eskimo, but it was Ted's kindly habit to take you into his

•The St. John's Mentsil Home, ;in obsolete institution for the de-
ranged, in St. John's.

+In the late summer of 1971 the workers at, the fish plant finally
struck for union recognition. This was refused them. When they
persisted, the plum owner simply closed down the plant and de-
parted, lock, stock and barrel; abandoning the plant, his job as
Mayor, and Burgeo itself.

34

kitchen and'pour you a warming four-finger glass of rum
before delivering up your mail. Banfield's old house had
been a place in which to linger, to chat with friends, to
hear the local news. The new post office, ultra-sterile under
the glare of fluorescent lights (NO DOGS ALLOWED . . .
WIPE YOUR FEET BEFORE ENTERING), was a place
to go into and get out of again with the utmost speed. I
hardly recognized the pallid and harrassed-looking young
man who thrust my mail at me without uttering a single
word. He was Uncle Ted Banfield's son.

Back in the dory I set a return course for home which
would take us out and around Eclipse Island and through
the deep channel known as Steamer Run. I was hoping to
get a glimpse of the whales, but on this fine day they must
have gone to sea with the other fishermen, for I saw no sign
of them.

S5

Chapter 3

Apart from occasional visits to the post office, Claire and I
saw little, by preference, of the eastern end of Burgco.
Messers was our home and we had come to feel very much
at home there. We had been given tolerance and friend-
ship by all the families whose trim and cared-for houses
stood, well spaced, around the rocky rim of the clean little
cove. They were people who had lived all of their lives,
even as their forbears had done before them, in this place.
They had not yet been much affected by the changes which
were so rapidly transforming the rest of Burgeo.

During the first week after our return we were visited by
most of our neighbours; and warm, welcoming visits they

were too.

One of the first to come was Onic Stickland, a sad-faced
bachelor of middle age, and one of the few dory-men on the
coast still fishing single-handed. Onie brought us a bucket
of fresh herring. The herring schools were beginning to run
heavily inshore, he told us, and he would be glad to bring
us some every day. That about exhausted the conversation
since Onie was a listener, not a talker. Shy, gentle, almost
pathetic in his eagerness not to be an imposition on us, he
was content to sit silently for hours in our house covertly
glancing now and again at Claire with an expression of
distant adoration.

S6

Simeon Ballard was another frequent visitor. Heavy-set,
bluff-browed and a seaman through and through, he was
as loquacious as Onie was reticent. Simeon had been a
great wanderer, sailing to the Caribbean in three-masted
schooners laden with salt cod, returning with cargoes-of
salt, molasses and rum. In sail, or in steam, he had visited
the great ports in South America, the Mediterranean, and
the Baltic. Between voyages he had not been idle, for he
had sired nineteen children, seventeen of whom were still
alive. Although still in his prime at the time of Confedera-
tion, he had hardly gone to sea since then.

He was a soft-spoken and extremely courteous man who
made a point of catling me "Skipper" because I owned
What may well have been the last schooner in Newfound-
land still under sail.

"Them days," he meant before 1949, "they was always
eight or ten big schooners belonged to Burgeo, Spring
and fall we fished the banks, and summer-times we voyaged
foreign. 'Twas a hard life, I suppose, but never seemed that
way to we. They was a dozen skipper-men in Burgeo and
no place on the seas they couldn't take a vessel. Aye, and
bring her home again!

"After Confederation that all went abroad. Seems they
fellows in Canada had no use for we. The schooners was laid
up to rot and the steamers was mostly sold away. Some of
we went at the fishing game, but that began failing too, and
so the most of us had to come ashore. 'Twas hard for a man
my age - forty I was then - with my master's ticket and all,
and still good for it, but no work to be had.

"Aye, 'twas hard enough. But they tells we 'tis all for the
best. They tells we a man has a better life working in a fac-
tory. Maybe 'tis so, but I thanks my God for the life I had at
sea."

One evening well after dark, when not too many people
would notice his coming, we had a visit from Uncle

37

Samuel. He was a whipcord little man whose walnut wiz-
ened face betokened his Indian blood. He was not much
of a fisherman and, indeed, he did not like the sea; but he
was a famous countryman - infamous if you listened to the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police constable who was Bur

geo's arm of the law,

Uncle Samuel was a hunter and trapper. His world was
the bleak, wind-eroded barrens which stretched north from
the coast for a hundred miles. On this visit he brought us
a huge, dripping brown-paper parcel which contained not
one, but several feeds of "country meat," the euphemism

for illegally killed caribou.

Warming himself generously with my rum, Uncle Samuel
talked for hours of the things which were his world. He told
us it was a great year for lynx; that scores of the big cats had
left the shelter of the distant forests to roam the barrens in
pursuit of hares. Moose, he said. were fairly common in the
river valleys, but he bemoaned the growing numbers of
"sports" (he used the word with supreme contempt) from
"down to the Reach" who were using their pay cheques to
buy magazine-loading rifles with which to kill every moose

they saw.

"'Tisn't the killing as I minds," Samuel complained.
" 'Tis the wicked waste. They fellows now, they'll 'go into
the country and if they spies a calf or a cow they'll kill it
quick as they would a bull. Aye, and likely nivver carry a
pick of meat back out with them.

" 'Tis not like the old times. Them days if a man was lucky
enough to have a gun and shot and powder, and killed a
deer, he'd carry ivvery last scrap home to the mouths of his
woman and his young'uns. . . ."

Uncle Samuel paused to shake his head in disgust.

" 'Tis hard times when growed men'll take on like they
does now. 'Tis something new. They's not a man I growed
up alongside would kill more'n him and his folks could.use.

S8

-Bf.-

^ Now, be Jasus, them fellows down to the plant is all for
'''/goin' gunnin' ivvery chance they gets, for ivvery thing as
; crawls, or walks, or flies. Last week some of they killed two

; gripes* just for the sport onto it. I never heered of ony man
,; shoot one of they before. 'Tis spiteful against nature, 'tis
'•• what / calls it!"

Although most of our visitors were from Messers, occa-
^ sionally people from "the other end" (the term by which
^ our neighbours obliquely referred to The Harbour and

'The Reach) also came calling. One afternoon Albert's
stentorian barking brought me to the window. Picking

"..their ways nervously across the footbridge which joins

' Messers to the rest of Burgeo were five strapping-big

- saddle horses. The riders were the husband-and-wife doctor
,. team from the Burgeo Cottage Hospital; their two children
',and their amiable handyman whom they liked to call their
, groom. All save the "groom" were impeccably dressed in

'English riding costumes - jodhpurs, riding crops, hunting
'jackets and duck-billed caps. They were followed by two
^ of those enormous black woolly mammoths which are
'^called "Newfoundland" dogs but which actually originated

'in England a century ago.
' ' The doctors' family was one of two comprising the Bur-

-: geo "aristocracy." As recent immigrants from Britain, the
'doctors perhaps considered themselves to be on a higher
asocial plane than the second family, which was that of the
^fish plant owner. But both were united in their determi-
^,nation to impose the social standards of country gentlefolk
|on the Burgeo background, and they competed mercilessly
jIfoT top billing, using the tools of conspicuous consumption.
|Thus when the doctors bought a jet-propelled speedboat
|which would do thirty knots, the plant owner responded
1-by purchasing a cabin cruiser of regal splendour. It was

•Bald Eagles.

39

an unfair competition. The doctors, as salaried employees
of the Provincial Health Service, had to make-do on a fixed
income not much in excess of $35,000.00 a year, but this was
a pittance compared to the income the plant owner and his
wife drew from their several enterprises.

The competition also had its ludicrous side; one which
was not lost on the people oE Burgeo. When the doctors
went equestrian and imported two riding horses, the plant
family riposted by buying tour thoroughbreds. The doctors
met this challenge by bringing in two more horses and a
Shetland pony. The plant owner's reply was to import four
more horses . . . and a Mexican burro. Then, to settle the
matter for good, he added a brace of Peruvian llamasi The
doctors gave up and turned the competition into different

channels.

"No telling where 'twould have stopped," was Sim Spen-
cer's acid comment. "I don't doubt they people'd have
brung in gee-raffs next, and elephants, 'til they'd have been
no room left for we!"

After a week at home our lives had settled down to the
Messcrs pace and we were beginning to regain the feeling
of tranquillity which was one of the great benefits of out-
port living- There was time for long walks along the shores,
beachcombing; or for treks into the country where we occa-
sionally glimpsed herds of caribou; or to the Barasway, a salt
water lagoon surrounded by white sand beaches which were
much favoured in summer by children's swimming parties

and clam digging excursions.

One sunny afternoon Albert and I crossed the precarious
suspension bridge - it was barely three feet wide and swung
like a skipping rope in heavy weather - that links Grandy
Island to the mainland on the west. Together we climbed
the steep slopes of The Head, a massive dome of granite

40

towering two hundred feet above the seas breaking against
the encrusting ice.

When we reached the crest it was to find we were not the
first to seek this magnificent vantage point, with its horizon-
wide sweep of islands and open ocean. Sitting as motionless
upon a lip of granite as if he were an extension of the rock
was a man whose lean, attenuated figure and hawk-nosed
profile belonged to the patriarch of Messers, Uncle Arthur
Pink.

Uncle Art was peering out toward Rencontre Island
through the tube of a big brass telescope which must have
been even older than he was. At seventy-eight. Uncle An
was another fisherman who clung resolutely to the old ways.
His boat was an elegant, lap-streak trap skiff which he had

'built himself and fitted with a thunderous 5 h.p. "makc-
and-break" engine of almost prehistoric vintage. In this

''little vessel he would go anywhere in any weather. People
used to say of him:

"Dey's nothin' to stop that man! He'd sail to hell and pull
the devil's nose it they was fish to be got!"

But Uncle Art was much more-than a master fisherman.
He was also a man possessed of an amazingly keen and
curious mind. Whatever he saw, heard, smelled or touched
became a part of his awareness . . . something to be remem-
bered and thought about. All his life he had minutely
observed everything upon the sea and much that lay

- beneath its surface.

• "Evening, Uncle Art," I said. (Any time after noon is
"evening" on the Sou'west Coast.) "Scunnin' for whales?"

He lowered the glass and gave me his slow smile.
, "Aye, skipper. And isn't they some smart? See that her-
.ring seiner off yonder? Brand-new iron ship, she is ...
: two hunn'ert tons or more, I'd say. She's got every modern
kind of gear for killing herring. I been watching her work.
And half a mile inside of her they's a pod of whales. I been

41

watchin' they, too, and I'll wager they be fishing twice as
smart as all that fine machinery, and twenty men besides."

He chuckled happily, which seemed a little odd since by
all the rules of the game he ought to have been on the side
of the fishermen and against any animal which competed
with them. However, I knew that Uncle Art was a whale en-
thusiast. At the age of ten he had ,begun accompanying his
father in a tour-oared dory to the dangerous offshore
fishery at the Penguin Islands. Here, while handlining for
cod, he met his first whales.

" 'Twas a winter fishery them times, and hard enough.
The Penguins lies twenty miles offshore. They's nothin'
more'n a mess of reefs and sunkers, feather-white with
breakers in any kind of a breeze, but the foinest kind of
place for cod, and herring too. We'd row out there on a
Monday and stay till we'd finished up our grub . . - some-
times ten days. Night-time, and in bad weather, we'd pitch
on the rocks under a bit of sailcloth.

"They was t'ousands of the big whales on the coast them
times. Companies of them would be fishing herring at the
Penguins whilst we was fishing cod. Times we'd be the
only boat, but the whales made it seem like we was in the
middle of a girt big fleet. They whales never hurted we, and
we never hurted they. Many's the toime a right girt bull,
five times the length of our dory, would spout so close along-
side you could have spit tobaccy down his vent. My old Dad
claimed they'd do it a-purpose; a kind of a joke, you under-
stand. We never minded none, for we was in our ileskins
anyway.

"And I'll tell you a quare thing. So long as they was on the
fishing grounds along of we, I never was afeared of any-
thing; no, nor never felt lonely neither. But after times,
when the whales was all done to death, I'd be on the Pen-
guin grounds with nothing livin' to be seen and I'd get a

42

^feeling in me belly, like the world was^empty. Yiss, me son,
• I missed them whales when they was gone.
"'Tis strange. Some folks says as whales is only fish. No,

bye! They's too smart tor fish. / don't say as what they's not

the smartest creatures in God's ocean."

He paused for a long moment, picked up the telescope
and gazed through it.
"Aye . . . and maybe out of it as well."

43

Chapter 4

Most assuredly whales are not fish, although until a century
ago most people, including those who knew them best,
their hunters, thought they were. Whales and men trace
the same ancient lineage through creatures born in the
warm waters of the primal oceans who exiled themselves
to the precarious environment of the dry land. They con-
tinued to share a common ancestry through the long, slow
evolution that began with the amphibians and eventually
led to the mammals. But whereas our mammalian fathers
stayed ashore, about a hundred million years ago the mam-
malian forbears of the whales chose to return to the mother
oE all life-the sea. The descendants of the whale forefathers
now number about a hundred species which man, the great
cataloguer, has divided into the families of the toothed and

the baleen whales.

The toothed whales are the more primitive but the most
various, for they include all the porpoises and dolphins, the
Sperm, Killer, White Whale, and that unicorn of the sea>
the Narwhal. Except for the Sperm, which grows to sixty
feet, most of the toothed whales are relatively small, some
being less than four feet long.

There are only eleven species o£ baleen whales, but they
rank at the top of the whale's evolutionary tree. About
eighteen million years ago, when our own ancestors were

44

abandoning the forests to awkwardly start a new way of life
as bipeds on the African savannahs, some of the whales
began abandoning teeth in favour of fringed, horn-like
plates (baleen) that hang from the root of the mouth to form
a sieve with which the owner strains out of the sea water
immense quantities of tiny, shrimp-like creatures, or whole
schools of little fishes. It seems a paradox that the largest

€. beast in the world should prey on some of the smallest, but

• .v"

'i'. the system works surprisingly well. The proof of the pud-
/. ding is in the eating, for the baleen whales arc the most
^Stupendous animals that ever lived. They include fifty-foot
w- Greys and Sets; sixty-foot Rights and Humpbacks; eighty-

•^ foot Finners; and the giant of all time, the Blue, which may
'y grow to a hundred and fifteen feet and weigh almost two
.•^hundred tons.

^'  Although they bear a superficial resemblance to fishes,
^whales have little in common with the scaly tribe. When
;. they returned to the sea they brought with them an intelli-
, "gence of a radically new order-one that had evolved as a
^ direct consequence of the ferocious difficulties which all
^ terrestrial animals must face in ofder to survive, and which
,'t reached its peak in the mammals. This legacy was shared by
^ the ancestral whales and by the nameless creatures who
.;. were to become the progenitors of man.

;H' In the case of our forbears, intelligence continued to
^-dcvclopalong terrestrial lines in order to cope with thcorigi-
^.nal stringent need which called it forth: the need to survive
^ under competitive and environmental conditions of appal-
||,ling severity. From this fierce struggle man ultimately

• ^emerged with the most highly developed brain of any land
1 ^animal, and he used it to become the most ruthless and dcs'
| '/tructivc form of life ever to exist. Intellectual supremacy

J'allowed him to dominate all other forms of life, but it also
enabled him to escape the restraints-the natural checks and
|S:balances-which had prevented any previous species from

45

running hog-wild and becoming a scourge unto life itself.
It was a different, story with the whales. When their an-
cestors returned to the sea it was to an environment which,
compared to the land, was positively amiable. Instead of
having to scrabble for survival on the dry, restricted, two-
dimensional skin of the planet, split as it was into fragments
separated by impassable seas, they returned to the wet,
three-dimensional and interconnected world of waters
which surrounds and isolates the land-islands. Here they
were free to go where and when they pleased. They were
restored to a womb world where the climate was more
stable; where there was no shortage of food; and where
there was no need to occupy or defend territory. Because
the ancestral whales returned to this water world endowed
with the survival skills so hard-won on land, they were as
superior to the old, cold-blooded residents or^the seas as
time-travellers from some point millions of years in the

future might be to us.

Pursuing their advantage over other sea-dwellers, the

whales underwent a leisurely evolution extending over
many millions of years during which they achieved near-
perfect adaptation to the sea environment.

On the other hand, the emerging human stock had to

battle desperately tor survival in a bitterly rigorous environ-
ment, not only against an array of other animals which were
often physically and functionally superior, but against the
organi2ed and war-like competition of their own species.
The human stock would surely have been eliminated it it
had not used its developing brain to invent ways of redress-
ing the balance. Faced, as he so often was, with an intoler-
able climate, man learned to build shelters, use fire, and
make clothes. Faced with physically superior animals of
other species, and with deadly competition trom his fellows,
he made weapons. Faced with the constant spectre of starva-
tion, he made tools with which to cultivate his own food

46

pplies. Bit by bit he stopped relying on natural evolution
keep him alive and in the race, and came to lean more

:nd more heavily on artificial substitutes. He had invented,

,nd had become a slave to, technology.

Whales never needed a technology. Going back to the
t^Sest enabled them to survive successfully as natural beings
.-(;... yet they were beings who, like proto-man, were endowed
1'with a great intellectual potential. What did they do with
j-^t. . . with their share of our mutual legacy? We simply do
^liot know. Despite our much-vaunted ability to probe the
.^secrets of the universe, we have so far failed to probe the
Mystery of the mind of the whale. .

I, Such studies as we have made suggest that the more ad-
vanced whales have brains comparable to and perhaps even
Ijtuperior to ours, both in complexity and capacity. It is clear
i^lhat their power to think has steadily increased, even as ours

^'has, over the millenniums. There can only be one reason-

•?'/; •"                                                                                                                                '

'^ble assumption from all this: whales must use their minds,
^SMid use them fully in some direction, in some manner, for
^some purpose which evades our comprehension. For it is
^an immutable law of nature thafany organ, capability or
^function, which is not kept well honed by constant use will
^atrophy and disappear . . . and the brain of the whale has
^•certainly not atrophied.

^ So whales and men diverged from the common ancestry,

•; one to become the most lordly form of life in the oceans, and
^thc other to become the dominant animal on the land. The
..day came when the two would meet. The meeting was not
:|'a peaceful one, in mutual recognition of each other's worth.

•%As usual, it was man who set the terms - and he chose battle.
^t was a one-sided battle where man wielded the weapons,
||and the whales did the dying.

||The bloody tale of men and whales has its beginnings in
forgotten times when a few coast-dwelling tribes began

47

putting to sea in skin boats or dugout canoes to test then
hunters' skills against the monsters they first encountered
as mountains oE tat and meat when dead whales washed up

on their shores.

In the northern hemisphere, such primitive people were
hunting the Biscayen Right Whale, and probably the now
extinct Atlantic Grey Whale, off the coasts of Portugal at

least as early as 2000 B.C.

In North America, Eskimoan people of theThule culture
hunted the Arctic Right Whale, while Indians on the
Pacific Coast pursued the Grey Whale, and still other
Indians on the Atlantic Coast took both Greys and Hump-
backs-
In all cases the methods used were essentially the samc-

Paddlcrs in open boats tried to approach a whale close
enough to let one of their number strike it with a barbed-
bone or Hint-headed harpoon, to which a rawhide line and
a skin float were attached. Frequently the shallowly em-
bedded weapon would break off or pull loose; or the boat
would be swamped in the flurry as the whale sounded; or
the line would part; or the float would be carried far beyond
the range of the hunters to pursue it.

Rarely (and it must have been very rarely indeed), the
hunters were able 10 stick with the whale, festooning it with
more and more harpoons and floats until, eventually, it
tired and they could pull alongside and try to kill it with
thrusts from fragile lances. Since they could seldom hope 10
penetrate to a vital spot, they literally had to bleed it to
death, a dangerous procedure during which the frenzied
animal might not only crush their boats but might well
crush them too. H they did succeed in killing the giant, they
still had to low it to the nearest beach, a task which, under
adverse conditions of wind and tide, might take many hours

or even days, or prove impossible.

Tribal traditions, together with the scarcity of whale

48

bones in ancient kitchen middens, make it clear that any
primitive whaling community which managed to kill two
or three whales a year was doing rather well for itself. There
was no need to kill more anyway. These people killed only
to cat, and it took a long, long time for a handful of families
to eat a whale. Consequently, early man posed no real threat
to the continuing prosperity of the whale nation.

Nor was there much danger from modern man either
until, during the 13th and I4th centuries, Europeans began
building ships that could keep the sea. One of the earliest
uses to which such ships were put was tor pelagic, or open
ocean, whaling; and, apparently, the first people to dare this
chase were the Basques, who "fished" for the Biscayen Right
and the Atlantic Grey Whale, not only because these were
common in their waters but because they were slow-moving
and rather unwary and, what was essential, did not sink
when killed. With luck, a Basque ship could sail close
enough to a Grey or a Right Whale so that the harpooner
poised in the bows could strike into it with a heavy wrought-
iron harpoon made fast to the ship by a strong warp, which
not even a whale could easily part. The drag of the ship
would eventually exhaust the animal and it could then be
lanced to death with little risk.

The Basques still towed dead whales to shore for disposal
but there had been a momentous change in the purpose for
which they were being killed. These new whalers did not
catch them for food. Instead they stripped off the layers of
blubber and cut out the baleen plates. Then they turned
the monumental carcasses adrift into the sea.

Only the oil and baleen were wanted now; the oil to fuel
the lamps of an increasingly urbanized European society,
and the baleen for the manufacture of "horn" windows and
utensils. Thus the whale had been transformed from edible
game into an article of commerce. When that happened
man ceased to be a pin-prick irritant to the whale nation

49

and became a deadly enemy. From this time forward whales
were slaughtered without quarter and with every weapon
and by every method the planet's most accomplished killers

could devise.

The Basques were already efficient enough. By the end

of the 15th century they had so reduced the Biscayen Right
Whales that the species was hardly worth the hunting, and
they had evidently exterminated the eastern population of
Atlantic Grey Whales, However, far to the northward lay
an even larger population-the Arctic Right, Bowhead or
Greenland Whale, as it was variously called. In pursuit of
this immensely abundant species (it is estimated there were
more than half a million Arctic Right Whales before the
great hunt began), the Basques had invaded Greenland
waters by 1410 and were whaling off Labrador and New-
foundland by 1440. They still relied on shore stations estab-
lished on the as yet officially "unknown" coasts to which
they towed their catch for "cutting-in" and rendering the
blubber. However, near the end of the 15th century, the
Basques made another great stride forward. They invented
and perfected ship-borne tryworks so whales could now be

cut-in and rendered at sea.

From that day pelagic whaling exploded into a rapacious,
world-wide slaughter of all those whales which were slow
enough to be caught by sailing ships, and tat enough not
to sink when killed. These were primarily Sperms, Hump-
backs, Greys and Rights. By the mid-1800's there were as
many as two thousand ships mercilessly sweeping the North
and South Atlantic, both Pacifies, and the Indian Ocean,
every year. They sailed from the New England States,
Holland, the Baltic States, Norway, France, England, and
a score of other places. They earned huge fortunes for the
money-men at home, and by 1880 they had reduced to
scattered remnants the once vast population of the great
whale species which they pursued.

50

The slaughter had been so tremendous that, as the 19th
century began to wane, it appeared that the hunt was
coming to an end for want of whales ... or, more accurately,
tor want of whales that men could catch.

There were still-and this was something which infuri-
ated whalers and businessmen alike-enormous numbers
of great whales in the sea. These were the baleen whales of
the group called rorquals-Blues, Fins, Seis and a few lesser
species. The rorquals included the largest, swiftest and un-
doubtedly the most intelligent of whales.

Quite apart from their wariness and the fact that most of
them were capable of speeds of at least twenty knots, their
relatively thin blubber layer failed to give them the positive
buoyancy which had proved so fatal to the Greys, Hump-
backs, Rights and Sperms. Consequently if, by exceptional
good luck, a sailing ship managed to catch and kill one of
the rorquals, the monster promptly sank, and that was that.

For a brief time it looked as if the rorquals would remain
out of man's reach; but then the Norwegians, the most
ruthless sea-marauders of all time, and by far the most ac-
complished killers of marine life, stepped in and took a
hand. About 1860 they turned their hard blue eyes upon
the rorquals and put their Viking minds to work. Within
ten years they had found the means to doom, not only the
rorquals, but all surviving great whales in all the oceans of
the earth.

They attacked with three new weapons. First was the
whale gun: a cannon which fired a heavy harpoon with a
line attached deep into the whale's vitals, where a bomb
exploded, ripping the animal apart internally and setting
the broad barbs of the harpoon so they could not tear loose.
The second was the steam catcher: a small, steam-powered
vessel of great speed and manoeuverability which could
match the rorquals' speed. The third was a hollow lance
which was thrust deep into the dead whale and through

51

which compressed air could be injected until the whale in-
flated and became buoyant. With these inventions the
Norwegians took virtual control of world-wide whaling.

By the turn of the century their shore stations (for pro-
cessing the carcasses) had spread like a pox along almost
every coast in the world near which whales were found. In
1904 there were eighteen such factories on the shores^of
Newfoundland alone, processing an average of twelve
hundred whales, most of them rorquals, every year!*

The world-wide slaughter was enormous and the profits
even more so. By 1912 all the great whales, including Blues,
both species of Rights, Fins, Sperms and Humpbacks, had
nearly vanished from the North Atlantic and, with the addi-
tion of the Greys, from the North Pacific as welU

It is likely that several of these species would have become
extinct in the northern hemisphere had it not been for the
outbreak of the First World War, which gave the surviving
whales in northern waters a brief surcease, though not
enough time to recover. The remnant survivors would have
been quickly finished off it the Norwegians had returned
heavily to the attack after the war was over,

That they did not do so was due to the discovery by the
Norwegians about 1904 of an immense and hitherto un-
touched population of whales in the Antarctic Ocean. Here,
during the decades that had almost emptied the other

•Not all the hunting of rorquals was done with the newly devised
harpoon gun. During the first decade of the 20lh century Norwe-
gians were killing Scis and Fins in a fiord near Bergen by a method
so barbarous that it is hard lo credit. The whales were driven into
the long fiord by boats and the entrance was barred oft with nets-
Thc great animals were then speared with lances whose blades had
been dipped in the rotting flesh of whales killed earlier. Infection
set in and the trapped whales died horribly of scpticemia or gan-
grene.

fGrey Whales were finally exterminated in Atlantic waters some-
time toward the end of ihe 18th century.

52

oceans of great whales, a sanctuary had existed. When the
Norwegians nosed it out, fleets of swift, merciless catchers
swarmed southward to begin a new and even more thorough
butchery of the whale nation from shore bases in the Falk-
land Islands and South Georgia.

Then, in 1922, a Norwegian named Carl Anton Larsen,
whose name deserves to be forever remembered in equal
opprobrium with that of Sven Foyn. inventor of the har-
poon gun. brought about the ultimate refinement in com-
mercial whaling. He invented the modern factory ship. In
its essential form, this is a very large cargo vessel with a
gaping hole in her stern through which a hundred-ton
whale can be hauled up into a combined floating abattoir
and processing plant. With her coming, away went the
pressing need for shore stations and the long, time-wasting
tows to land. Accompanied by fleets of catchers, buoy boats
and tow boats, and stored for a voyage of six months or
more, the factory ships could penetrate far southward to the
edge of the Antarctic ice itself and could range the whole
expanse of the Antarctic seas.

The ensuing slaughter of an'animal population is un-
paralleled in human history. The combination of man's
genius tor destruction together with the satanic powers of
his technology dyed the cold, green waters of the Antarctic
crimson with the heart's blood of the whale nation. The
massacre built to a crescendo in the early 1930's when as
many as 80,000 great whales died each year!

The outbreak of the Second World War brought a pause
to the purposeful slaughter of whales in the Antarctic, but
it brought new setbacks to the slowly recovering popula-
tions of whales in the other oceans of the world. The war at
sea was primarily a war between submarines and surface
ships, and the submarinc-which is no more than a man-
made imitation of a whale, in form - came under increas-
ingly sophisticated and sustained attack as the war went on.

53

Such technological marvels as sonar and Asdic were re-
fined to detect and follow underwater objects with great
accuracy, and could guide depth charges, bombs, and other
deadly devices to the unseen target. Although, to my knowl-
edge, the matter lias never been investigated or even pub-
licly discussed, there is no doubt that tens of thousands o£
whales were killed by the men who hunted submarines with
ships or planes.

A commander in the Royal Canadian Navy who served
four years in corvettes, frigates and destroyers in the North
Atlantic told me he believed a high percentage of the depth-
charges fired from his ships had been directed at submerged
whales rather than at submarines. The drifting carcasses
of bombed or depth-charged whales were a common enough
sight to lookouts aboard naval and merchant ships. Wars are
deadly, not only to mankind, but to those most innocent
bystanders, the other forms of life which share the planet
with us.

Here is as good a place as any to reply to a question I
have sometimes been asked. Why is it that, if whales have
such large and well-developed brains, they have not been
able to avoid destruction at man's hands? The answer seems
obvious. The whales never dabbled in the arcane arts of
technology and so had no defence against that most deadly
plague. In time they might have evolved a defence, but we
gave them no lime. The answer raises a counter question:

Why is it, if man has such a remarkable intelligence, he has
been unable to avoid an almost continuous acceleration of
the processes of self-destruction? Why, it he is the most ad-
vanced of beings, has he become a threat to the survival of
all life on earth?

At the end of the Second World War, despite the fact that
the Antarctic whale population had shown no increase, the
whalers went back to work with renewed energy and with

'54

even deadlier weapons. Sophisticated sonar gear, radar, and
spotting aircraft operating from immense new floating fac-
tories (some as big as 30,000 tons), were combined with
powerful new catchers that could make twenty knots with
ease. This combination ensured that any whale which came
within the wide-reaching electronic ken of the killer fleet
stood no more than a fractional chance of survival.

By the early 1950's the Blue Whale was rapidly approach-
ing "commercial" extinction so the hunters turned their
main effort on the Fins. They were so successful that, by
1956, there were no more than 100,000 Finners left alive
out of a population estimated to have been nearly a million
at the turn of the century. And in 1956, 25,289 Finners-one
quarter of those remaining in the seas-were slaughtered!
By 1960 there may have been 2500 Blue Whales left in all
the oceans of the world (of whom less than a thousand now
survive), and perhaps 40,000 Fins in the Antarctic. They
were so few, and so widely dispersed, that it hardly paid the
pelagic whaling fleets to hunt them anymore, and so they
turned to the lesser rorquals. They began exterminating the
Sets.

Although the official whaling returns ot the late 1950's
made it obvious that the great whales were entering their
final hours on this earth, nobody took any effective action
to halt the butchery. When a few worried biologists sug-
gested that the whaling industry should establish meaning-
ful quotas which would result in the whalers being able
to make a sustained harvest indefinitely, while allowing
the whale nation to at least partially recover its numbers,
they were ignored. The owners of the whaling fleets made it
patently clear that they were determined to hunt the whales
to extinction, and the devil take the hindmost.

Hardly a voice was raised in public against this calculated
policy of extermination, On the contrary, there was a spate
of novels, non-fiction books and motion pictures, many of

55

which seemed to glorify the slaughter, and all of which
praised the hardihood and manliness of the whale killers.

It is true that in 1946 an organization had been formed
with the publicly stated intention of giving protection to
the threatened species of whales and of regulating the hunt.
This was the International Whaling Commission whose
headquarters were (and remain) in Norway, which also hap-
pened to be headquarters for the world's most efficient whale
killers. But despite the employment of many good and dedi-
cated men, the Commission was run tor, and by, the whalers;

and in such a manner that, instead of helping to preserve
and conserve the vanishing whale stocks, it served as a cyni-
cal device to divert attention from the truth. It served to
mask the insatiable greed which lay behind the slaughter, by
promulgating regulations which appeared wise and humane
but which, in fact, were useless . . . and sometimes worse

than that-

One of the first actions of the Commission was to institute
a quota system whereby each nation was allowed to kill only
so many whales. IE was a totally meaningless gesture since
the quotas were set. and have since been consistently main-
tained, at levels far higher than the whale populations could
support. There were regulations against the taking of
undersize whales, or of cows accompanied by their calves;

and these were honoured mostly in the breach. But the most
hypocritical of all were the regulations, declared with great
fanfare, which ultimately prohibited the killing of Blues,
Humpbacks and all species of Right Whales. These were
brought into effect only after all these species had been
brought so close to extinction that they were no longer of
any major commercial value and were, in fact, all threatened
with biological extinction. These regulations were promul-
gated . . . but they were not enforced! The Japanese, for
example, evaded them by pretending to discover a new
species of whale in the Antarctic. They named it the Pygmy

56

Blue Whale and, since it was outside the quota and not
included in the prohibition on killing protected species,
they busily cleaned up this last viable pocket which might
very well have provided a nucleus tor the return of the
doomed Blue Whale. Furthermore, almost all pelagic
whaling fleets, of whatever nationality, took protected
whales upon occasion, giving the excuse that these were
cases of mistaken identity. Still worse, many nations allowed
their whalers to kill significant numbers of protected species
for "scientific research." Nearly 500 Greys (also a protected
species) out of a world population of under 10,000 were
killed under scientific permits between 1953 and 1969 by
Russian. Canadian and United States whalers, with the
Americans alone taking 316 of these. During the past three
years whalers on Canada's east coast have killed 43 rare
Humpbacks (the survivors of this once numerous species
now number fewer than 2000) in the name of science. While
it is true that scientists examined most of these sacrificial
whales, adding presumably to their anatomical knowledge
of the dead beasts, it is also true that the carcasses became
the property of the whaling companies, who processed them
commercially, for profit.

Because of the inestimable damage it has done by assum-
ing the guise of champion to the beleaguered whales, and so
gaining acceptance in the public eye as the authority on the
subject, I must emphasize that the International Whaling
Commission has served only to hasten the doom of most of
the species it has pretended to protect, while concealing the
magnitude of the crime against life which has been, and is
being, committed by the whalers on behalf of powerful in-
dividuals. industries, and governments; and, in the last and
inescapable analysis, on behalf of all of us.

57

Chapter 5

It was during the winter of 1911 that Uncle Art saw the
disappearance oE the great whales from the Sou'west Coast.

"Back .about 1903 they Norway fellows built a factory in
a cove eastward of Cape La Hune. Called it Baleena and, me
son, 'twas some dirty place! They had three or four steam
catching boats with harpoon guns, and they was never idle.
Most days each of them would tow in a couple of sulphur
bottoms or Finners* and the shoremen would cut 'em up
some quick. No trouble to smell that place ten miles away

upwind!

"And floating whales! When they got the blubber stripped
off they turned the carcasses loose, the meat all black, and
they blasted up so high they floated nigh out of the water.
Some days when I been offshore I t'ought a whole new set
of islands had lifted overnight. Five or ten in sight at once,
and each one with t'ousands of gulls hangin' over it like a

cloud.

" 'Twas a hard winter for weather and I never got to the
Penguins as much as in a good year, but whenever I was
there I hardly see a whale. Then, come February and the
weather got fittin', I made a run for the grounds. Was a good

•Colloquial names for Blue Whales and Fip Whales.

58

sign of fish so I stayed on the islands six or seven days. One
morning 'twas right frosty but nary a pick of wind. I was
workin' a trawl near the Offer Rock when I heard this girt
big sound. It kind of shivered the dory.

"I turned me head and there was the biggest Finner I ever
see. My son\ He looked nigh as big as the coastal boat. He
was right on the top of the water and blowing hard, and
every time he blowed the blood went twenty feet into the
air. He stayed where he was to, a dozen dory lengths from I,
and I could see there was a hole blowed into his back big
enough to drop a puncheon into. One of them bomb har-
poons must have took him. and then the line parted.

"Now 1 got to say I was a mite feared. There's no tellin'
what ary wounded beast will do. I was tryin' to slip me oars
through the t'ole pins, quiet like, when he began to move
straight for I. Was nothin' to be done but grab the oar to
fend him off, but he never come that close. He hauled off to
starboard, and then he sounded, and I never saw he again
. . . no, nor any of his like, for fifty year."

Until after the Second World War there were almost no
sightings of great whales off the south coast of Newfound-
land. Then, in the late 1940's, u.s. Naval aircraft Hying out
of the leased base at Argentia in southeast Newfoundland
began spotting an occasional big whale. News of these sight-
ings came to light in the mid-1950's when it was learned that
whales had become a useful addition to the Navy's anti-
submarine training. Aircraft crews engaged in practice
patrol work had been instructed to pretend that any whales
they spotted were Russian submarines. The whales became
targets for cannon fire, rockets, bombs and depth charges!
In 1957 an outcry by Harold Hoi-wood, a crusading
kolumnist on the St. John's Evening Telegram, resulted in
|apromise from the Argentia officials that whales would no
longer be used as targets. However, the number which had

59

been attacked, wounded or killed over a ten-year period was
never released. Presumably it was classified information.

The Americans were certainly not the only military
people who were sacrificing whales "in defence of freedom."
Most countries with sea coasts to guard, and aircraft and
ships to exercise, were probably also abusing whales in like
manner, and may very well still be doing so.

Despite their reception by the u.s. Navy, a few great
whales continued to filter into the vacuum created in south
Newfoundland waters by the Norwegians half a century
earlier. These may have been fugitives from the coastal
waters of northern Newfoundland and southern Labrador
where, in 1945, the Norwegians returned to the attack and
established shore whaling stations at Williamsport and
Hawkes Harbour. The Finners in this region had managed
a remarkable come-back during thirty years of relative free-
dom from the hunters. It was short-lived. In the six years
up to 1951, these two stations between them killed 3721
Fin Whales before they began to run out o£ targets and
both stations became "uneconomical" and were closed.

Wherever they came from, little pods of Fins and Seis,
a few Humpbacks and Sperms, and even the odd Blue
Whale, were seen with increasing frequency during the late
1950's in the seas south of Newfoundland and east of Nova
Scotia. In December of 1961, Uncle An and Uncle Job
were hauling herring nets near Hunts Island in the Burgeo
archipelago when two Fins surfaced close by.

" 'Twas the finest sight I t'inks I ever had, to see they
whales come backl" Uncle Art recalled.

"They had no fear of we. The herring was thick as smoke
that month and they whales was hungry as ary wolf. They
made a sweep or two close to our nets and the herring rose
right out of the water ahead of she. They drove into one
net and filled it up so full we had to go ashore and get some
extra hands to help us haul it up."

60

These two whales were joined by another adult Fin and
the little group remained in Burgco waters until April
1961, when they and the herring disappeared together.

Their presence at first caused some concern among the
younger fishermen who knew nothing about whales except
by hearsay. They were afraid for their fishing gear, particu-
larly because of an incident which had taken place the pre-
vious summer. A 20-foot Greenland Shark had invaded the
narrow waters between the islands and blundered its way
westward, leaving a trail of shredded salmon nets behind,
until the weight of twine and anchors it was hauling grew
too much for even its mighty muscles and it drowned.

The shark had been a huge enough and destructive
enough monster but he was dwarfed by the Fin Whales who
had the potential to wreak much greater havoc. They did
nothing of the sort. Not a net or a mooring was touched nor
a fishing boat threatened. After a few weeks the fishermen
came to take the whales as much for granted as the whales
apparently took them. To my knowledge, there was never
any suggestion made by fishermen that "something should
be done" about the whales. Perhaps their acceptance of the
great animals was partly due to the fact that they had no
weapons which could have been effective against such
giants, but I think not. Their reaction was the normal one
of hunting man in a natural environment toward another
form of life which he cannot make use of, does not need,
and which poses no threat or inconvenience to him. Live
and let live was the attitude of the Burgeo fishermen.

Unfortunately, not all Newfoundlanders felt this way.
Word of the return of the great whales soon reached the
sharp ears of Premier Smallwood who was not the man to
let. an opportunity for the exploitation of a natural resource
pass him by.

Smallwood had already tried to profit by the presence in
Newfoundland waters of a small but abundant toothed

61

whale called the Pothead. Potheads seldom grow more than
eighteen feet in length but they live in large herds some-
times numbering in the hundreds. Their favourite food is
small squid, in pursuit of which they often come deep into
Newfoundland's narrow fiords. Here they are very vulner-
able to attack.

Smallwood's plan was to establish a mink industry and to
feed the mink on the meat of Pothead Whales. In quick
order several mink ranches were constructed (one of the
largest of them belonging to Premier Smallwood himself),
and the slaughter of the Potheads began. Dildo was the
favourite killing ground. When a herd entered this fiord,
some boats would bar off the entrance, while others, whose
crews were armed with shotguns and other noise makers,
panicked the little whales and drove them aground in the
shallows at the head of the fiord. By 1965 more than 50,000
had been axed, clubbed and stabbed to death in Newfound-
land waters for mink food, so decimating the Pothead stock
that three Norwegian catchers had to be hired to hunt
thirty-foot Minke Whales, the smallest members of the
baleen family, which had been ignored until then but
which are now coming under heavy attack.

Smallwood also had designs on the great whales. He in-
vited foreign interests to again revive the slaughter off the
northern coasts of Newfoundland, offering incentives which
amounted to guarantees that the whalers could do almost as
they pleased, plus subsidies on a grand scale. The Japanese
were all too happy to accept and they re-opened the factory
at Williamsport while a consortium of Japanese and Nor-
wegians expanded the Dildo operation to include the kill-
ing of the big rorquals. Soon the catchers from these two
stations were ranging far at sea, into the Straits of Belle Isle
and up the Labrador Coast, and taking between three and
four hundred Finners a year. Both stations are still in opera-
tion, having killed 2114 Fin Whales (together with several

62

hundred Seis, Sperms and Minkes) between 1965 and 1971.
Under a quota system authorized by the Canadian govern-
ment, these stations, plus a third in Nova Scotia, will be
allowed to kill 360 Finners in 1972 . . . which is about the
limit of their maximum catching effort. . . and this from a
rapidly declining population of western North Atlantic Fin
Whales which, according to at least one biologist, may al-
ready have plunged to below 3000 individuals. It is likely
that the three stations will simply not be able to find and
kill 360 Finners but, no matter. There are no quotas on how
many whales of other species they may slaughter and so
there is little likelihood that they will be deprived of a good
margin of profit tor their year's work. However, if they do
manage to hll the generous Fin Whale quota, they, and the
Canadian government, will have made a significant contri-
bution to the ultimate destruction of a species whose world-
wide numbers are now thought to be less than 60,000.

The tranquil acceptance of the Fin Whales at Burgeo was
in sharp contrast to an incident I witnessed at about this
time at St. Pierre, the capital and only port for the French
islands of St. Picrre-Miquelon which lie a few miles off the
south coast of Newfoundland. Most of the inhabitants there
are fishermen too, but St. Pierre itself is full of shops, tourist
establishments, ship repair facilities, and people whose
loyalties tie with the modern industrial society.

On a moonless night in August 1961, my schooner lay
moored to a rotting dock in St. Pierre harbour. About mid-
night I went on deck to smoke a pipe and enjoy the silence;

but the quiet was soon broken by what sounded like a gust
of heavy breathing in the waters almost alongside. Startled,
I grabbed a flashlight and played its beam over the dark
waters. The calm surface was mysteriously roiled in great,
spreading rings. As I puzzled over the meaning of this phe-
nomenon. there came another burst of heavy exhalations

63

I swung the light to port and was in time to sec one, three,
then a dozen broad black backs smoothly break the oily
surface, blow, then slip away into the depths again.

I was seeing a school of Potheads who had made their way
into the sewage-laden waters of the inner harbour. They
must have had a pressing reason, for no free-swimming
animal in its right mind would have entered that cessgool
willingly. The skipper of a local dragger later told me he
had met a small group of Killer Whales close to the harbour
channel on the day the Potheads entered. Killer Whales
have been given a ferocious reputation by men; one not at
all deserved, but it is true that they will occasionally make
a meal of a Pothcad calf, and the Potheads in St. Pierrc
harbour were accompanied by several calves-
When I went to lied, the whales were still circling lei-
surely. I slept late, to be awakened by the snarl of outboard
engines, by excited shouting, and by the sound of feet
pounding on my deck- When I thrust my head out of the
hatch, I found what appeared to be about half the male
population of St. Picrre, accompanied by a good many
women and children, closely clustered along the waterfront.

There was a slight fog lying over the harbour. In and out
of it wove two over-powered launches, roaring along at full
throttle. In the bow of one stood a young man wielding a
homemade lance which he had made by lashing a hunting
knife to the end ot an oar. In the second boat was another
young man, balancing a riHe across his knees. Both boats
were in furious pursuit of the Potheads which numbered
some fifteen adults and six or seven calves.

The whales were very frightened. The moment one of
them surfaced, the boats tore down upon it, while gunners
on the shore poured out a fusillade of shots. The big animals
had no time to properly ventilate their lungs but were
forced to submerge after snatching a single breath. The

64

calves, choking for oxygen, were often slow in diving.
Time after time the harpooner got close enough to ram his
hunting knife into the back of one of them so that long
streamers of crimson began to appear on the filthy surface
of the harbour. It was obvious that neither the gunfire -
mostly from .22 calibre rifles - nor the lance were capable
o£ killing the whales outright; but it did not appear that
killing them was the object. In truth, what I was watching
was a sporting event.

I was appalled and infuriated, but there seemed to be
nothing I could do to end this exhibition of wanton blood-
lust. A fisherman friend of mine, Theophille Detcheverey,
came aboard and I poured out my distress to him. He
shrugged.

"That one in the big speedboat, he is the son of the biggest
merchant here. The other, with the spear, he is from France.
He came here two years ago to start a raft voyage across the
Atlantic. But he don't get out of the bars until today, I
think. They are pigs, eh? But we are not all pigs. You see,
there is no fisherman helping them with their dirty work."

This was true enough, if of small comfort to the whales.
The fishermen of St. Pierre had left for the cod grounds at
dawn. When they returned in tlieir laden dories late in the
afternoon, the excitement in the- harbour had reached a
crescendo. All the fast pleasure craft available had joined
in the game. The onlookers crowding around the harbour
had become so densely packed it was hard to pusli one's way
through. I had chased scores of them off my decks where
they sought a better vantage point; and they had responded
to my anger with derision. For ten hours, relays of boats had
chased the whales. Clusters of men with rifles stood at the
pierhead at the harbour entrance and every time the Pot-
heads tried to escape in that direction they were iTiet with a
barrage of bullets which now included heavy calibre slugs.

65

Unable to run that gauntlet, the whales were forced to give
up their attempts to escape in the only direction open to
them.

Toward evening the whales, most of them now bleeding
profusely, had become so exhausted they began to crowd up
into the dangerously shoal water at the head o£ the harbour
where the boats could not follow. Here they lay, gasping
and rolling, until they had recovered enough strength to
return to deeper water. Many times they swam directly
under my boat, and they were beautiful. . . superb masters
of the seas, now at the mercy of the bifurcated killer of the
land.

At dusk the sportsmen called it a day and went home to
dinner. The audience departed. The fog rolled in thickly
and silence returned. Again I sat on deck, and again the
strange sibilant breathing of the whales kept me company.
I could not go to my berth, knowing what must await them
with the dawn. Finally I untied my little dinghy and rowed
out into the darkness of the fog shroud. I had a vague hope
that I might be able to drive the herd out of the harboul
before daylight brought a renewal of their ordeal-
It was an uncanny experience, and a nerve-wracking one,
to row my little cockleshell silently through that dense and
dripping fog, not knowing where the whales might be. The
size of them - the largest must have been nearly twenty feet
long - and their mysterious and unseen presence intimi-
dated me. I felt extraordinarily vulnerable, detached from
my own world, adrift on the lip of a world which was utterly
alien. I thought, as a man would think, that if there was the
capacity for vengeance in these beasts, surely I would exper-
ience it.

Then, with heart-stopping suddenness, the entire pod
surfaced all around me. A calf blew directly under one up-
raised oar and my little boat rocked lightly in its wash. It
should have been a terrifying moment, but it was not. In-
66

explicably, I was no longer afraid. I began talking to the
beasts in a quiet way, warning them that they must leave.
They stayed at or near the surface, swimming very slowly -
perhaps still exhausted - and I had no difficulty staying with
them. Time after time they surfaced all around me and
although any one of them, even the smallest calf, could have
easily overturned the dinghy, they avoided touching it. I
began to experience an indescribable sense of empathy with
them . . . and a mounting frustration. How could I help
them to escape from what the morrow held?

We slowly circled the harbour - this strange flotilla of
man and whales - but they would not go near the harbour
mouth, either because they knew the Killer Whales were
still in the vicinity or because of the vicious barrage of
bullets with which men had greeted their every attempt to
escape during the daylight hours.

Eventually I decided to try desperate measures At the
closest point to the harbour entrance to which they would
go, I suddenly began howling at them and wildly flailing my
oars against the water. Instantly they sounded, diving deep
and long. I heard them blow once more at the far side of the
harbour but they never came close to me again. I had done
the wrong thing - the human thing - and my action had
Drought an end to their acceptance of me.

The whales were stilt in the harbour when dawn broke.
During the long evening in the bars, the ingenious sports-
men of St. Pierre had set the stage for a massacre.

Early in the morning, just as the tide was beginning to
ebb, half a dozen boats came out and formed a line abreast
at the harbour mouth. Slowly, they began to sweep the
harbour, driving the herd closer and closer to the shoals.
When the whales sounded and doubled back, they were
again met with rifle fire from the breakwater as on the day
before. One of the largest beasts seemed to be leading these
attempts to escape, with the rest following close in its wake.

67

It looked like a stalemate until three small whales became
momentarily separated from the pod as it came under the
fusillade from the breakwater. They gave way to panic.
Fleeing at full speed on the surface, and close-harried by
a fast speedboat. they torpedoed across the harbour and
into the shoals where the tide was dropping fast. Within
minutes they were hopelessly aground.

Howling like the veriest banshees, men and boys armed
with axes and carving knives leapt into the knee-deep shal-
lows. Blood began to swirl thickly about them. The appar-
ent leader of the pod, responding to what impulse I shall
never know, charged toward the three stranded and muti-
lated whales. There was a wild melee of running, falling,
yelling people; then the big whale stranded too. The rest of
the herd, following close behind, were soon ashore as well.
Only one calf remained afloat. It swam aimlessly back and
forth just beyond the fatal shoals, and for a few minutes was
ignored as the boats crowded in upon the herd and men
leapt overboard. Jostling one another in their lust to have a
hand in the slaughter. Blood from one impaled whale
spouted high over their heads - a red and drenching rain-
Men flung up their ensanguined faces, wiped the blood
away, and laughed and shouted in the delirium of dealing
death.

Finally someone noticed the calf. Arms, red and savage,
pointed urgently. A man leapt into his speedboat. The
engine roared. He circled once at top speed then bore
straight at the calf which was in such shoal water it could
not sound. The boat almost ran up on its back. The calf
swerved frantically, beat its flukes wildly, and was aground.

The slashing and the hacking on that bloody foreshore
continued long after all the whales had bled to death. A
crowd of four or five hundred people drank in the spectacle
with eager appetite. It was a great fiesta in St. Pierre.
Throughout the remainder of the day there was a crowd

68

standing and staring at the monstrous corpses. I particu-
larly remember a small boy, who could not have been more
than eight years of age, straddling a dead calf and repeatedly
striking into its flesh with a pocket knife, while his father
stood by and encouraged him.

Nor were the "townies" of St. Picrrc the only ones to
enjoy the spectacle. Many American and Canadian tourists
had witnessed the show and now were busy taking pictures
of one another posing beside the dead behemoths. Some-
thing to show the folks back home.

It was a grand exhibition , . . but the aftermath was not
so grand. Those many tons of putrefying flesh could not be
left lying where they were. So, on the following day, several
big trucks appeared at the shore where lay the carcasses of
twenty-three Pothead Whales. One by one the whales were
hauled up by a mobile derrick and either loaded aboard
the trucks or, if they were too big, chained behind. Then
the trucks carried and dragged the bodies across the island
to a cliff where, one by one, they were rolled over the steep
slopes - - - and returned to the freedom of the seas.

69

Chapter 6

A curiosity about the whale nation has been a part of me
for as long as I can remember. When I was a very small
child my grandfather used to sing me a song that began:

In the North Sea lived a whale .. .
Big of bone and large of tail. . .

The song went on to describe how this particular whale
was the master of his world until the day when he espied
a stranger in his domain: a big, gleaming silver fish who
stubbornly refused to acknowledge the whale's mastery. The
whale grew angry and slapped the interloper with his tail.
That was a fatal error, because the strange fish was actually
a torpedo.

The moral of the song (nil children's songs of that era
had a moral) must have been that it does not pay to be a
bully. I never understood it that way. The song haunted me
because my sympathy was entirely with the whale - the
victim, so it seemed to me, of a very dirty trick.

As I grew older and became more and more fascinated

70

by non-human forms of life, the whale became a symbol of
the ultimate secrets which have not yet been revealed to us
by the "other" animals. Whenever anything came to hand
about whales, I read it avidly; but the only thing which
seemed to emerge with certainty from all my reading was
that the whales appeared to be doomed by human greed to
disappear and to carry their secrets with them into oblivion.

Before coming to live in Burgeo, I had never actually
seen one of the great whales- Knowing how rapidly they
were being destroyed, I never really expected to see one.
However, I had not been there long when I heard about
the little pod of Finners which had spent the previous
winter among the Burgeo Islands. The possibility that they
might come back again was intensely exciting and con-
tributed something to my decision to make our home in
Messers Cove.

Shortly after I first met Uncle Art, I asked him if he
thought the whales would return. He assured me they
would, but I hardly dared believe him until a day Just be-
fore Christmas in 1962.

It was a cold and pallid day with a hazed sky and sun dogs
circling a half-veiled sun. Claire and I were in our kitchen,
reading, when Onie Stickland came quietly through the
door to tell us that whales were spouting just off Messers
Head.

Seizing binoculars, we followed him out along the snow-
crusted promontory. Not more than a quarter of a mile off
the headland, several quick, high puffs of vapour bloomed
and hung briefly in the still air. We could catch only elu-
sive glimpses of the great beasts themselves: slick black
mounds, like moving rocks, awash in the jet-dark waters. It
was enough. For me it was a moment of supreme excitement
and supreme awareness. The secret was here - was now
was on my own doorstep.

Four Fins comprised the family that spent the rest of that

71

winter in Burgeo waters, and it was a bad day indeed when
we could not spot them from our seaward windows. Uncle
Art was so delighted to have them about that, I truly believe,
he set most of his herring nets, not to catch herring, but
simply to justify the hours he spent on the water watching
his gigantic friends. Ashore, he was equally happy to sit for
hours telling me what he had learned during his long life
about leviathan; and slowly, slowly, I began to steal some
'glimpses through the shroud of mystery.

During the succeeding years, the whales returned to our
coast early each December and remained with us until the
herring departed, usually sometime in April. Each winter
we looked forward with unabated eagerness to their arrival.
We were not alone in our interest. In general, the fishermen
of Burgeo seemed to hold the great beasts in a kind of rough
and friendly regard. There was no conflict between whales
and men. The whales remained scrupulous in keeping clear
of the fishing gear; nor could they be looked upon as'com-
petitors tor the herring since our fishermen were only inter-
ested in taking small quantities for use as trawl bait, plus a
few tubs to be salted down for table use. Since the herring
were present in millions, if not billions, there were far more
than enough of them for whales and men together.

The whales and the inshore fishermen developed a re-
markable familiarity. Whales would often surface only yards
from a dory, a skiff, or even a forty-foot longliner: blow,
draw in a huge draft of air, then return unconcernedly to
their fishing while the human fishermen went on as uncon-
cernedly with theirs.

It was Uncle Art's conviction that the whales looked upon
our fishermen with an almost benevolent tolerance, as those
who are past masters of a complex trade may sometimes
look upon willing but not very bright apprentices. This is
how matters stood until the arrival of the "foreign" purse
seiners on our coast.

72

Although anatomists and other such can tell us something
about the mechanisms ot dead whales in terms of what they
are, rather than of what they do, science remains surpris-
ingly ignorant about the activities and behaviour of living
whales and understands even less about their special capa-
bilities in their aquatic world. A friend of mine, who is one
of the foremost cetologists of our time, recently summed up
the state of our knowledge in these words: "The little we
biologists know about whales in life would hardly provide
enough material for an essay by a high school student."

In view o£ the face that man's interest in the great whales,
through the millenniums, has been largely restricted to
bringing them to death, this is not very surprising. It has
only been within the last few decades th.it we modern tech-
nological men have made any real effort to study them as
living creatures; and by the time our scientists began to
show some interest in the matter, there was only a remnant
population of many species left and that, moreover, so
widely dispersed over such an immense realm of waters that
we landsmen could count ourselves lucky to catch even
occasional glimpses of them. A modern scientist attempting
to plumb the secrets of whale life is in much the same pre-
dicament as the denizen of another planet would be if, sus-
pended high above the atmosphere, he tried to comprehend
the intricacies of human life through the cloudy ocean of
air surrounding us. Fortunately, we do not have to rely
solely upon what professional science has been able to piece
together.

Because Fin Whales are herring eaters (at least in certain
seasons and in certain parts of their vast oceanic range) and
because the herring strike inshore every winter along the
ice-free southern coast of Newfoundland, there is a period
when the great mammals live almost at the portals of our
world. And because of men like Uncle Art, who are pos-
sessed of that abiding curiosity about other forms of life

73

which- is the hallmark of natural man, we actually know.
rather more about the great whales than my scientist friend
concedes.

It is proper for me to acknowledge my debt to such men
as Uncle Art, and to warn the reader, if such a warning is
needed, that in almost all that I have to tell about the Fin
Whale, I have drawn heavily on the observations and on the
intuition of such natural observers. For instance, I have
been able to find nothing in writing to explain even such an
apparently basic thing as how a Fin Whale gets his supper.
It was Uncle Art who gave me the key to this minor secret.
My own subsequent observations enlarged upon the picture
and, when combined with some of science's discoveries
about whale sonar, enabled me to come to a broad under-
standing - a somewhat awestruck one - of how a Finner
feeds himself.

When Uncle Art and I stood on Messers Head on the winter
day in 1967 watching that marvel of technology - a modern
herring seiner, competing with a family of Fin Whales -
Uncle Art was moved to amusement. He had reason to be.

Consider one of those new seiners: a hundred-odd feet of
steel, diesel power and complex electronic gear, all de-
signed, with the ultimate in modern man's technical skill,
to pursue and catch a little fish about a foot in length.

The seiner begins its work by first locating a herring
school with a sophisticated echo-location system whereby a
pulse of sound is transmitted through the water to be reflec-
ted back by any object it encounters. The returning echoes
"read off" on a slowly unrolling strip of sensitized paper,
and a dense school of herring will show clearly on this rec-
ord. Depth and distance are also indicated. The seiner fol-
lows the electric scent and closes with the school. When the
ship is in position she "shoots her seine," a fine-mesh net

74

which is laid in such a fashion as to encircle the school. The
net is then "pursed": its bottom edges being drawn together
and its circumference diminished until the catch is concen-
trated, as in a huge dip net, alongside the ship. A big suction
pipe is then lowered into the purse and the herring are
pumped from the net and spewed into the vessel's holds.
From beginning to end it is a complex operation which may
take several hours to complete.

Now consider a big Fin Whale: as much as eighty feet of
bone, muscle, sinew and brain, which has evolved into a
living instrument of maximum efficiency for the pursuit of
a little fish about a foot in length.

The whale locates a herring school either by sight (the
Finner's underwater vision is excellent) or by means of a
highly sophisticated echo-location system of his own, trans-
mitting a pulse of very low-frequency sound through the
water.* This low-frequency "sonar" has a broad beam effect.
If there is anything in front, below or above him within a
range of one to several miles, he will "see" it in the pattern
of returning echoes. If it is a herring school - and the whale
can presumably distinguish and identify herring as distinct
from other species of fish of similar size - the whale heads
for the target at his normal underwater cruising speed,
which seems to be about eight knots.

As he closes with the school he accelerates in a burst of
speed which may reach twenty knots. Closing with his tar-
get, he alters course and at torpedo velocity begins circling
the school, spiraling steadily inward. As he does so, he turns
on his side with his belly presented toward the herring. Un-
like his grey-black back, his belly offers a huge expanse of

•New evidence suggests that Finners may also have, and use. high
frequency, narrow beam sonar similar to that possessed bv many
of the toothed whales, capable of scanning objects at great dis-
tances, and perhaps ,ilso used for long-range communication.

75

glistening white with a very high light-reflecting value.
Encircled by this flashing ring of light,* the herring jam
tightly in upon one another in much the same manner as if
they were surrounded by a seine.

When the circle (the "net" of reflected light) is tight
enough and the herring sufficiently concentrated, the whale
abruptly charges straight into the mob of little fishes with
his enormous mouth agape.                       "

Sheer speed, even when combined with his big mouth,
might not alone suffice to bring him an adequate return for
his effort; so he brings into play another and very special
device. The whole underpan of his body, from directly
beneath his mighty chin and extending aft to a point near
his navel, is slit and pleated like a gigantic accordian. All
rorquals have these slits, which in the Fin number about a
hundred. When a Finner is travelling at speed and suddenly
opens his mouth, the immense pressure of static water exerts
itself on the whole gaping forefront of his body which
promptly inflates to gargantuan size as the accordian pleats
open to their tullest extent. Thus, instead of being able to
engulf only a few barrels of salt water, and whatever her-
ring are contained therein, he almost instantaneously ingests
many tons of water together with its contents. Smanly now
he closes his mouth, contracts the muscles controlling the
pleats, and squirts the unwanted water out of apertures set
at the corners of his jaws. The herring are trapped against
the sieve of baleen plates. When there is nothing left in his
mouth but herring, tie uses his tongue to sluice them

•The Fin Whale's use of reflected liglit to "herd" herring expLnns
another minor puz/lc - his strikingly asymmetrical colour pattern.
The white of the belly extends far higher up the flank, on the
whale's right side than it does on his left. I conclude that this is
because the fishing whale circles a herring school clockwise, which
means that his right side is always presented to the herring so that
the barrier effect produced by the reflected light comes into play
even before he turns on his side and begins to tighten the circle.

76

through his surprisingly small gullet into the first of his sev-
eral holds, or stomachs. The entire operation takes about
ten minutes.

Human seiners can only take herring, capclin and other
such small fry when these arc at or near the surface of the
sea; but the Fin knows no such limitationsand can probably
go as deep as, or deeper than, any of the food fishes lie pur-
sues. Fin Whales can certainly cruise contentedly at a depth
of at least 300 feet for as long as 30 minutes and on occasion
can go much deeper and remain even longer. We do not
know how deep they can go but one Fin which was har-
pooned with a device containing a depth recorder descended
1164 feet

The fishing procedure I have described appears to be
standard for daylight fishing; but what do Fins do at night?
That they do sometimes fish in darkness is an observed fact.
Echo location would work as well by night as by day, but
the light-barrier effect presumably would cease to be of
much value. Apparently the Fin does not employ the circlc-
and-concentrate system on very dark nights, relying instead
on a straightforward rush executed at high speed against a
school of prey fishes. This is probably a relatively inefficient
procedure, and it may be that the only Fins who regularly
hunt at night are pregnant or nursing females who need a
heavier than normal, and more nearly continuous, food
supply.

The similarities between the fishing methods of whales
and those of technological man are fascinating, but there is
an essential difference between them. After the whale has
scooped up a ton or two of food, he ceases fishing and is free
to do whatever it is whales choose to do with their spare
time. The human herring seiner, on the other hand, oper-
ates on a different principle. Until the seiner is loaded to
her marks with as much as 200 tons of herring, the human
crew keeps at the killing.

77

Before modern man began his murderous exploitation of
the seas, the oceans swarmed with herring . . . and with
whales. Now that is changed. Having come close to elimin-
ating the great whales, man is now rapidly doing the same
thing to the herring. Today the once-famous herring fishery
in the North Sea is fast declining. There are almost no
herring stocks of any significant commercial value left off
the coasts of Norway, England, or other European nations.
A few years ago the British Columbia herring fishery, which
was one of the richest in the world, was virtually fished out.
By 1967, more than fifty big, modern British Columbia
seiners had made the long voyage via the Panama Canal to
Canada's east coast where they are now helping to clean
the herring out of the Bay of Fundy, the Gulf of St. Law-
rence and the waters adjacent to the southern coast.of New-
foundland.

This fishery was extremely successful in its first few years
of operation. In 1969 more than 120,000 tons of herring
were taken by seiners in Newfoundland waters alone... and
almost all of this mighty harvest of the sea was reduced to
fish meal and fish oil for agricultural and industrial use.
Only an insignificant part was used directly as food for man.
However, by 1970, despite an even greater catching effort,
the take had fallen by one-third. Samples taken in 1971 by
fisheries biologists showed that the new-year classes (new
generations) of herring were not coming along at anything
like a sufficient rate to fill the gaps in the herring ranks. It
is a competent prediction that by 1980 the herring fishery
in eastern Canadian waters, if not in the entire North At-
lantic Ocean, will have ceased because there will be almost
no herring left.

Their disappearance will bring the threat of starvation
to a vast array of commercially important fishes such as cod,
halibut, haddock and even salmon, all of which depend
heavily upon herring and upon which, in turn, the wildly

78

proliferating human species is itself becoming increasingly
dependent for its survival.

This is not something which worries the owners of the
efficient new herring-reduction plants which have sprung up
all along the Canadian Atlantic coasts. These plants (there
is now one in Burgeo and it is due to triple its capacity
before 1973) are highly-mechanized, low-cost, low-employ-
ment operations. Most of those built on the Sou'west Coast
amortized their investment costs in the first three years of
operation. They are now intensely profitable and the owners
expect to continue making a big profit, even after the her-
ring have been destroyed, by switching the attack to the
other primary food of those large northern food fishes which
man has used to sustain himself for countless centuries. The
seiners will go after the capelin: a slim, beautiful little fish
which is found only in northern waters but which may be
as numerous at present as the herring were in the days be-
fore the purse seine fishery began.

The Norwegians have already begun seining capelin in
eastern Atlantic waters in order to feed their reduction
plants. Two Newfoundland plants are already experiment-
ing with them. One of the executives of an international
fisheries corporation happily told me he expects the capelin
supply will "hold up for as long as five or ten years." What
happens after that is something tor which the fishing indus-
try, apparently, has no great concern.

It will not be a happy prospect for the North Atlantic
Fin Whales, if, indeed, any remain alive that long. It will
also be a poor lookout for the remnants of the once great
herds of Harp Seals which are primarily capelin-eaters and
which are still being savagely decimated by Norwegian seal-
ing fleets with some assistance from Canadians.

The prospective elimination of the great base herds of
capelin and herring, upon which so many other forms of
marine life depend for survival, is actually being used to

79

provide a human rationale for the continuing butchery of
seals and whales. This rationale was explained to me by a
man who has interests in both whaling stations and sealing
ships.

"It is nonsense to try to save the seals, or the whales either.
The herring and capelin. and probably squid also, arc
going to go into the reduction plants so the whales and seals
will end up starving anyway. We might as well kill them
while they are still some good to us."

Another rationale tor continuing the slaughter to exter-
mination was given to me by a fisheries biologist charged
with helping to conserve the resources of the oceans: a task
which, I suspect, he may feel is already beyond our capabili-
ties.

"A lot of people in the business [resource management]
say it's ridiculous to get worked up about saving whales
because they are probably going to disappear anyway, be-
cause of pollution. All the fish-eating species are at the top
of oceanic food chains and they concentrate such pollutants
as DDT, mercury and the rest of the stuff we are dumping
into the sea. If those things don't kill them outright, it will
likely make them sterile, or at least shorten their lives ... Of
course, if we did stop hunting them, it would certainly ease
the total pressure they are under now and, who knows, they
just might make out despite the pollution problem."

There is still another reason for exploiting the remaining
whales, of all species and all sizes. This has to do with the
extremely heavy capital investment required to build a
modern whaling fleet and its ancillary industries. The Jap-
anese, who are now the world's major whalers, claim they
cannot afford to stop killing whales until all their invest-
ments have been amortized and, even then, it would be
economically wasteful not to continue to make use of their
fleet and plant for whaling since most of it cannot be con-
verted to other uses. Presumably Russia, with the second

80

largest whaling fleet, Norway and other whaling countries
such as Canada, agree with this.

However, these are not the publicly stated reasons for con-
tinuing the massacre. Propagandists for the whaling inter-
ests insist we must continue to kill whales, and in quantity,
to provide protein and fat for hungry human beings and to
provide industrial and medicinal products vitally needed
by modern society. These arguments are, at best, fraudulent.
At worst they are downright lies. There is no single product
derived from whales which cannot now be synthesized at
comparable cost, and proteins and fats can be more effec-
tively produced by farming on a sustained yield basis than
by the hunting-to-extinction methods which we still apply
to oceanic life.

Nevertheless, we should not lie much surprised by any of
these attitudes. They arc, after all, no more than expressions
o£ the basic approach of modern man toward the world
around him. Exploit... consume . . . excrete ... at an ever-
accelerating pace. . . . Such is the mad litany of our times.

Like imbecilic children loose in a candy store, we may
well come to a sticky end in a belch of indigestion but, if we
do not, then we will assuredly die of hunger when the sweets
run out. They are running out very rapidly in the oceans of
the world. The tond expectation that the seas will feed man-
kind when the ravaged earth can no longer do so, is no more
than an illusion. Already the seas are being grossly over-
fished. Competent fisheries experts predict, with gloomy
certainty, that within two decades food fish populations in
the oceans will have plunged to less 1'han half their present
levels, while during the same twenty years the fishing pres-
sures upon them will have increased at least ten-fold!

The appalling destruction of herring in Newfoundland
waters is already seriously affecting the inshore fishery for
cod and related species. Taken in conjunction with the
gross overkill of all the larger species of food fishes on the

81

offshore banks by the burgeoning fleets of trawlers and drag
gers belonging to a score of desperately competing nations,
the loss of the bait fishes (mainly herring and capelin) will
mean an early end to any significant continuing catch of
large edible fishes. It will also mean an end to fisheries as a
way of lire for many thousands oE men However, not every-
one views this as a disaster. As Premier Smallwood, a ralhel
typical politician in the modern mould, once told me:

"That would be a good thing. Yes. A very good thing. A
very, very good thing indeed! It would mean the fishermen
would have to take jobs ashore as industrial workers. It
would lead them into a better way of life. you see. A good
thing! Yes, the best thing in the world for them "

82

Chapter 7

Although my attempts to gain insight into the lives of the
Finners were bound to be frustratingly inadequate, because
I could only encounter them at the interface between air
and water, I occasionally had a stroke of luck. Lee Frank-
ham, a friend who was the pilot of a Beaver airplane on
floats and who sometimes came visiting and took us joy-
riding along the coast, was responsible tor one such happy
accident.

On a July day in 1964 we flew off with him to visit the
abandoned settlement of Cape La Hune, Uncle Art's one-
time home. It was a cloudless afternoon and the cold coastal
waters were particularly pellucid and transparent. As we
were crossing the broad mouth of White Bear Bay, Lee sud-
denly banked the Beaver and put her into a shallow dive.
When he levelled out at less than a hundred feet, we were
flying parallel to a family of six Fin Whales.

They were in line abreast and only a few feet below the
surface. As seamen would say: they were making a passage
under forced draft. Lee estimated they were doing all of
twenty knots.

He throttled back almost to stall speed and we slowly
circled them. From our unique vantage point, they were as
clearly visible as if they had been in air, or we in water, and

83

we could sec minute details of their bodies and of their
actions. Yet if it had not been that their swift progress under-
water was relative to a light wind-popple on the surface, it
would have been hard to believe they were progressing at all,

Their mighty tails and flukes which, unlike the tails of
fishes, work vertically, swept lazily up and down with what
appeared to be a completely effortless beat. Their great,
paddle-like flippers - remnants o£ the forelimbs of their
terrestrial ancestors - barely moved at all, for these organs
serve mainly as stabilizers and as diving planes.

There was no visible turbulence in the water although
the whales were moving at a rate of knots which few of man's
submarines can equal when submerged. The overall effect
was of six exquisitely streamlined bodies hovering in the
green sea and seeming to undulate just perceptibly, as if
their bodies were composed of something more subtle and
responsive than ordinary flesh and bones. There was a sug-
gestion of sinuosity, of absolute fidelity, to some powerful
but unheard aquatic rhythm.

They were supremely beautiful beings.
"It's like watching a fantastic ballet," was Claire's response.
"Perfect control and harmony! They aren't swimming
through the water . . . they're dancing through it!"

Dancing? It seemed a wildly imaginative concept for I
knew these beasts weighed seventy or eighty tons apiece.
And yet I cannot better Claire's description.

Man, being a terrestrial beast of rather rigid perceptivity,
is limited in his ability to conceive of alien beings except
in terrestrial terms. In attempting to convey something of
the magnitude of the great whales, men have inevitably
compared them with the largest dinosaurs that ever lived
(the great whales arc much laiger), or with the largest sur-
viving land animal, the elephant ... "a herd of twelve
African elephants could be contained inside the skin of one
Blue Whale."

84

Even more misleading is the concept we have formed of
the great whales from looking at them stranded on a beach
or hauled up on the flensing plan at a whaling factory. Out
of its own element (and stone dead in the bargain) one oE
the great whales becomes a monstrous lump of a thing: a
shapeless and gigantic sack, loosely stuffed with meat and
guts and fat, only remotely identifiable with the living,
functioning entity it once was.

The livmg whale is something else. The all-too-brief per-
iod during which we watched the Fin family crossing White
Bear Bay was a revelation. We were all three of us made
sharply aware that these creatures were paragons of grace
who had achieved a harmonious relationship to the world
of waters such as man will never know in air or on the land,
in nature or in art.

About ten minutes after we first saw them, the whales
rose as one, surfaced, blew and inhaled several times, then
sounded while still moving at full speed and without leav-
ing more than a few faint ripples. Since they have excellent
vision in air as well as in water, they may have seen our
plane. In any event, when they-sounded they went deep;

shimmering and diminishing in our view as if they were
sliding down a long, unseen chute leading to the privacy of
the abyssal depths.                   •

Since the last World War men have become very interested
in how whales move so swiftly and smoothly in both the
horizontal and vertical planes of their three-dimensional
world. This interest has not been prompted by admiration
or even by true scientific curiosity, but rather by the desire
of human warriors to build better submarines with which
more effectively to destroy one another. This curiosity,
perverted though it be, has led to some fascinating discover-
ies about the whale as a machine; and everything science
has discovered has strengthened the conclusion that whales

85

are among the most highly perfected forms of life ever to
dwell upon this planet.

One thing that sadly puzzled early investigators was the
question of how a whale could achieve its great speeds with
such a "rudimentary" power source as living muscle, and
such a simple transmitter of power to water as a pair of
flukes. Streamlining was obviously a part of the answer, but
only a part. Most modern submarines are almost slavishly
streamlined after the whale pattern but, even so, and even
when equipped with engines and propellers of maximum
mechanical efficiency, they can only achieve speeds compar-
able to those of whales by expending many times the amount
of energy. The secret seems to lie in the fact that the sub-
marine is a rigid object and the whale is not. Experiments
in test tanks with those little whales, the dolphins, show that
the illusion Claire, Lee and I thought we were expeiiencing

- that of seeing a sort of shimmering undulation in the danc-
ing Fins - was no illusion at all.

Apparently the outer layers of a whale - skin. blubber,
and the immediate underlying layers of connective tissue

- have the capacity to simulate fluids in motion, almost as
if they were themselves a liquid substance. This strange
quality produces what hydrodynamic experts refer to as
laminar flow, an effect which almost eliminates the normal
turbulence produced by an object moving rapidly through
water. Laminar flow has the effect (if one can imagine this)
of lubricating the whale's body so there is almost no friction
or drag. Although I am by no means certain the scientists
fully understand what laminar flow is all about, they have
certainly recognized its effectiveness. They have discovered,
for example, that a dolphin of the same relative mass as a
modern torpedo can attain torpedo speed with an expendi
ture of only one-tenth the energy.

A classic case illustrating the whale's efficiency is referred

86

to by Ivan Sanderson in his fine book, Follow the Whale.
An 800-horsepower catcher harpooned an 80-foot Blue
Whale which then proceeded to tow the catcher, whose
engine was running full speed astern, a distance otfifty miles
at speeds up to eight knots! It was not brute power which
made this feat possible. No, it was the almost unimaginable
efficiency achieved by the whale's near-total adaptation to
the aquatic medium.

We do not know the highest speeds attainable by whales.
Some smaller species have been accurately clocked at 27
knots. The misnamed Killer Whale can evidently exceed 30
knots in short spurts, and Fin Whales have been seen to out-
run Killers! However', unlike men, Fin Whales probably do
not worship speed as an end in itself. For the most part they
seem content just to loaf along, conserving energy, at a mod-
est six to seven knots.

Although we are beginning to learn a little something about
the mechanics of the whale as a living machine, we still
know very little about the nature of whale society.

The toothed whales, which are more primitive than the
baleen, seem to prefer extended family groupings rather
like those of baboons and many monkeys. Such groups may
include a hundred or more individuals. Polygamy, or at
least random mating, seems to be the general rule among
the toothed whales. Alt members of the group or tribe have
mutual but generalized responsibilities toward one another.
Mature males, or in some cases mature females, may assume
leadership roles but all "hands" appear equally concerned
with the well-being of the young. When a member of the
group is injured, or endangered, all the adults within reach
will rally to its assistance. There are many well-authenti-
cated reports of toothed whales physically supporting a sick
companion so that it can rise to the surface and breathe.

87

And what is almost unique in the animal world, toothed
whales of one species will sometimes come to the assistance
of an individual of quite a different species.

Among the baleen whales, the social structure seems to be
based on the closed family unit. I am convinced that each
Fin Whale pod is actually a "nuclear" family consisting of
a mated pair of adults, accompanied by the calf of the year
plus one or several earlier and as yet unmated offspring.
The Fin is not only monogamous; it evidently mates for
life, and the bonds between a mated pair are extraordinarily
close and tenacious.

Although Finners are strongly family oriented, they are
also social in a broader sense. There are reports, dating back
to the days when whales were still plentiful, of aggregations
of as many as 300 Fins gathered together in one small por-
tion of the sea. These were gatherings of family groups,
rather than of individuals. Some whalers believed these
gatherings took place two or three times a year and were
in the nature of festivals at which unmated whales <on-
ducted their courtships in order to establish new family
units.

The largest number of Finners seen at Burgeo, after the
return of the species to the Newfoundland coast, gathered
among the islands during the winter of 1964-65. There
were five discrete pods numbering thirty or thirty-one indi-
viduals in total. Although some of the families might tem-
porarily come together, and even remain together for a day
or two, they would eventually separate again. Each family
maintained its own cohesion and each had its own pre-
ferred fishing grounds.

The winter of 1964 65 saw the peak'and the beginning of
the decline of the re-occupation of the south Newfound-
land seas by the several species of rorquals. Word of their
return had spread all too rapidly until it came to the ears

88

of the Norwegians who. by that time, in company with the
British, Japanese, Dutch and Russians, had swept the Ant-
arctic waters almost clean.

Shortly after the end of the war, Karl Karlsen, a financially
well-established Norwegian immigrant to Nova Scotia, set
up a company to exploit the herds of Harp Seals which
drop their pups-whitecoats, they are called-each spring
on the pack ice of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and off the
northern coasts of Newfoundland. Karlsen acquired a fleet
of sealing ships and built a processing plant at Blandford,
near Halifax. In 1964 he expanded the plant to handle
whales and, using Norwegian catching ships and Norwegian
crews, began going after the rorquals which had reappeared
in the seas between Nova Scotia and southern Newfound-
land. Soon his big, sea-going catchers, like the Thorarinn
which is 200 feet long, were ranging five hundred miles and
more from the Blandford base, thereby exposing the use-
lessness oE another of the International Whaling Commis-
sion's gestures at whale conservation. The Commission had
forbidden the use of factory ships in the North Atlantic in
order, so it was announced, to provide a sanctuary in mid-
ocean for the beleaguered stocks ofAtlanticwhales.Thefact
that few of the great whales ever use the mid-ocean reaches
but prefer to stay near the coastal shelves where food is
much more abundant was not mentioned. In any event, the
whole gesture was meaningless in view of the fact that mod-
ern catchers, such as the Thorarinn, have such great range
that those operating from land bases in Norway, Iceland
and eastern Canada could, between them, cover almost
every area where whales were to be found.

Karlsen's ships worked as far east as the Grand Banks and
during their first year took 56 Finners. The next year they
killed 108. In 1966 they began to hit their stride, killing
263, and the following year they killed 318. In all, the

89

Karlsen enterprise had killed 1458 Finners up to the end ot
1971.* These were in addition to 654 Sets, 64 Sperms and a
number of Minkes and Humpbacks. Most of the meat from
the more than 2000 great whales so far processed at Bland-
ford has been sold for "animal food," which is to say, for pet
food. A good percentage of the oil rendered there has been
consumed by the world cosmetics industry, although it is
true that some of the meat, and some of the oil, has gone
to Japan for human consumption.

With the coming of the Karlsen enterprises, the brief
respite during which the great whales had found a sanctu-
ary in the waters south of Newfoundland drew rapidly to a
close.

During the winter of 1965-66 only two Fin families re-
turned to Burgeo. There were four individuals in one, and
only three in the other, but in addition there was one lone
whale whom I believe to have been the sole survivor of a
family which had been destroyed by the whalers.

The "Loner," as we called the single whale, spent part
of his time in company with one or other of the two family
groups, but even more time by himself. Oddly, his favourite
fishing place seemed to be the restricted waters of Messers
Cove. Here, apparently oblivious to houses, people, and
moored boats which almost surrounded him, he spent many
hours contentedly eating herring which misguidedly con-
tinued to pour into this cul-de-sac. Returning homeward
late on winter evenings, I would often hear him blowing in
the Cove. He taught me much about his species but per-
haps the most surprising discovery was that he had a voice
and, moreover, one that could be heard by the human ear,

in air.

*Since 1964, the three stations on the eastern Canadian coast,
Williams port, Dildo and Blandford, have killed 3598 Finners out
of a Western Atlantic population estimated at 7000 in 1964. Their
total kill of whales of all species in this eight-year period is 5717.

90

Late one chilly afternoon I was chatting with Sim Spencer
on Messers bridge when we both became aware of a deep
thrumming sound which seemed to be as much felt as heard,
We turned in surprise toward the Cove and saw a fading
pillar of vapour hanging over the icy water.
"Was that the whale?" I asked in astonishment-
Sim's intent face wrinkled in puzzlement.
"Never heard no whale blow like that before. But if
'twarn't he, what do you suppose it were?"

We watched and listened and after a minute or two the
sound came again, deep and vibrant; but this time the sur-
face of the Cove remained unbroken. It was four or five
minutes later before the whale rose and blew, with no more
than his normal whooshing exhalation. Although Sim and
I continued to stand there, half frozen, for the better part
' of an hour, we did not hear that other-worldly sound again.
A year was to pass before I would hear it once more and
certainly identify it as the voice of the Fin Whale.

While Claire and I were away in the winter of 1966-67, the
whales' friends in Burgeo awaited the annual visit of the
Finners with foreboding. It was common knowledge that
1966 had been a very good year for the Karlsen catchers and
that no great whales had been seen "in passage" by any of
our local draggers throughout the autumn months. How-
ever, during the first week in December, Uncle Art was de-
lighted to discover they had returned.

It was a sadly diminished band-a single family number-
ing five individuals.

Throughout most of December these five spent their
time, as of old, in the runs among the islands; but during
Christmas week their quiet occupancy was challenged by
several big British Columbia herring seiners. These great
steel vacuum cleaners began sucking up the herring with a
relentlessness that was terrifying to behold. Working so

91

close to land that they several times swept away nets belong
ing to local fishermen, they roused the wrath of Burgeo;

but the intruders did not care about the nets, the wrath, or
about whales either. On one occasion Uncle Art reported
seeing a seiner make what looked like a deliberate ramming
run at a surfacing Finner. If it was deliberate, then it was
also foolhardy, since a collision between ship and whale
would have been disastrous to both.                ^

The whales did not take to the newcomers. According to
Onic and Uncle An, they seemed uneasy in their presence.
This is understandable since seiners and whale catchers arc
driven by diesel engines that must sound ominously alike.

A few days after the arrival of the seiners, the Fin family
abandoned the island runs and shifted eastward to a little
fiord called The Ha Ha, which not even the insatiable
seiners dared enter because of many rocky outcrops that
might have damaged their costly nets. The whales stayed
close to The Ha Ha and the nearby mouth of Bay DC Loup,
except when the seiners were absent delivering their
catches to the reduction plant at Harbour Breton. It was on
one such occasion, when only a single seiner was present,
that Uncle Art and I stood on Messers Head and watched
the whales demonstrate the superiority of their fishing tech-
niques.

The whales were not alone in The Ha Ha. They shared
it with several Burgeo fishermen working cod nets from
open boats. When the whales moved in, these men were
concerned for the safety of their nets. Two among them, the
Hann brothers, Douglas and Kenneth - small, quiet, foxy-
faced men from Muddy Hole - even considered moving
their gear to some safer ground.

" 'Twarn't as we t'ought they'd tear up our gear a-purposc-
like," Douglas Hann remembered, "but The Ha Ha is a
right small place and not much water at the head of she. We
t'ought, what with six fleets of nets scattered round, them

92

whales was bound to run foul of some of them ... couldn't
help theirselvcs. Well, son-, they never did. Sometimes when
we'd be hauling a net they'd pass right under the boat close
enough you could have scratched their backs with a gaff.
First off, when they did that, we used to bang the oars on
the side of the boat and yell to make them veer away; but
after a time we sees they knowcd what they was about, and
was going to keep clear without no help from we,

"Still and all, 'twas scary enough betimes. One evening
our engine give out. We had the big trap skiff and no thole-
pins for the oars so we had to scull her along. It were com-
ing on duckish* and we was alone in The Ha Ha and them
whales begun coming up all round. They^was only six
fathom of water where we was to, and they was after the
herring like big black bullets. We could hear the swoosh
when they drove by, and foam would fair bile up where
they took a big mouthful out of a hen-ing school.

"I'd as soon have been home in me kitchen, I can tell you,
but them whales is some smart navigators, for they never
come nigh enough to do we any hurt. We was an hour
poking our way to the pushthrough what leads into Ald-
ridges Pond, and them whales stayed right along of we.
Toward the end of it they give up fishing and just come
along like they knowcd we was into some kind of a kettle.
Ken, he said maybe they was offering we a tow; but I sup-
pose that's only foolishness."

What the Hanns told me of their experience reminded
me of a story I had heard some years earlier from a very old
man at Hermitage Bay, many miles to the eastward. As a
youth this man had been employed at a whale factory in
Gaultois, on the north shore of Hermitage Bay. His home
was five miles across the full breadth of the Bay, but on week-
ends he would row over to spend Sunday wilh his family.

•Meaning dark.

93

One Saturday afternoon he was homeward bound when
he saw a pod of Finners. There were three of them. and they
were behaving in a peculiar fashion. Instead of briefly sur-
facing and then sounding again, they were cruising on the
top. Their course converged with his.andastheydrew close,
my friend saw that they were swimming, as he put it,
"shoulder to shoulder." The centre whale was blowing
much more rapidly than the rest and its spray was pink in
colour.

'"Twarn't hard to know what was the trouble," the old
man remembered. "Yon middle whale had been harpooned
and the iron had drawed and he'd got clear of the catcher
boat. The bomb must have fired, but not deep enough for
to kill he.

"I laid back on me oars, not wantin' to get too handy to
them three, but they never minded I ... just steamed slow
as you please right past me boat, heading down the bay and
out to sea. They was close enough so I could near swear the
two outside whales was holding up the middle one. I t'inks
they done it with their flippers. That's what I t'inks.

"When they was all clear, I rowed on home. Never ('ought
no more about it. About the middle of the week a schooner
puts in to Gaultols and the skipper was telling how he come
across three whales outside Green Island. They was right on
top of the water, he says, and never sounding at all, and
making a slow passage to eastward. The skipper, he held
over toward they, but when it looked like they was all going
to go afoul of one another he had to alter course, for they
had no mind to sound no matter what he did. When he
passed alongside he saw the middle whale had a girt hole
in his back.

"I made certain 'twas the same three I come across and
'twas agreed by all hands 'twas the same whale was har-
pooned by one of our boats that Saturday morning and got
away. They two other whales took the sick one off some-

94

place ... some said 'twas to the whales' burying ground . . .
but all I knows is they kept that sick one afloat somehow for
five days, and close onto sixty miles."

Aldridges Pond is a salt-water enclosure about half a mile
in length, and nearly as broad, lying in the centre of the
rocky isthmus which separates The Ha Ha from Short
Reach. There is a narrow and very shallow "pushthrough"
between it and The Ha Ha, passable only by small boats
and then only at high water. However, a wider and deeper
channel connects the Pond to Short Reach by way of a
rather large entry cove. It was the habit of the men who
fished The Ha Ha to pass back and forth through Aldridges
Pond to save themselves the long and, in dirty weather,
dangerous outside run around the head of the peninsula.
Each morning at daybreak they would cross Short Reach,
enter and cross the Pond. pole through the pushthrough,
and set to work hauling their nets in The Ha Ha. In mid-
afternoon, when the haul was finished, they would bring
their loaded boats back into Aldridges and moor up to the
shore in the Pond's protected wafers to gut their catch.

During our years in Burgeo, Claire and I had only once
visited Aldridges Pond; but before we had been home two
weeks, the Pond became the centre and the setting for an
event which was to change our lives.

95

Chapter 8

The weatherman was predicting a sou'caster for Friday,
January 20-the worst kind of storm on the Burgeo coast-
and the Hann brothers were in a hurry to get clear of The
Ha Ha. Working under a lowering sky with snow squalls
flickering around them, they hauled their last net and
cleared it shortly after noon. Beating the ice from their
homespun mittens, they cranked up their little 5 h.p. At-
lantic and began chugging homeward toward the push-
through leading into Aldridges Pond. They had seen no
whales all day and, as they cut the engine and began poling
the boat through the shallow entrance, Kenneth remarked
to his brother that the whales must have heard the weather
report too.

"They knows the seiners has sheltered up, I wouldn't
doubt. It'll be clear fishing for them whales 'mongst the
islands."

"They's welcome to it," Douglas replied, with a concerned
glance at the ominous overcast.

The Hanns let their boat drift westward across the Pond
while they hurriedly gutted the small lot of fish they had
caught. Within an hour they were finished. As their boat
puttered out through the south channel into the entrance
cove which leads to Short Reach, they found themselves

96

bucking a heavy tidal stream that was racing back into the
Pond. The old boat swayed and yawed uncertainly back and
forth across the channel until Kenneth had to fend her head
off with an oar. As he was doing so, he noticed that the
water around him was alive with herring.

"Don't say as I ever see them so thick," he recalled, "pretty
near enough to float our boat on their backs. They was pour-
ing into the Pond like the devil was on their tails. Maybe he
was. cause just after we got into Short Reach we see two
spouts just abeam of Fish Rock. It looked to we like the
whales was having themselves some right good fishing."

During the previous several days the Hanns had noticed
that, despite its almost landlocked nature, Aldridges Pond
was becoming increasingly attractive to the herring. They
laid this to the fact that, hard-pressed by the seiners, the
little fishes were being driven to seek refuge where the ships
could not follow. Whatever the reason, the Pond had ac-
quired a dense herring population which seemed to surge
in and out with the ebb and flow of the tides.

Despite the ominous forecast, it only blew a "moderate
breeze" that night. The anemometer on our roof registered
forty knots and when Claire and I went to bed we could
feel the dull reverberation of breakers exploding against
the cliffs of nearby Mast Cove, but it was a brief blow.
Before morning the wind had hauled into the north, the
skies were clearing, and the sea was falling out.

The Hann brothers, hard-working men with big families
to support, were early getting out to haul their gear and
they entered Aldridges before dawn began to break. They
noticed nothing unusual as they thumped across the Pond,
but as they were leaving the pushthrough they encountered
several whales clustered near that narrow entrance. Vaguely
Kenneth wondered if they might be waiting for herring to
come out with the falling tide, but he was too concerned
just then about his gear to give the matter much thought.

97

The brothers were delighted to find their nets un-
damaged and even more delighted to find them full of cod.
They spent several hours clearing and resetting the nets
and when, heavily laden, they started back for the push-
through, they again passed close to several whales surfacing
near the entrance. Paying them no particular heed, they
poled through the channel, moored their boat to a rock on
the north shore of the Pond and began gutting their catch

They had been at work only a few minutes when they
were startled by what would have been a familiar enough
sound outside but which was totally unexpected in the con-
fines of the Pond. It was the explosive whoooof of a spout-
ing Finner; and it came from "close aboard." When Ken-
neth. a voluble and excitable little man, described the dis-
covery some time later, he was still amazed.

"I tells you, we was some surprised. We looked up and
not more'n a couple of chains off was the fin of a girt whale
just slipping down into the water, and the fog from her
spout still hanging in the air.*

" 'Twas hard to believe a whale that big could get herself
into the Pond. Certainly there was no water tor her in the
pushthrough, and even the south gut never had no more'n
two fathom and a half since ever I see it. But there she was,
and looking twice as big as life.

"We went on cutting our fish, but I tell you we kept a
sharp lookout for that whale. She was down for quite a time
and when she come up again she was going like a battle-
ship and right on course for the south gut. I give a yell:

'Doug, bye! She be going to drive herself ashore!'

"We both stood up to watch her. She never slowed 'til she
was fair in the mouth of the gut, and I made sure she was

•The Hanns did not realize that the whale actually was a female,
but so impressed were they by her gigantic size that they auto-
matically referred to her in the feminine gender exactly as they
would have done had she been a ship.

98

going to end up high and dry. But just at the last of it she
changed her mind. She come about so hard she sent a wall
of water right out the gut. If they had been a boat inbound,
'twould have been capsized for sure. She turned so quick
she heeled right over on her side, and she was some big! We
figured sixty, seventy feet and maybe more."

During the next hour, while the Hanns finished cutting
their fish, the whale went on making these frantic and
abortive rushes, as if trying to nerve herself to dare the
shallow channel. Time and again she surfaced near the
middle of the Pond, put on a burst of speed and headed for
the opening. But each time she gave up the attempt at the
last moment. She must have known'that not even her great
speed and momentum would suffice EO carry her across the
shoals which barred the mouth of the channel.

"I wondered," Doug Hann recalled, "was she sounding the
rising water 'cause the tide was on the flow. 'Twas near
sprinjes* and we thought maybe she might get clear on
the top of high water that evening."

Having finished with their fish, the Hanns found them-
• selves in something of a quandary. They had no desire to
be caught, in the south channel during one of the whale's
impetuous rushes. On the other hand, they did not much
relish the idea of taking their heavily laden boat back into
The Ha Ha and out around Aldridges Head in the teeth of
the heavy swell which was the storm's aftermath. Eventually
they decided to ease their way toward the south channel,
holding close to shore, and see what happened.

The whale paid no attention to them until they were
within a hundred yards of the channel mouth. Here they
discreetly nosed their boat ashore, uncertain what to do
next. Then the whale surfaced in mid Pond and turned in
their direction.

•Spring tides, the highest tides of the lunar month

99

'What happened next was the queerest thing I ever see,"
Kenneth remembered. "Whenever I see a whale spout be-
fore, and I supposes I see a t'ousand, only the top of the
head and a bit of the fin and back would come out of the
water- But this one . . . she made a slow start toward we,
went under, and next thing we knowed was standing up
with her whole head clear of the water, high as a cliff,, and
staring straight at we out of one big eye.

"I tell you, it scared me some! Her mouth was closed but
we could see 'twas big enough to swallow a dory and room
to spare. Then she slid back under. We waited and waited
but she were gone pretty near twenty minutes and when
she come up again she were at the north end where we'd
been cutting fish. I says to Doug: 'Start the engine, bye! I
t'inks she's going to give we a free passage out.'

"We never wasted no time, I'll tell you. We was out
through the gut like a rat out of a red-hot stovepipe! Going
back down The Reach we talked about how wonderful
queer it was for that whale to get herself into the Pond.
'Twas Doug had the best idea of it: ' 'Twas the herring took
she into it,' Doug says- ' 'Twas the herring tells the tale!' "

Although the cove from which the south channel leads
into Aldridgcs Pond is small, it is surprisingly deep, with
an average depth of thirty feet over most of its area even at
dead low tide. However, at its head, toward the Pond end
of the channel, it shoals abruptly to a low-tide depth of five
feet, and it narrows equally abruptly to form the mouth of
the channel which is itself some forty yards in length and
ten yards wide. 'Ncar the inner end of the channel are a
number of huge but scattered boulders, some of which are
covered by less than four feet of water at low tide.

On Friday night, January 20, the predicted tidal rise was
just under five feet but the actual rise was nearer six due

100

to the heavy sea driving inshore before the brief sou'east
gale. Consequently, at full of the tide that night, there was
close to forty feet of water in the cove and ten or eleven
through most of the channel itself.

Early Friday afternoon the half-dozen seiners which had
been working among the Burgeo Islands began to stow
their gear and head for port to ride out the coming storm.
The last of them left at about 3 o'clock and the underwater
world no longer vibrated to the pound ofdiesel engines.

With the return of quiet to their world, the family of
Finners in The Ha Ha decided to try a change of ground.
Perhaps the herring had begun to avoid the restricted
waters of The Ha Ha which were being so closely patrolled
by the whales, or perhaps the five great, hungry maws had
simply thinned them out. In any event, the whales rounded
AIdridges Head and entered Short Reach where two of
them were seen by the Hann brothers as they headed up
for home that evening.

Short Reach, it happened, was alive with herring, and
the whales had good fishing while daylight lasted. How-
ever, dusk came early this Friday evening as the cloud came
down, dark with the promise of the coming storm.

With the coming of night, the preferred method of fish-
ing, using reflected light from the abdomen to herd the
herring, became ineffective, but by then most of the whales
had gorged and were no longer hungry. The paler familias,
a sleek giant only slightly smaller than his mate, and three
young but well-grown progeny of other years, were content
to idle in the depths and wait for another day. Not so the
female. She was still ravenous, and she had good reason for
her gargantuan appetite; for she was carrying a calf within
her vast womb, a new life growing at such a furious pace
as to keep her perpetually hungry. So while the rest of her

101

family took life easy, the female continued fishing in the
dark, relying now on the high speed "dash," directed at the
densest herring schools she could find-
Locating such schools posed no great problem because
her sonar told her where they were, how dense the schools
were and the depth at which they swam. Since she could
not use the herding technique, it was to her advantage to
choose those schools which would be prevented, by some
natural barrier, from scattering at her approach. The many
coves and cul-de-sacs along the steep, deep shores of the
Richards Head peninsula were well suited to her purpose
and it was not long before she discovered that one of them,
the entrance cove to Aldridges Pond, was fairly seethmg
with little fishes.

Her sonar gave her sight in darkness but it was not per-
fect vision. Although quite capable of defining for her the
shape and depth of the cove, it probably did not reveal the
existence of the narrow, shallow channel leading into Ald-
ridges Pond. Unaware, then, that the packed mass of
herring had an escape route open to them, the female
whale came streaking into the cove like the black shadow
of nemesis . . . only to find that, inexplicably, the school
was fading away before her. She would have had no way of
knowing that it was pouring like a living river through the
channel to seek safety in the Pond.

The cove was deep but it was dangerously small. If the
whale had accepted the fact that her attack had somehow
failed, she could have halted her rush in time by gaping her
enormous mouth and allowing the inrush to distend her
accordian pleats so that the resistance of the water would
have brought her to a halt nearly as abruptly as if she
had deployed a parachute brake. But the hungry female
fractionally delayed applying her brakes. When she did
decide to stop, momentum carried her into the mouth of
the channel where the water abruptly and horrifyingly

102

shoaled until her belly touched the bottom rocks. She
swung frantically back and forth trying to turn. for a whale
cannot swim in reverse. But assisted by the fast-flowing in-
bound tidal current, her struggles only served to carry her
farther into the channel.

Now she must have known fear; for a great whale that
goes aground at high tide is almost certainly doomed. As
the tide ebbs, the tremendous body, no longer buoyed up,
becomes its own instrument of death. The ribs collapse
under the immense weight and the whale suffocates.

Caught in the tidal stream, and propelled by the frenzied
thrusting of her flukes, she moved in the only direction
open to her-forward through the channel, contorting her-
self to squeeze over and between the boulders which par-
tially barred her way. Then, miraculously it must have
seemed, the water deepened and she was free.

There is an average depth of five fathoms over most of
Aldridges Pond, and nine in the middle. The whale's relief
on reaching apparent freedom must have been exquisite. It
must also have been short-lived. It could not have taken
her many minutes to scan the sh6reline and to realize that
she had escaped . . . into a trap; a trap from which there
was no hope of release except through the channel by which
she had entered.

Then came a fearful moment of decision! To stay was,
eventually, to starve; but to dare that channel on a falling
tide almost certainly meant death, a quicker one, before
the next day came.

Of course the tide would rise again. Certainly she would
know that. But that was not all-and not enough-for this
was happening at spring tide and the water would not be
so high again for the whole of a lunar month and, even
then, it might not be high enough unless accompanied by
an onshore gale. Perhaps she knew that too.

The inexorable rhythm of the tide was the whale's key

103

to freedom. Throughout the rest of that Friday night she
waited for the new tide to rise. It reached its peak late
Saturday morning . .. and the peak was almost a foot below
the levei it had reached the night before. It was not enough.
Nevertheless, she was inexorably drawn to the mouth of the
narrow channel which was her on4y path to freedom.

The Harm brothers reached the plant about 4:30 in the
afternoon and began forking their fish up on the wharf,
while an interested audience of plant workers listened to
the tale they had to tell. It provided a major diversion in
the otherwise dismal routine of working in a fish packing
plant.

"You think she's still into the Pond?" asked one of the
foremen, a strapping-big - almost obese - man in his fifties.

"More'n likely. Don't see as she got a chance get clear until
full tide tonight."

"But," Kenneth Hann told me later, "if I'd a knowed what
they fellers had in mind. I'd have told they she was gone
clear of it already."

Perhaps he would have done so, for the brothers wished
the whale no ill. There were other men in Burgeo who did
not feel as the Hanns felt.

104

Chapter 9

Only a few minutes after the Hanns finished unloading
their fish and departed for their homes in Muddy Hole, an-
other boat put out from the plant wharf carrying the fore-
man, George, who had been so interested in the whale,
together with four younger men. AH five were employees
of the plant and they had obtained permission from the
manager to quit early in order to go and "see" the whale.
They did not go'straight to Aldridges Pond. Partway down
Short Reach they put in to shore and each man hurried up
to his own house, returning with a rifle and whatever
ammunition he could lay hands on. When they shoved oft
again, they were armed with two .30,30 sporting carbines, a
.30.0(i U.S. Army rifle, and a pair of .303 Lee Enfield service
rifles.

Although these men had all been born on the Sou'west
Coast, they liad all spent some years away, either in Canada
or the United States. Returning home for one reason or
another, they had rejected the vocations of their fishermen
forefathers and had instead sought wage employment at the
plant as mechanics, tradesmen and supervisors. They were
representative of tlie new Newfoundlanders envisaged by
Premier Siiiiillwood - progres-iive, modern men who were
only too anxious to deny their outport heritage in favour of

105

adopting the manners and mores of 20th-century industrial
society.

It was already growing dusk when their boat passed
Richards Head and opened the mouth of the cove leading
to Aldridges Pond. Suddenly the man in the bow gave a
shout, grabbed his rifle and pointed with it. A whale was
spouting just off the entrance of the cove.

The foreman throttled back and the boat slowed fo a
drift.

"Son of a bitch must'a got clear!" someone cried disgust-
edly.

As the whale sounded, three or four high-velocity bullets
whacked into the water and ricocheted, spinning and sing-
ing into the darkening air. Although the boat's crew waited
expectantly for the great beast to reappear, it did not do so.
Believing it to be the whale reported by the Hanns, and
convinced it was now well on its way to sea, the dis-
appointed men decided to head home. George, the foreman,
was turning the boat when one man, who had only recently
returned to Burgeo after a decade spent working in a To-
ronto paint factory, spoke up:

"I never been into the Pond since I was a kid. Let's take
a turn. Might stir up a couple of sea ducks or maybe a seal."

Agreeably, George completed a full circle and the boat
headed into the cove, crossed it, and nosed into the channel.
At that instant all five men were electrified by what they
later described as a sort of hollow roar - "like a cow bawling
into a big tin barrel." Almost at the same moment, there
was a mighty splash at the inner end of the channel and a
drift of spray descended on the boat and its occupants. The
men stared at each other in amazement.
"Holy Jesus Christ! 'Tis still in there!"

They ran the boat's nose ashore on a patch of shingle,
sprang over the side and raced across the narrow neck of

106

land separating the cove from the Pond. They reached the
crest in time to see what one of them described as ". . . the
biggest goddamn fish that ever swum! It was right into the
mouth of the gut and looked to be half out of the water. The
tail onto it was like an airplane. It was smashing into the
water so hard, spray come right up where we was to."

The five men wasted no time. Some dropped to their
knees, levering shells into their rifles as they did so. Others
stood where they were and hurriedly took aim. The crash
of rifle fire began to echo from the cliffs enclosing the Pond
and, as an undertone, there came the flat, satisfying thunk
of bullets striking home in living flesh.

"You couldn't miss," one of the gunners recalled ecstatic-
ally, "I was shooting tor the eye-big as a plate it looked.
Some was shooting for the blowhole. But them bullets only
seemed to tickle it. It kind of rolled a little, turned and slid
off into deep water and went down. I guess we put twenty
bullets into it."

The whale submerged and retreated to the north end of
the Pond but after a few minutes, during which the gunners
hurriedly reloaded, she reappeared heading back toward
the channel mouth. The men held their fire until she was
a hundred feet away and then let fly a concentrated blast.
The whale sounded again, this time disappearing tor nearly
twenty minutes.

"Some of the lads figured as how we'd killed it, but that
was crazy stuff. Take a hell of a lot more'n what we had to
kill a thing that big! But George, he figured if we kept
shooting every time it come toward the gut it'd give up on
the idea and stay where it was to until next day. Next day
being Sunday we'd have all day tor sporting with it."

The men had not brought much ammunition and after
an hour had exhausted their supply. Reluctantly they re-
turned to their boat and to Burgeo where they spent the

107

rest of the evening in convivial drinking as they toured from
house to house around The Harbour and The Reach, tell-
ing the story of their exploit.

Sunday broke white and clear, with blinding sunlight
glaring from the snow and ice of a silent land and on the
sheen of a still sea. Completely unaware of what had been
happening at Aldridges, Claire and I and Albert set out to
the westward for a day-long hike on the scimitar of sand
beaches which bars the waters of Little Barasway Pond from    1 |
the open ocean. It was an unforgettable day for we saw
seventeen Bald Eagles-an almost unbelievable number in
this age when the Bald Eagle has become yet another van-
ishing species. They had gathered on the beaches from God
alone knows how many hundreds of miles away to feed on
tens of thousands of dead herring-victims of the seiners-
which had washed ashore-

Meanwhile in Burgeo the bells of the Anglican and
United Churches were ringing and men and women were
making their ways along the icy roads to morning service.
After the services, knots of men gathered here and there to
yarn a bit before going home for Sunday dinner. The main
topic was the trapped whale. It would have been difficult
to ignore the subject because ever since early morning a
distant obbligato of rifle fire had been audible east of the

town-

Not long after dawn, between twenty and twenty-five
gunners had ringed Aldridges Pond. This time each man
had a good supply of shells. A number of the merchants had
obligingly opened up their stores and soon sold most of the
high-velocity ammunition they had in stock. The morning
shooting party included several of these merchants, to-
gether with some staff members from the plant and a good
representation from among the smart young fellows who
spent their springs, summers and autumns working on
the Great Lakes freighters, and their winters at home

108

in Burgeo drawing unemployment insurance. Also repre-
sented was Burgeo's first businessmen's organization, the
recently formed Sou'wcsters Club, which was a combination
service group and Chamber of Commerce committed to the
proposition that Burgeo must transform itself as rapidly
as possible into a really modern town.

With the arrival of the sportsmen, the whale retreated to
the middle of the Pond where she spent as much time as she
could submerged.

The system whales have evolved to enable them, as air-
breathing fnammals, to survive for long periods in the
depths is wonderfully effective. Unlike a human diver, the-
whale does not rely solely on the air it can store in its lungs.
If it were to dive with lungs fully inflated, it too would be
subject to the crippling and often fatal effects of what we
know as the bends. Instead it stores most of the oxygen it
.needs in the red corpuscles of the blood and, by means of
a special chemical process, in the muscle tissues too.
Furthermore, a whale on a deep or prolonged dive restricts
the blood circulation so that the precious oxygen is only
distributed to those organs and those regions where it is
most vitally needed.

When a Fin Whale surfaces after a long dive (there are
records of dives of at least 40-minute duration), it must
expel the waste gases which have accumulated and then
take in enormous quantities of fresh air; and it must do
this swiftly, for it is vulnerable when it is at the surface of
the sea. The arrangements which make tills possible are
impressive.

A whale's blowholes arc actually a mammal's nostrils,
which have migrated from the front to the top and hack of
the head. They are equipped with powerful valves and are
connected to the lungs by a huge passage capable of hand-
ling an immense volume of air. The great bellows of the

109

lungs are so effective that when a Finner surfaces it can
totally exhaust and then refill them to the bursting point
in just over one second! After a long submersion this breath-
ing rhythm must be repeated several times before the de
pleted supply of oxygen is fully replenished, and there must
be an interval between breaths to allow the blood to ab-
sorb the oxygen which has been taken into the lungs. A
Fin Whale submerges after each separate breath, rising to
spout again at intervals of two or three minutes until, fully
"recharged" with oxygen, it can again return to the deeps.

The first pan of a surfacing Finner to become visible is
usually the hump housing the blowholes. The moment the
hump breaks surface the valves snap open; the whale 3ets
go an explosive exhalation which is instantly followed by
an implosive indraft. Then the valves snap shut and the
great beast begins to descend, appearing to cartwheel for-
ward in a flat arc so that the blowholes are followed at the
surface by a long expanse of curving back and finally by the
high fin, which is set well aft. The flukes seldom show, but
twin circular disturbances of roiling water testify to their
powerful presence as the whale vanishes from view.

The brief surfacings of the whale did not give the sports-
men at Aldridges Pond much chance to spot their quarry,
take aim and fire, and at first the gunners did not make very
good practise- However, they soon began to recognize a
pattern in the whale's appearances and to take advantage
of it. When she first surfaced after a long submergence, they
held their fire. When she rose again to take her second and
subsequent breaths, they were ready for her. The rifles
cracked and the echoes reverberated back and forth from
nearby Richards Head to Greenhill Peak.

As the day wore on, more and more boats arrived and an
atmosphere of fiesta began to develop. Most people were
content Just to watch the show from the natural rock amphi-

110

theatre which cradles Aldridges. Men, women and children,
many in their Sunday best, sat or stood and watched with
eyes that brightened when the -whale, beginning to panic,
turned into shoal water, touched bottom, reacted in terror,
and then flailed her way back to deep water again while a
continuous BAM-whap . . . BAM-whap . .. BAM-whap told
how well the sportsmen were doing.

Not everyone who saw the show that day was happy about
it. An elderly fisherman from Muddy Hole, who had
brought his daughter and grandchildren to see a live whale,
was disconcerted.

"It looked like rare foolishness to I," he said. "What war
the use of it? Them bullets cost money and they was heaving
*em away like they was winkle shells. 'Twould have been
better to save their .bullets to get a bit of meat in the country
. . . but I supposes the likes of them chaps got more money
'an they needs. Still and all, they had no reason to torment
the whale. She war no good to they. Happen they killed her,
what was they going to make of her? Put her through the
plant for frozen fillets? No, me son, 'twas a pack of foolish-
ness."

Another friend of mine, the mate of a dragger, was there
that day. He did no shooting either and his contempt for
those who did was surprisingly explicit in a community
where criticism was seldom openly expressed.

"There was three young chaps there I knowed for what
they was . . . bloody butchers. March of last year when the
glitter drove the deer out to Connaigre Bay, they come along
to have some fun. Nothing better to do, I suppose. I was
aboard the Pennyluck, anchored up the Bay with engine
trouble. When them chaps come. Lard Jasus, I thought
'twas the Germans. Shoot? They never stopped, sunup to
sundown, I was ashore next day and they was dead deer,
cows and bulls alike, all over the place. Yiss, bye, I knowed
them chaps. What was their names? That's for me to know

ill

and you to find out. Rotten bastards they is, but I'll not tell
their names,"

I changed the subject and asked him to describe the
whale's behaviour under fire.

"It made me feel right ugly just to watch her. She had no
place to go, only down under, and she couldn't stay down
forever. I expected her to go right crazy after a couple of
hundred bullets had smacked into her, but it was like she
knowed that would do her no good. Once or twice she got
wild, but for the most of it she war right quiet.

"One thing .. . she warn't alone. I was standing high up on
a pick of rock where I could spy into the Pond and out
across Short Reach as well. 'Twasn't long afore I sees an-
other whale outside. It blowed first just off Fish Island.
Then there was a stretch of time when no boats was in The
Reach, and it moved closer and closer until 'twas fair in the
mouth of the cove.

"Now here's the queer thing. Every time the whale in the
Pond come up to blow, the one outside blowed too. It hap-
pened every time they blowed. I could see both of them, but
they was no way they could sec one t'other. You can say
what you likes, but the one outside knowed t'other was in
trouble, or I'm a Dutchman's wife.

"They fellows shooting at the whale weren't no smarter
nor a tickleass*. They was using soft-nose bullets and when
they hits something they busts up ... goes all to pieces-
That whale must a had a foot of blubber and I don't believe
the most of them bullets got through at all. I supposes some
did, certainly, but I don't say she was hurted bad. Try and
kill a thing that big with soft-nosed slugs? My son, they
might as well have took to heaving rocks at her!"

The shooting gallery went out of business early on Sun-
day afternoon when the supply of ammunition ran out.

*The local name for the small gull otherwise called kittiwakc.
112

With nothing more to entertain them, most of the onlookers
went home. My friend was one of the last to leave.

"The last I see of the whale, she was swimming pretty
good. Was no blood coming from her blowhole but she
weren't blowing near so high nor staying down so long,
Maybe she was just played out." He paused thoughtfully
and then concluded in a tone that indicated some embar-
rassment. "A man didn't feel right about what was done that
day. 'Twas no great credit to us folks in Burgeo. . . ."

When Claire and I returned from our walk late Sunday
afternoon, we were tired and content. The tensions which
had beset us during the long months of travel had sloughed
off like old skin. The outer world of turmoil and disaster
now seemed so distant as to be almost irrelevant. I do not
ever recall having felt more at ease within myself than I did
that night as we prepared to go to bed.
Claire wrote in her journal:

"It is so nice to be back among people who live simple and
uncomplicated lives. We have really missed the people here.
How I hope they are never spoiled by the savagery and
selfishness that seems to be spreading over the whole world
like a fog...."

113

Chapter 10

By Monday morning a bitter nor'easier, blowing down from
the frozen barrens, had shrouded Burgeo under a tow and
scudding overcast. Those who could stay at home by their
kitchen stoves did so gladly. Few fishermen were out; but
the plant workers, men, women, and children as young as
fourteen, red-faced and bending to the chill wind, shuffled
off as usual to begin their bleak day's work. They stood for
endless hours on cold concrete while numbed hands filleted
and packaged a thin stream of fish coming along a conveyer
belt from the belly of a deep-sea dragger unloading at the
wharf.

There seems to have been little talk about the whale that
day. Those who had been at Aldridges on Sunday were dis-
inclined to discuss the matter. A letter written to me by one
of the Burgeo clergymen a year afterwards may throw some
light upon this reticence.

"I hope you won't think all the people were acting in their
ordinary way that Sunday. Afterwards a lot of them felt very
bad about it. Except for those few who did the shooting,
most of the people had no idea of harming the whale. When
they saw the shooting and watched it for a while they got
worked up by it; and afterwards a lot of them felt very bad.
They hardly knew how to tell what was the matter, but
most of them was quite upset next day. . . ."

114

That there was indeed something like a conspiracy of
silence explains what is otherwise difficult to understand;

that Claire and I, living less than three miles from Aldridges
Pond, heard not a whisper about what had taken place
there. Onie Stickland, Simeon Spencer, Uncle An, and the
rest of our friends and neighbours who were usually so
ready, not to say eager, to keep us informed of everything
that happened in Burgeo, spoke not a word to us about the
whale.

On that Monday morning, while we remained in ignor-
ance, the Hann brothers were cautiously and somewhat
fearfully entering Aldridges Pond. As Kenneth recalled it:

"We knowed the gunning might have killed the whale,
though 'twas more likely she was just bad hurled. But you
got to watch out tor even a deer with a bullet in its guts,
and that whale, she had hunnerts of bullets into she. There
was no telling what she might do, but we knowed one flip
of her tail could put an end to we."

Gingerly they puttered through the south channel, stop
ping Just inside to see what the situation was. The surface
of the water was ruffled only by the wind. Although they
waited a quarter of an hour they saw no sign of the whale
So they started up their engine and headed across the Pond,
but they had gone only a hundred yards when she surfaced
close ahead and almost on a collision course. She blew once
and began to sound. The two men frantically snatched up
their oars to help the engine push them to the safety of the
shore. They were rowing for dear life when they were ap
palled to see the enormous head passing directly beneath
their boat.

"I says to myself, 'Kenneth, me son, that's it! You're gone
out nowl' I was certain sure that whale, with all them
bullets into her, would be so hateful she'd lay into the first
humans she could reach. Feared? I was shaking like a dog!"
But Kenneth was wrong- The whale passed majestically

115

on her way and when she surfaced again it was at the far end
of the Pond. Still shaken, the Hanns hastened to the push-
through and on into The Ha Ha where they spent the next
several rough and frigid hours wrestling with their gear.
They were glad to regain the shelter of the Pond but they
were still leery of the whale, so they prudently pulled their
boat to shore close to the entrance before beginning to gut
their fish.

While they were busy at their task, the whale continued
to cruise steadily around the deep part of the Pond, blowing
at intervals of about ten minutes and showing no further
desire to dare the passage of the south channel. Once or
twice the men saw big, circular water boils appear on the
surface and they thought the whale was chasing herring.

Such placid behaviour restored the Hanns' confidence
somewhat and as they coasted the shore of the Pond, home-
ward bound (and keeping, as they say, "one toot on the
land"), Douglas was moved to take a bait-tub full of herring
and empty it into the water not far from where the whale
had just submcrged-

"Don't know as she cared for it," he explained, "but I
' thought 'twould do no harm. Truth to tell we was feeling
friendly toward she ... she give us a clear passage through
the Pond, spite of what them fellers done."

As far as is known, the Hanns were the only people to
visit the whale on Monday ... but Tuesday was a different
day.

The weather had improved by Tuesday noon and a party
of riflemen, hearing that the whale was still alive, thought
there might still be some sport to be had with her. The only
difficulty was a shortage of ammunition, but there was an
answer to this problem. Like many remote Canadian com-
munities, Burgeo boasts a platoon of Rangers, a semi-mili-
tary organization of volunteers under command of one of
their own number who holds a temporary commission in

116

the Canadian armed forces. Each Ranger is issued with a
.303 service rifle; and cases of ammunition are kept at each
detachment headquarters. Part of this ammunition is issued
for target practise while the balance is retained for use in
case of a "military emergency." The Burgeo Rangers had
long since exhausted their practise issues, mostly on caribou,
moose and harbour seals.

It happened that several of the whale hunters belonged
to the Ranger platoon. On Tuesday morning one of them
visited the second-in-command of the detachment, who was
also a senior member of the fish plant staff, and asked for a
special ammunition issue. The spokesman did not claim
there was an emergency in Burgeo but he did point out that
target practise never came amiss and that it was unlikely
they would ever find a better target than "that whale, up to
Aldridges."

A number of rounds were issued . . . just how many I
was never able to determine, but I was later to count more
than 400 empty .303 cartridge cases lying in piles around
Aldridges Pond, all bearing the markings of Canadian army
arsenals.

Apparently Tuesday's gunriers were not entirely easy in
their minds. Perhaps they were aivare that an undercurrent
of disapproval now existed in the community. Or possibly
they were a bit worried about the illegality of what they
were doing since, of course, they knew that even the carry-
ing of rifles, let alone their use, in the countryside at this
season of the year was prohibited, as a measure intended to
protect the caribou and moose from poachers.

For whatever reason, those who manned the three boats
heading down The Reach toward Aldridges late Tuesday
afternoon had waited until all the fishermen who used the
Pond had left it. In fact they were so circumspect that no-
body seems to have even seen their boats depart. Had it not
been for the unexpected arrival on the scene of a man and

117

his son who, in their dory, had been retching a barrel ol
spring water from a stream at the foot of The Ha Ha, the
names and activities of Tuesday's sportsmen might never
have been known. Of the eleven gunners who disembarked
at the Pond that day, eight had taken part in Sunday's
affray, while three were respected members of Burgeo
"society" who had missed the Sunday fun because of church
commitments.

The man who had gone to fetch water at The Ha Ha was
not hesitant about describing what he saw.

"We heard the shooting before ever we left the spring.
but never thought much about it till we come to the push-
through. The young lad was up in the bow and we no sooner
got into the Pond when a bullet comes wheening over his
head, close enough so he could feel the wind.

"Well, sorr, we hauled the dory in behind a rock, right
smart. Then I takes a spy over the top. 'Twas something like
I never see before. There was that crowd from down The
Reach, one of them fellers on every point, and carrying on
like they had all gone right foolish. They was yeliing and
Jumping, and hauling away on bottles, and shooting at the
whale, and yelling some more. There was bullets flying
every which way. 'Twas a wonder some of them never killed
the others."

What he was seeing that Tuesday afternoon was essen-
tially a repetition of Sunday's fusillade . . . with one impor-
tant difference tor the whale. The army-issue bullets used
on Tuesday were steel-Jacketed and so had a penetration
far greater than that of commercial, soft-nosed bullets- In-
stead of shattering into small fragments after making a rela-
tively shallow entry into the whale's blubber, these bullets
pierced deep into her body,

"The creature was drove clean crazy! She got herself into
the shoal water on the eastward side of the Pond, the
farthest she could get from them fellers, and there warn't no

118

more than just enough water to keep her afloat. And beat
the water! My dear man, her tail and flippers was flying in
the air! 'Twas a desperate sight, I tell you. And all the while
you could hear the thump of them bullets just a-pounding
into her.

"After a time she kind of thrashed into deeper water and
then she took a run for where we was to. I swears to God I
thought she was going to come right on top of we! She come
to a stop fair in the mouth of the pushthrough with her
mouth swole up like one of them balloons they used to fly
on ships in the war to keep the German planes away. I tell
you, 'twas more'n I cared to see! The young lad and me, we
hauled back into The Ha Ha and rowed right out around
Aldridges Head. I'd a rather crossed the ocean in me dory
than gone across the Pond that evening!"

This man had one further detail to add. As he and his
son were rowing into Short Reach they encountered four
more whales.

"Three of them was in deep water a quarter-mile offshore.
but t'other was right into the mouth of Aldridges Cove and
he was near as wild as the one Hiside the Pond. He was
running right up to the edge of the shoal ground, blowing
high as a steeple, and sending a wash right up onto the shore.
I and the young lad hauled clear over to the south side of
Fish Rock and took to the lee of the islands. 'Twas a long
way out of our course, but I cell you I never liked the looks
of that big fellow. Far as I were concerned he could have the
whole channel to hisselfl"

At their homes in Muddy Hole that Tuesday evening, the
Hann brothers knew nothing of this new assault upon the
whale- They had spent several quiet hours in her company
earlier in the day and had begun to take an almost proprie-
tary interest in her, and even to feel a strengthening sym
pathy for her predicament.

119

"What a hard business," Kenneth remembered. " 'Twasn'
fitting for a creature the like of she to be barred off. Whales
likes company, you see. Was times Doug and me thought
she was after looking to we for company . . . Times us'd be
gutting cod and that girt big head would come along six,
eight feet off the boat, just under water and moving slow
and easy as you please, with nary a ripple of a wake. . . .
Could see her eye sometimes, looking up at we. We tooR the
habit of saving the herring out of the cod bellies and heav-
ing it overboard when she come nigh. Can't say as she took
to it, but 'tis certain she had no use for gurry*! When we'd
heave that overboard, she'd go right clear of we until it
washed away."

When the Hanns returned to the Pond on Wednesday,
they noted changes in the whale's beliaviour and appear-
ance.

"She waren't blowing near as high as Tuesday and she
blowed a lot oftener. Couldn't seem to stay down more'n a
few minutes at a time. When she come close up we see her
hide was peppered with white spots the size of silver dollars.
Doug said they was likely bullet holes but a man could
hardly believe she had that many bullets into tier. I thought
maybe 'twas where she'd had barnacles hung onto her, and
they got scraped off.

"Well, son, we soon found out the truth of that. Just afore
we left the Pond two of them speedboats come in from The
Reach and six fellows jumped ashore. They all had them
army rifles, and George Oldford, he started right in to shoot-
ing.

"We hailed them and told them to liold off so we could
get clear of the Pond. George, he yelled down to we they had
orders for to finish off the whale. Put it out of its misery,
like. I told them that was only foolishness. 'You'll shoot

"The guts of the cod.
120

somebody yet!' I told them. They never answered but when
we was passing out of the south gut we heard the lot of them
open fire again.

"Doug, he turns to me and says 'tis time somebody put a
stop to it. Trouble was, the Mountie waren't likely to take a
hand unless some of the big folks told him to, and they was
into it as much as anybody . . . People was needing to use
the Pond for the fishing and to fetch water from The Ha
Ha, but 'twas hardly safe to go in there at all."

Although I still knew nothing about the continuing
attacks on the whale, they were no secret to most people.
The firing could be distinctly heard in the eastern parts of
Burgeo and by Thursday a rising indignation on the part of
those who customarily used Aldridges Pond had brought
the matter to a head. Late Thursday evening some of the
Muddy Hole fishermen decided on a course of action.

During my years in Burgeo I had been called upon on a
number of occasions to speak, or write, on behalf of indi-
viduals and groups who felt themselves incapable of reach-
ing the ears of those in authority. Although a little vague
about the real nature of my work as a writer, they assumed
I had some kind of influence with those up above.

After supper on Thursday two fishermen from Smalls
Island walked into our kitchen bearing gifts of cod tongues
and a huge slab of halibut. They sat on the day bed and we
talked for a while about the state of the fishery, the weather,
and other usual topics of Burgeo life. It was not until they
were leaving that the real reason tor the visit came out.

"I suppose, Skipper, you knows about the whale?"

"You mean the Finners in The Ha Ha?"

"No, Skipper, I means the one down in Aldridges Pond.
Big feller. Been in there quite a time."

"What the devil would a whnie be doing in there?" I
asked incredulously. "What kind of a whale is it?"

He was vague. "Don't rightly know. Black, like; with a

121

gin big fin. They says it can't get clear . . . Well. goodnight
to you, Missus, Skipper."
And with that they vanished.
"Now what do you suppose that's all about?" I asked

Claire.

"Who knows? Maybe there's a Pothead caught in Ab-
ridges." *

"Maybe. But why did those chaps come all the way up here
to tell us about it and then go all evasive when I started
asking questions? Something's going on. 1 think I'll slip
over to Sim's and see what he can tell me."

Although-1 was inclined to agree with Claire that the
whale (if it existed at all) would turn out to be a Pothead,
I thought there was just a chance it might be a Killer. The
remark about the "girt big fin" suggested this and, too,
some local dragger men had recently met pods o£ Killers
not far from the Burgeo Islands. Anyway, my curiosity was
aroused.

Sim Spencer was alone in his little store, laboriously
working up his accounts- Rather reluctantly, it seemed to
me, he admitted to having heard something about the
Aldridges whale. When I asked him why he hadn't told me
before, knowing how interested I was in anything to do with
whales, he was embarrassed.

"Well," he said, fumbling for words. "They's been a lot of
foolishness ... a shame what some folks does . . . wouldn't
want to bother you with the likes of that... but now as you
knows, I thinks 'tis just as well."

The implications of this escaped me at the time, but soon
became clear enough. The reason I had not been told about
the whale was that many of the people were ashamed of
what was happening and did not want to talk about it with
outsiders; and even after five years I was still something of
a newcomer in their midst.

Sim took me to see the Hanns. They were reticent at first

,122

but they did describe the whale in fair detail; and I now
realized there was an excellent, if almost unbelievable
chance it might turn out to be one of the great rorquals.
Having seen Aldridges Pond in the past, I knew it to be an
almost perfect natural aquarium, quite large enough to
contain even a Blue Whale in some kind of comfort.

The prospect that, for the first time in history, so far as
I knew, it might be possible to come to close quarters with
the mystery of one of the mighty lords of Ocean, was wildly
exciting. I was in such a hurry to rush home and tell Claire
about it that Kenneth Hann's concluding words did not
quite sink in.

"They says," he warned, "some fellers been shooting at it.
It could get hurled, Skipper, an' they keeps it up."

Probably some damn fool has been takipg pot shots at
it with a .22, I thought, and put the warning out of mind.
As I hurried across Messers bridge in the gathering dark
ness, my thoughts were fixed on tomorrow, and my imagina-
tion was beginning to run away as I contemplated what
could happen if the trapped whale indeed turned out to be
one of the giants of the seas.

123

Chapter 11

Early next morning I telephoned Danny Green, a lean,
sardonic and highly intelligent man in his middle thirties
who had been the high-lining skipper of a dragger but had
given that up to become skipper, mate and crew of the little
Royal Canadian Mounted Police motor launch. Danny
not only knew - and was happy to comment on - everything
of importance that happened on the Sou'west Coast, he was
also familiar with and interested in whales. What he had to
tell me brought my excitement to fever pitch.

"I'm pretty sure 'tis one of the big ones, Farley. Can't say
what kind. Haven't seen it meself but it might be a Hump-
back, a Finner or even a Sulphur." He paused a moment.
"What's left of it. The sports have been blasting hell out
of it this past week."

As Danny gave me further details of what had been hap-
pening, I was at first appalled, then furious.

"Are they bloody well crazy? This is a chance in a million.
If that whale lives, Burgeo'll be famous all over the world.
Shooting at it! What the hell's the matter with the con-
stable?"

Danny explained that our one policeman was a tempor-
ary replacement for the regular constable, who was away
on leave. The new man, Constable Murdoch, was from New
Brunswick. He knew nothing about Burgeo and not much

124

about Newfoundland. He was hesitant to interfere in local
matters unless he received an official complaint.

At my request, Danny put him on the phone.
"Whoever's doing that shooting is breaking the game laws,
you know," I told him. "It's forbidden to take rifles into the
country. Can't you put a stop to it?"

Murdoch was apologetic and cooperative. Not only did
he undertake to investigate the shooting, he offered to make
a patrol to AIdridges Pond and take me with him. However,
Claire and I had already made other arrangements with two
Mcsscrs fishermen, Curt Bungay and Wash Pink, who fished
together in Curt's new boat. They were an oddly assorted
pair. Young, and newly married. Curt was one of those
people about whom the single adjective, "round," says it
all. His crimson-hued face was a perfect circle, with round
blue eyes, a round little nose, and a circular mouth. Al-
though he was not fat, his body was a cylinder supported on
legs as round and heavy as mill logs. Wash Pink was almost
the complete opposite. A much older man, who had known
hard times in a distant outport, he was lean, desiccated, and
angular. And whereas Curt was'a born talker and story-
teller, Wash seldom opened his mouth except in moments
of singular stress.

A few minutes after talking to Murdoch, Claire and I
were under way in Curt's longlincr. I was dithering between
hope that we would find a great whale in the Pond, alive and
well, and the possibility that it might have escaped or, even
worse, have succumbed to the shooting. Claire kept her
usual cool head, as her notes testify:

"It was blowing about 40 miles an hour from the north-
west." she wrote, "and I hesitated to go along. But Farlcy
said I would regret it all my life if I didn't. Burgeo being
Burgeo, it wouldn't have surprised me if the 'giiint whale'
had turned out to be a porpoise. It was rough and icy cold
crossing Short Reach but we got to AIdridges all right and

F25

sidled cautiously through the narrow channel. It was several
hours from high tide and there was only five feet of water,
which made Curl very nervous for the safety of his brand-
new boat.

"We slid into the pretty little Pond under a dash of watery
sunlight. It was a beautifully protected natural harbour
ringed with rocky cliffs that ran up to the 300-foot crest of
Richards Head. Little clumps of dwarfed black spruce clung
in the hollows here and there along the shore.

"There was nobody and nothing to be seen except a few
gulls soaring high overhead. We looked eagerly for signs of
the whale, half expecting it to come charging out of no-
where and send us scurrying for the exit. There was no sign
of it and 1 personally concluded it had left - if it had ever
been in the Pond at all.

"I was ready to go below and try to get warm when some-
body cried out that they saw something. We all looked and
saw a long, black shape that looked like a giant sea-serpent.
curving quietly out of the water, and slipping along from
head to fin, and then down again and out of sight.

"We just stared, speechless and unbelieving, at this vast
monster. Then there was a frenzy of talk.

*' 'It's a whale of a whale! . .. Must be fifty, sixty feet long!
. . . That's no Pothead, not that one . ..'

"Indeed, it was no Pothead but an utterly immense, soli-
tary and lonely monster, trapped. Heaven knew how, in
this rocky prison.

"We chugged to the middle of the Pond just as the R.C.M.P.
launch entered and headed for us. Farley called to Danny
Green and they agreed to anchor the two boats in deep
water near the south end of the Pond and stop the engines.

"Then began a long, long watch during which the hours
went by like minutes. It was endlessly fascinating to watch
the almost serpentine coming and going of this huge beast.
It would surface about every four or five minutes as it fol-

126

lowed a circular path around and around the Pond. At first
the circles took it well away from us but as time passed, and
everyone kept perfectly still, the circles narrowed, coming
closer and closer to the boats.

"Twice the immense head came lunging out of the water
high into the air. It was as big as a small house, glistening
black on top and fish-white underneath. Then down would
go the nose, and the blowhole would break surface, and
then the long, broad back, looking like the bottom of an
overturned ship, would slip into our sight. Finally the fin
would appear, at least four feet tall, and then a boiling up
of water from the Hukes and the whale was sone aaain.

0           ff

"Farley identified it as a Fin Whale, the second largest
animal ever to live on earth. We could see the marks of
bullets - holes and slashes - across the back from the blow-
hole to the fin. It was just beyond me to even begin to
understand the mentality of men who would amuse them-
selves filling such a majestic creature full of bullets. Why
try to kill it? There is no mink or fox farm here to use the
meat None of the people would eat it. No. there is no motive
of food or profit; only a lust to kill. But then I wonder, is
it any different than the killer's lust that makes the main-
land sportsmen go out in their big cars to slaughter rabbits
or ground-hogs? It just seems so much more terrible to kill
a whale!

"We could trace its progress even under water by the
smooth, swirling tide its flukes left behind. It appeared to
be swimming only about six feet deep and it kept getting
closer to us so we began to catch glimpses of it under the
surface, its white underparts appearing pale aqua-green
against the darker background of deep water.

"The undulations on the surface came closer and closer
until the whale was surfacing within twenty feet of the boats.
It seemed to deliberately look at us from time to time as if
trying to decide whether we were dangerous. Oddly, the

127

thought never crossed my mind that it might be dangerous
to us. Later on I asked some of the others if they had been
afraid of this, the mightiest animal any of us was ever likely
to meet in all our lives, and nobody had felt any fear at all.
We were too enthralled to be afraid.

"Apparently the whale decided we were not dangerous.
It made another sweep and this time that mighty head
passed right under the Mountie's boat. They pointed and
waved and we stared down too. Along came the head, like
a submarine, but much more beautiful, slipping along^
under us no more than six feet away. Just then Danny
shouted: 'Here's his tail! Here's his tail!'

"The tail was just passing under the police launch while
the head was under our boat, and the two boats were a good
seventy feet apart! The Hippers, each as long as a dory,
showed green beneath us, then the whole unbelievable
length of the body flowed under the boat, silently, with just
a faint slick swirl of water on the surface from the flukes-
It was almost impossible to believe what we were seeing!
This incredibly vast being, perhaps eighty tons in weight,
so Farley guessed, swimming below us with the ease and
smoothness of a salmon,

"Danny told me later the whale could have smashed up
both our boats as easily as we would smash a couple of eggs.
Considering what people had done to it, why didn't it take
revenge? Or is it only mankind that takes revenge?"

Once she accepted the fact that our presence boded her
•no harm, the whale showed a strange interest in us, almost
as if she took pleasure in being close to our two 40-foot
boats, whose undersides may have looked faintly whale-like
in shape. Not only did she pass directly under us several
times but she also passed between the two boats, carefully
threading her way between our anchor cables. We had the
distinct impression she was lonely - an impression shared

128

by the Hann brothers when she hung close to their small
boat. Claire went so far as to suggest the whale was seeking
help, but how could we know about that?

I was greatly concerned about the effects of the gunning
but, apart from a multitude of bullet holes, none of which
showed signs of bleeding, she appeared to be in good health.
Her movements were sure and powertui and there was no
bloody discoloration in her blow. Because I so much wished
to believe it, I concluded that the bullets had done no more
than superficial damage and that, with luck, the great ani-
mal would be none the worse for her ordeal by fire.

At dusk we reluctantly left the Pond. Our communion
with the whale had left all of us half hypnotized. We had
almost nothing to say to each other until the R.C.M.P. launch
pulled alongside and Constable Murdoch shouted:

"There'll be no more shooting. I guarantee you that.
Danny and me'll patrol every day from now on, and twice
a day if we have to."

Murdoch's words brought me my first definite awareness
of a decision which I must already have arrived at below -
or perhaps above - the limited levels of conscious thought.
As we headed back to Messcrs, I knew I was committed to
the saving of that whale, as passionately as I had ever been
committed to anything in my life. I still do not know why I
felt such an instantaneous compulsion. Later it was possible
to think of a dozen reasons, but these were afterthoughts -
not reasons at the time. If I were a mystic, I might explain
it by saying I had heard a call, and that may not be such a
mad explanation after all. In the light of what ensued, it is
not easy to dismiss the possibility that, in some incompre-
hensible way, alien flesh had reached out to alien flesh . . .
cried out for help in a wordless and primordial appeal
which could not be refused.

During the run home, my mind was seething with

129

possibilities, with hopes, with fears. Only one thing seemed
sure; the whale would need more help than I alone could
give. We needed allies, she and I.

As soon as we reached home I called the fish plant man-
ager who, because of his position as "boss," was one of the
most influential men in the community. In rather inco
herent fashion I tried to convince him of the importance to
Burgee, and to the world at large, of our having one of the
great whales in our keeping. A withdrawn, uncommunica-
tive man who seemed to think of everything in managerial
terms, he was not easy to persuade; obviously finding it
hard to understand why anyone, would be much concerned
about the life or death of a whale. However, he finally did
agree to post notices at the plant asking everyone to leave
the animal alone.

He helped me more than he knew, for his very coolness
brought me sharply up against the realization that I would
have to marshal some convincing practical reasons why the
whale should be saved. The most obvious one I could think
of was the fact that, to the best of my knowledge, no human
being had ever before had the chance to study closely a
living rorqual. That chance was here - was now. I was sure
the scientific people would recognize its importance, would
be as excited as I was, and would come rushing to help.
Science had to be alerted.

This was easier said than done. Our telephone link with
the outer world consisted of a make-shift system of radio
transmitters and micro wave relays, no part of which was
even moderately efficient. Even after a connection had been
established with the "outside" - a feat which might take
several hours - the chances were excellent that neither party
would be able to hear or understand the other I disliked
and distrusted the black machine hanging on our wall so
much that I refused to have anything to do with it except
in case of dire emergent y But ihis was an emergency.

130

The first call I placed was to the Federal Fisheries office
in St. John's, Newfoundland. I managed to conduct a
shouted conversation with a senior biologist there who ex-
plained, kindly, as one would to an enthusiastic but ill-
informed child, that his station only concerned itself with
fishes . .. and whales were mammals.

Cursing his bureaucratic mind, I spent the next three
hours trying to reach the central Fisheries Research station
near Montreal. When I eventually got through to its direc-
tor, I found him sympathetic but no more helpful than his
colleague in St. John's. He told me the Department's whale
expert was away in the United States studying whale skele-
tons in museums. It was apparently out of the question that
he should be recalled from his research into the bones of
the dead in order to visit Burgeo and study a rorqual in
the living, breathing flesh.

By this time it was late at night and I was beginning to
suffer from a growing sense of frustration, coupled with a
certain feeling of unreality. Could it be, I asked myself,
that the world of science would prove to be unmoved by this
unique opportunity to gain a little insight into the life of
one of the most remarkable animals that ever lived?

In something between panic and despair, I now called
a tried and patient friend, my publisher, Jack McClelland,
in Toronto. Jack resignedly climbed out of bed to spend
the next several hours himself trying to interest marine
biologists all across Canada. Most of those he reached were
outspokenly irate at being roused in the middle of the night,
and none of them apparently gave a damn whether or not
Burgeo possessed a captive Fin Whale. One eminent cetolo-
gist in British Columbia listened with cold politeness while
Jack described the situation, then gave him a little lecture.

Fin Whales, he said, do not eat herring; they subsist
entirely on plankton. Thus, even if I did have one in cap-
tivity, I could not possibly feed it. However, feeding such

1S1

a captive would be unnecessary in any case because Fin
Whales can easily survive for six months by assimilating
their own blubber. Anyhow, the point was not germaine,
he continued crushingly, because Fin Whales never come
near shore unless they are dead or dying; therefore, the
Burgco whale, if it was a Fin at all, must be in a dying
condition. Since scientists had already studied a good many
dead Fin Whales, they would not be much interested in
studying yet another. He advised Jack to forget the whole
thing.

1 was having breakfast early on Saturday morning when
Jack phoned back with his doleful news. He did his best
to sound optimistic.

"Look, if you've really got an eighty-ton whale on your
hands, I'll believe you. Evidently not many people will.
But not to worry. You concentrate on keeping it alive and
I'll keep plugging until I find some way to get these silly
bastards oft their asses,"

Saturday had brought another raging blizzard and, since
there was no possibility of visiting Aldridges Pond until the
weather moderated. I was left to pace the house and con-
sider ways to keep the whale alive. I also had to consider
what my ukimate'intentions were. Mere success in preserv-
ing her life could simply doom her to perpetual captivity
in the confines of the Pond, with the likelihood that she
would end up as the object of a money-grubbing attempt at
exploitation as a tourist attraction. The prospect of saving
her life only to deliver her over to the Bander-log was a
revolting one. Nevertheless, I was tempted by selfish con-
siderations to equivocate. It was something, after all, to be
the nominal possessor of such a fantastic creature. No other
human being had ever had a Fin Whale for a "pet." And
yet ... and yet I could not refuse to see that to keep her
captive would be to commit another kind oE atrocity, almost
as cruel as using her for target practise.

1S2

Ultimately I could find no way to evade the simple trutn.
My duty, obligation, purpose - whatever it might be called
-did not lie with man; it lay solely with the trapped whale,
Whatever 1 did on her behalt had to be directed toward
setting her free. Only so could she be saved.

With this decision made, I had to face the problem of
how to free her. From local charts, the weather records
which I kept in my daily journal, and from the scraps of
information I had already picked up from the Hann
brothers and other people, I calculated that she had entered
the south channel of Aldridges Pond when it carried a
maximum depth of about eleven feet. A textbook on the
cetacea indicated (although there were no concrete data)
that an adult Finner, swimming at the surface, carries a
draft of just about that much.

The tide tables told me it would be nearly a month before
there would again be anything approaching sufficient depth
in the channel to Boat her out to freedom. So that left me
with slightly less than a month to plan her release. Con-
sidering the difficulties I could expect to encounter in try-
ing to manoeuvre such a titanic beast safely through the
narrow channel, a month might be none too long. However,
for the moment I felt I could relegate the detailed planning
of her escape to the back of my mind while I tried to deal
with the immediate difficulties involved in simply keeping
her alive.

The first thing, of course, was how to keep her fed. I
knew, from my several years of watching Finners at Burgeo,
that the whale specialist in British Columbia had been talk-
ing through his academic hat when he told Jack that Fin
Whales don't eat herring; and I was sure he was just as far
at sea when he claimed that a Finner could survive com-
fortably for six months on its own blubber.

The blubber layer- which is an integral part of a whale's
skin - serves only in a secondary role for food storage.

133

Whales developed oil-impregnated tissue primarily as in-
sulation to protect them against the loss of body heat into
the hungry conductivity of icy seas. While it is true that a
starving whale will, perforce, burn its own blubber oil for
fuel, this is a dead-end street in cold northern waters. As the
blubber layer thins, ever greater quantities of fuel are re-
quired to compensate for the increasing rate of heat loss
until, if no other source of food is found, the whale dies of
a combination of starvation and exposure.*

Since the temperature of the sea at Burgeo in February
hovers around 31° F., just below the freezing point of fresh
water, it seemed all too clear that, without a large and steady
supply of food, the trapped whale must perish long before
she could be freed.

Food meant herring. But the Hann brothers had told
me that Aldridges Pond was rapidly emptying of the little
fishes. Either the whale had already decimated the schools
or they had fled before the demands of such a gargantuan
appetite. It was unlikely that new schools would-now enter
the Pond of their own free will since there is nothing sui-
cidal about the behaviour of a herring school. I would have
to find a way to drive them in and pen them there; and at
this Juncture I had no idea how this could be done.

Equally pressing was the matter of protecting her from

•Whales make still another demand on iheir supplies of stored oil.
Although they live surrounded by water, it is salt water - which is
just as unusable to their metabolism as it is to ours. They have no
direct access to any source of fresh water. To obtain the vital sup-
plies they need, they must rely on what they can obtain from the
body fluids of their prey, supplemented by the chemical breakdown
of their oil reserves, which provides fresh water as a by-product.
Consequently, if a whale cannot feed, its entire fresh water require-
ments must be provided from the stored oils, particularly from
blubber oil. A whale that is denied food is not only threatened with
death by starvation and exposure, it is also doomed to die of thirst.

1M

the sportsmen. The tact that the Mountie would now try
to prevent them from using firearms was no guarantee they
would leave her alone. On the contrary, Danny Green had
already intimated that they might go to considerable lengths
to do her further hurt, if only to spite me for having been
instrumental in stopping their target practise. There was a
considerable stock of dynamite in Burgeo and it was all too
readily accessible. I only hoped this thought would not
occur to them but I had no confidence it would not.

Food, protection, and a workable plan to tree her at the
next spring tide - the ^^ext spring, not some other - these
were her needs, which I had made my problems. It was in-
creasingly clear that I could not do it all alone. I would
have to find help from the outside.

Before noon on Saturday, I had again returned to the
black d]in o[ a telephone. This time I deiided to appeal
directly to the angels. After two hours of wrestling with the
intervening demons of air, I managed, by a miracle it
seemed, to reach the Minister of Fisheries tor Newfound-
land on whom, in taw at least, the responsibility tor the
whale rested. I gave him the best pitch I could muster, but
my shouted explanations and pleadings brought no tangible
result except a hoarseness which was to betome chronic in
the days ahead. The government of Newfoundland, I was
told, had better things to do than concern itself with the
preservation of a lone Fin Whale.

Several other calls to both provincial and federal bureau-
crats proved equally fruitless. Apparently nobody in author-
ity had any interest in assuming responsibility for the whale
or in providing assistance to me in my self-appointed task.
I suspect that many of the men I spoke to thought I was a
little mad.

Although my previous experiences with Burgeo's resi-
dent politicians had given me no grounds to expect help

135

from that quarter, I was driven by my^railures elsewhere to
turn to our own mayor; but he was absent in St. John's. I
thereupon tracked down his deputy, who was the male
member of the doctor team. He was a "soft-centred" sort
of man, physically graceful in a willowy kind of way, and
with a willow's capacity to bend easily before the wind.
Although a neutralist by nature, his response to my request
for help was distinctly hostile. Not only did he firmly reject
the idea that the whale was any of his, or the town coun-
cil's, business, he was equally emphatic that it was none of
mine. His wife. who was also a council member, not only
confirmed his judgement but stated her opinion that the
Burgeo people had every right to kill the whale by any
method they might choose. Furthermore, she said, the carcass
could be put to very good use ... as dog food. (It may have
been pure coincidence that the doctors owned those two
immense and perpetually hungry Newfoundland dogs). '

Darkness had fallen by this time, and the house shook
and shuddered in a snow-filled gale. The devils of self-doubt
began to stalk me. Perhaps I was a little mad - deluded any-
way - in thinking I might save the whale. Perhaps the battle
was already lost. Perhaps I had no business meddling in a
tragedy which was essentially a natural one . . . but then I
saw again the whale herself, as we had watched her slipping
through the green void beneath Curt Bungay's boat. That
vision routed the devils instantly. That lost leviathan was
one of the last of a disappearing race, and I knew she had
to be saved if only because contact with her, though it lasted
no more than a few brie? weeks, might narrow the immense
psychic gap between our two species; might alter, in at least
some degree, the remote and awesome image which whales
have always projected onto the inner human eye. And if,
through this opportunity for intimate contact, that image
could be changed enough to let men, to force men, to see
these secret and mysterious beings with the compassion we

136

have always denied them, it might help bring an end to the
relentless slaughter of their kind.

This thought, combined with the effect of the rejections
from those whose help I had thus far sought, began to make
me fighting mad. I decided that if those who ought to have
displayed some interest in the whale refused to do so, I
would make them. And, by God, I thought I knew how to
do just that.

"Claire," I told my wife, "I'm going to give the story to
the press. The whole story. About the shooting. There'll be
plenty of people who'll react to that. They'll surely make
enough fuss, raise enough hell, to force someone out there
to act Burgeo won't like it. It could get damned unpleasant
around here. What do you say?"

Claire was very much in love with Burgeo. This was
where she had made her first home as a married woman.
She understood the delicate nature of our acceptance in the
place and she had a woman's shrewd ability to see the
possible implications of this decision. Her voice, in reply,
seemed very small against the cacophony of the storm.

"If you must... oh, Farlcy, I don't want that whale to die
either . . . but you'll be hurting Burgeo . . . the people you
like won't understand . . . but I guess ... I guess it's what
you have to do."

The phone rang and I went to it, and it was a reprieve.
The operator in Hermitage, her voice barely audible over
the babbling static, slowly read me a telegram. It was from
Dr. David Sergeant, a biologist with the Federal Depart-
ment of Fisheries. Sergeant is a maverick and the possessor
of a truly open and questing mind. He had taken it on
himself to rouse his fellow scientists to action.

HAVE CONTACTED SEVERAL EMINENT BIOLOGISTS NEW ENG-
LAND THEY VERY EXCITED YOUR WHALE SUGGEST YOU BEGIN

1S7

SYSTEMATIC OBSERVATIONS IMMEDIATELY PENDING THEIR
ARRIVAL AT EARLIEST POSSIBLE DATE STOP PHONE CIRCUITS
BURGEO IMPOSSIBLE BUT WILL TRY AGAIN TOMORROW GOOD
LUCK.

It was a small enough glimmer oi light, but on that dark
Saturday it persuaded me that help would come. As we
prepared to go to bed, Claire and 1 were further cheered by
a radio forecast which promised an end to the storm and a
fine Sunday coming.

If I had guessed what that Sunday would bring, I think
I would have prayed for a hurricane.

138

Chapter 12

Burgeo winter weather often seemed 'o consist of six days
of storm followed by a seventh wnen all was forgiven, and
the seventh day was almost always a Sunday. I once dis-
cussed this interesting phenomenon with the Anglican
minister but he decently refused to take any credit for it.

Sunday, January 29th, was no exception. It almost seemed
as if spring had come. The sun flared in a cloudless sky;

there was not a breath of wind; the sea was still and the
temperature soared.

Early in the morning Onie Stickland and I went off to
Aldridges in his dory. We took grub and a tea kettle since
I expected to spend the entire day observing the whale and
noting her behaviour for the record. I hoped Onie and I
would be alone with her, but there were already a number
of boats moored to the rocks at the outer end of the channel
when we arrived, and two or three dozen people were clus-
tered on the ridge overlooking the Pond. I saw with relief
that nobody was carrying a rifle.

We joined the watchers, among whom were several fisher-
men I knew,and found them seemingly content just tostand
and watch the slow, steady circling of the whale. I used the
opportunity to spread some propaganda about Burgeo's
good luck in being host to such a beast, and how its con-
tinued welt-being would help in drawing the attention

139

of faraway government officials to a community which had
been resolutely neglected [or many years.

The men listened politely but they were sceptical. It was
hard for them to believe that anyone outside Burgeo would
be much interested in a wh.ile. Nevertheless, there did seem
to be a feeling that the whale should not be further tor-
mented.

"They's no call for that sort of foolishness," said rfarvey
Ingram, a lanky, sharp-featured fisherman, originally from
Red Island. "Lave it be, says I. "Tis doing harm to none."

Some of the others nodded in agreement and I began
to wonder whether-if no help came from outside-it might
be possible to rouse sufficient interest in the whale, yes, and
sympathy for her, so we could take care of her ourselves.

"Poor creature has trouble enough," said one of the men
who fished The Ha Ha. But then he took me down again by
adding:

"Pond was full of herring first day she come in. Now we
sees hardly none at all. When we first see the whale, 'twas
some fat, some sleek. Now it looks poorly. Getting razor-
backed, I'd say."

We were interrupted by the arrival, in a flurry of spray
and whining power, of a big outboard speedboat, purchased
through the catalogue by one of the young men who spent
their summers on the Great Lakes freighters. He was accom-
panied by several of his pals, all of them sporting colourful
nylon windbreakers of the sort that are almost uniforms for
the habitues of small-town poolrooms on the mainland.
They came ashore, but stood apart from our soberly dressed
group, talking among themselves in tones deliberately
pitched high enough to reach our ears.

"We'd a had it kilt by now," said one narrow-faced youth,
with a sidelong glance in my direction, "only for someone
putting the Mountie onto we!"
"And that's the truth!" replied one of his companions.

140

"Them people from away better 'tend their own business.
Got no call to interfere with we." He spat in the snow to
emphasize his remark.

"What we standing here for?" another asked loudly. "We's
not afearcd of any goddamn whale. Let's take a run onto the
Pond. Might be some sport into it yet."

They ambled back to their powerboat and when the
youths had clambered aboard, one of the men standing near
me said quietly:

"Don't pay no heed, skipper. They's muck floats up in
every place. Floats to the top and stinks, but don't mean
nothin'."

It was kindly said, and I appreciated it.

By this time a steady stream of boats was converging on
the Pond from Short Reach, The Harbour, and from further
west. There were power dories, skiffs, longliners and even
a few rowboats with youngsters at the oars. Burgeo was mak-
ing the most of the fine weather to come and see its whale.

The majority of the newcomers seemed content to moor
their boats with the growing armada out in the entrance
cove, but several came through (he channel into the Pond,
following the lead of the mail-order speedboat. At first the
boats which entered the Pond kept close to shore, leaving
the open water to the whale. Their occupants were obvi-
ously awed by the immense bulk of the creature, and were
timid about approaching anywhere near her. But by noon,
by which time some thirty boats, bearing at least a hundred
people, had arrived, the mood began to change.

There was now a big crowd around the south and south-
west shore of the Pond. In full awareness of this audience,
and fortified by lots of beer, a number of young men (and
some not so young) now felt ready to show their mettle. The
powerful boat which had been the first to enter suddenly
accelerated to full speed and roared directly across the Pond
only a few yards behind the whale as she submerged. Some

141

of the people standing along the shore raised a kind of rag-
ged cheer, and within minutes the atmosphere had com-
pletely - and frighteningly - altered.

More and more boats started up their engines and nosed
into the Pond. Five or six of the fastest left the security of
the shores and darted out into the middle. The reverbera-
tion of many engines began to merge into a sustained, roar,
a baleful and ferocious sound, intensified by the echoes from
the surrounding cliffs. The leading powerboat became more
daring and snarled across the whale's wake at close to twenty
knots, dragging a high rooster-tail of spray.

The whale was now no longer moving leisurely in great
circles, coming up to breathe at intervals of five or ten
minutes. She had begun to swim much faster and more er-
ratically as she attempted to avoid the several boats which
were chivvying her. The swirls of water from her Hukes
became much more agitated as she veered sharply from side
to side. She was no longer able to clear her lungs with the
usual two or three blows after every dive, but barely had
time to suck in a single breath before being driven down
again. Her hurried surfacings consequently became more
and more frequent even as the sportsmen, gathering courage
because the whale showed no sign of retaliation, grew braver
and braver. Two of the fastest boats began to circle her at
full throttle, like a pair of malevolent water beetles.

Meanwhile, something rather terrible was taking place in
the emotions of many of the watchers ringing the Pond. The
mood of passive curiosity had dissipated, to be replaced by
one of hungry anticipation. Looking into the faces around
me, I recognized the same avid air of expectation which con-
torts the faces of a prizefight audience into primal masks.

At this juncture the blue hull of the R.C.M.P. launch ap-
peared in the entrance cove. Onie and I jumped aboard the
dory and intercepted her. I pleaded with Constable Mur-
doch for help.

142

"Some of these people have gone wild! They're going to
drive the whale ashore if they don't drown her first. You
have to put a stop to it... order them out of the Pond!"

The constable shook his head apologetically.
"Sorry. I can't do that. They aren't breaking any law, you
know. I can't do anything unless the local authorities ask me
to. But we'll take the launch inside and anchor in the mid-
dle of the Pond. Maybe that'll discourage them a bit."

He was a nice young man but out ot his element and
determined not to do anything which wasn't "in the book."
He was well within his rights; and I certainly overstepped
mine when, in my distress, I intimated that he was acting
like a coward. He made no reply, but quietly told Danny to
take the police boat in.

Ome and I followed them through the channel, then we
turned along the southwest shore where I hailed several
men in boats, pleading with them to leave the whale alone.
Some made no response. One of them, a middle-aged mer-
chant, gave me a derisive grin and deliberately accelerated
his engine to drown out my voice. Even the elder fishermen
standing on shore now seemed more embarrassed by my atti-
tude than sympathetic. I was slow to realize it but the people
gathered at Aldridges Pond had sensed that a moment of
high drama was approaching and, if it was to be a tragic
drama, so much the better.

Having discovered that there was nothing to fear either
from the whale or from the police, the speedboat sportsmen
began to make concerted efforts to herd the great beast into
the shallow easterly portion of the Pond. Three boats suc-
ceeded in cornering her in a small bight, and when she
turned violently to avoid them, she grounded for half her
length on a shelf of rock.

There followed a stupendous flurry of white water as her
immense flukes lifted clear and beat upon the surface. She
reared forward, raising her whole head into view, then

143

turned on her side so that one huge flipper pointed skyward.
I had my binoculars on her and for a moment could see all
of her lower belly, and the certain proof that she was female.
Then slowly and, it seemed, painfully, she rolled clear o£
the rock.

As she slid free, there was a hubbub from the crowd on
shore, a sound amounting almost to a roar, that was audible
even over the snarl of engines. It held a note of insensate
fury that seemed to inname the boatmen to even more
vicious attacks upon the now panic-stricken whale.

Making no attempt to submerge, she fled straight across
the Pond in the direction of the eastern shallows where there
were, at. that moment, no boats or people. The speedboats
raced close beside her, preventing her from changing course.
She seemed to make a supreme effort to outrun them and
then, with horrifying suddenness, she hit the muddy shoals
and drove over them until she was aground for her whole
length.

The Pond erupted in pandemonium. Running and yell-
ing people leapt into boats of all shapes and sizes and these
began converging on the stranded animal. I recognized the
doctor [earn - the deputy mayor of Burgeo and his council-
lor wife - aboard one small longliner. I told Onie to lay the
dory alongside them and I scrambled over the longlincr's
rail while she was still under way. By this time 1 was so
enraged as to be almost inarticulate. Furiously I ordered
the deputy mayor to tell the constable to clear the Pond,

He was a man with a very small endowment of personal
dignity. I had outraged what dignity he did possess. He
pursed his soft, red lips and replied:

"What would be the use of that? The whale is going to die
anyway. Why should I interfere?" He turned his back and
busied himself recording tlie whale's "last moments" with
his expensive movie camera.

144

The exchange had been overheard, for the boats were

now packed tightly into the cul-de-sac and people were
scrambling from boat to boat, or along the shore itself, to
gain a better view. There was a murmur of approval for the
doctor and then someone yelled, gloatingly:

"Dat whale is finished, byes' It be ashore for certain now!
Good riddance is what I says!"

Indeed, the whale's case looked hopeless. She was aground
in less than twelve feet of water; and the whole incredible
length of her, from the small of the tail almost to her nose,
was exposed to view. The tide was on the ebb and if she
remained wliere she was tor even as little as lialf an hour,
she would be doomed to die where she lay. Yet she was not
struggling. Now that no boats were tormenting her, she
seemed to ignore the human beings who fringed the shore
not twenty feet away. I had the sickening conviction that
she had given up; that the struggle tor survival had become
too much.

My anguish was so profound that when I saw three men
step out into the shallows and begin heaving rocks at her
half-submerged head, I went berserk. Scrambling to the top
of the longliner's deckhouse, I screamed imprecations at
them. Faces turned toward me and, having temporarily foc-
used attention on myself, I launched into a wild tirade.

This was a female whale, I cried. She might be and prob-
ably was pregnant- This attack on her was a monstrous, des-
picable act of cruelty. If, I threatened, everyone did not in-
stantly get to hell out of Aldridges Pond and leave the whale
be, I would make it my business to blacken Burgeo's name
from one end of Canada to the other.

Calming down a little, I went on to promise that if the
whale survived she would make Burgeo famous. "You'll get
your damned highway!" I remember yelling. "Television
and all the rest of it..." God knows what else I might have

145

said or promised if the whale had not herself intervened.

Somebody shouted in surprise; and we all looked. She was
moving.

She was turning - infinitely slowly - sculling with her flip-
pers and gently agitating her flukes. We Lilliputians watched
silent and incredulous as the vast Gulliver inched around
until she was facing out into the Pond. Then slowly, slowly,
almost imperceptibly, she drifted off the shoals and slid
from sight beneath the glittering surface.

I now realize that she had not been in danger of stranding
herself permanently. On the contrary, she had taken the one
course open to her and had deliberately sought out the shal-
lows where she could quite literally catch her breath, free
from the harassment of the motorboats. But, at the time,
her escape from what appeared to be mortal danger almost
seemed to savour of the miraculous. Also, as if by another
miracle, it radically altered the attitude of the crowd, sud-
denly subduing the mood of feverish excitement. People
began to climb quietly back into their boats. One by one the
boats moved off toward the south channel, and within
twenty minutes Aldridges Pond was empty of all human
beings except Onie and me.

It was an extraordinary exodus. Nobody seemed to be
speaking to anybody else . . . and not one word was said to
me. Some people averted their eyes as they passed our dory.
I do not think this was because of any guilt they may have
felt - and many of them did feel guilty - it was because / had
shamed them, as a group, as a community, as a people . . .
and had done so publicly. The stranger in their midst had
spoken his heart and displayed his rage and scorn. We could
no longer pretend we understood each other. We had be-
come strangers, one to the other.

My journal notes, written late that night, reflect my be-
wilderment and my sense of loss.

"... they are essentially good people. I know that, but what

146

sickens me is their simple failure to resist the impulse of
savagery . . . they seem to be Just as capable of being utterly
loathesome as the bastards from the cities with their high-
powered rifles and telescopic sights and their mindless com-
pulsion to slaughter everything alive, from squirrels to ele-
phants ... I admired them so much because I saw them as
a natural people, living in at least some degree of harmony
with the natural world. Now they seem nauseatingly anx-
ious to renounce all that and throw themselves into the stink-
ing quagmire of our society which has perverted everything
natural within itself, and is now busy destroying everything
natural outside itself. How can they be so bloody stupid?
How could / have been so bloody stupid?"

Bitter words . . - bitter, and unfair; but I had lost my
capacity for objectivity and was ruled, now, by irrational
emotions. I was no longer willing, or perhaps not able, to
understand the people of Burgeo; to comprehend them as
they really were, as men and women who were also victims
of forces and circumstances of whose effects they remained
unconscious. I had withdrawn my compassion from them,
in hurt and ignorance. Now I bestowed it all upon the
whale.

147

Chapter 13

As with so many aspects o£ the life of the Fin Whale, so it is
with their intimate and personal relationships - we know
almost nothing about the subject. We have never seen them
in the act of making love. No man has ever witnessed the
birth o£ one. We do not even know with any certainty how
long the gestation period is; how often a female gives birth;

how old she is at sexual maturity; or even how she manages
to suckle her young under water.

Examination of foetuses taken from dead Finners suggests
that the young are born in early spring, perhaps in March
or April. At any rate, this is presumed to be the case
amongst Finners who live in the North Atlantic. Because
late-term foetuses have only a very thin blubber layer, and
therefore not much insulation, some biologists believe the
young must be born in warm southern waters, perhaps in
the mysterious region near the Sargasso Sea. Other cetolo-
gists are equally positive that, because of the quantity and
extreme richness o£ the mother's milk (it is ten times richer
than that of a Jersey cow), baby Fins can produce enough
internal heat to enable them to survive even in far northern
waters. These men suggest that the young are born near the
edge of the arctic ice pack. But the fact is that nobody knows.

Again basing their conclusions on examination o£ dead

148

foetuses, biologists surmise that the gestation period is be-
tween ten and twelve months and they think that, at birth,
young Finners must be eighteen to twenty feet in length
and weigh nearly two tonsi The growth rate after birth
seems to be equally fantastic. Avidly guzzling at its mother's
twin breasts, the young whale is thought to grow to a length
of about forty-five feet, and a weight of perhaps twenty tons,
during a nursing period between six to eight months. After
that its growth slows. It apparently takes at least six and
probably as many as eight years for the youngsters to reach
puberty, by which time the males-alwayssomewhatsmaHcr
than their mates - may be sixty feet long and the females
about sixty-five. Although sexual maturity seems to come
relatively early, there is new evidence suggesting lhat Fin-
ners are not fully grown until about the age of thirty, by
which time a female may be seventy-five feet long and weigh
as much as ninety tons. Until recently, science thought the
Finner's life span was rather brief - perhaps twenty or thirty
years. But during the last few years a method of ageing bal-
een whales, by counting the number of concentric growth
rings in their horny ear plugs, has been developed and it
now seems certain that, left unmolested, a Blue or a Fin can
expect to surpass "three score years and ten with ease. In
fact the baleen whales may be the most long-lived of all
mammals, including man.* And since they are preyed upon

'Probably we will ne^er know wlial the "normal" life span of any of
the great whales really was. Because (lie oldest were also the biggest.
they were prime targets of liarpooncrs in the modern catchers. So
tliorongli was tlie hum for the big ones that, since 195U. utmost no
fuily matwe rorqunis of <my species have bt'en laken. few, if any,
are left ain 'c. However, scientists recently examined the car plug of
one of [lie last really large Finners, which h;id been killed half a
century ago (the plug li.id been kept in preservative). They esti-
mated its age .is between eighty and ninety years when a harpoon
ended its life.

149

by no natural enemies in adulthood, except, o£ course, foi
us, and appear to be singularly free from fatal diseases, they
are probably one of the very few non-human forms of life
that nature would permit to die of old age, if man did not
intercede.

It is my belief that, until they are sexually mature, the
young remain in company with their parents as part of the
family group - the pod. Unhappily, it is during this youth-
ful period of relative inexperience that they are most vul-
nerable to the whalers, and catch records show that at least
half the Fin Whales killed in recent years never even had a
chance to mate and so help perpetuate their kind. Today,
as we hunt them toward extinction, the family pods are
almost always small; however, records from earlier whaling
days show that Fin families often numbered as many as
eight individuals.

We know nothing about their courtship or even how the
young whales find their mates; but we can guess that both
events used to take place during the periodic assemblies
when all the families which occupied a given portion of the
ocean came together for a while. Tales of such concentra-
tions are common in the old records although none has been
reported in North Atlantic waters during the past forty
years.

Today the few remaining Fin Whale families are so
widely scattered that a young Finner may have to wait many
years before encountering a potential mate. This is the more
deeply tragic because Finners seem to be strictly monog-
amous- There is nothing to indicate that a sexually mature
daughter ever produces young while she remains in the fam-
ily pod, or that a widowed female will mate again except
with an unattached male. Polygamy, which is the rule
among Sperm Whales, has helped that nation to partly hold

150

its own against our depredations. But the practice of mono-
gamy among the Finners may prove to be a luxury their
decimated species cannot afford.

The love-making of the Fin may always remain a secret;

and I for one will not regret it; let them keep their tender
intimacies well hidden. However, this we do know: the
bonds between a mated pair are of legendary tenacity; and
if this be not love, then love is nothing. Whalers have long
been aware ot this, and have bloodily profited from the
knowledge. They knew that it they could harpoon the fe-
male in a pod, her mate would remain by her, so completely
reckless of the risk that he all too often joined her in death.

The reverse is not always true. A female will abandon her
endangered mate if she is pregnant or has a calf in tow. How-
ever, if she is not driven by the need to protect the next
generation, she too will often remain with a dying mate
until the bombs explode deep in her own vitals.

I knew one old Scots gunner who in his day had killed
more than two thousand whales but who had never over-
come his revulsion at striking a female of the rorqual tribe.

"We never wanted to know too much about them," he
explained. "It was too much like murder as it was. I think
if I'd had the Celtic gift of 'sight' and could have looked
into the minds of those beasts, I'd have had to give up the
sea and go ashore for good. There're times when too mucli
knowledge can stand in a man's way."

The disastrous events of Sunday, coupled into the bargain
with the discovery that the whale was a female who might
very well be pregnant, made it even more urgent that I ob-
tain help. I decided I would have to follow through on my
earlier decision and at 10 o'clock on Monday I sent the
following telegram to the Canadian Press head office in
Toronto:

151

SEVENTY-FOOT WHALE WEIGHING ABOUT EIGHTY TONS TRAP-
PED LARGE SALTWATER POND BURGEO SINCE JANUARY 21
STOP POND FORMS NATURAL AQUARIUM HALF BY HALF MILE
DIMENSIONS ALLOWING WHALE CONSIDERABLE FREEDOM
MOVEMENT STOP DURING FIRST FIVE DAYS LOCAL SPORTS
USED WHALE AS TARGET HIGH-POWERED RIFLES AND STILL
CONTINUE HARASSMENT WITH SPEEDBOATS STOP HAVE PRE-
VAILED RCMP HALT SHOOTING BUT FEARFUL OTHER DAGGERS
STOP THIS IS FIRST GREAT WHALE EVER REPORTED SIMILAR
CIRCUMSTANCES PROVIDING ABSOLUTELY UNEQUALLED POS-
SIBILITIES FOR STUDY BUT URGENTLY REQUIRE ASSISTANCE
PROTECT ANIMAL AND ORGANIZE FEEDING PROGRAM STOP
WHALE RAPIDLY LOSING WEIGHT OTHERWISE APPEARS GOOD
CONDITION IS TOLERANT HUMAN BEINGS DESPITE PERSECU-
TION STOP FOR FURTHER DETAILS PHONE ME BURGEO.

I was hardly sanguine enough to believe this sparse ac-
count would set the media world afire; I only hoped it
would be of enough interest to the press and radio people
so they would call back for more information, out of which
they might make a story that would stir someone in the
outside world to action. Consequently. Claire and I were
flabbergasted when we switched on the Canadian Broad-
casting Corporation's noon report of world and national
news and heard my account of the trapped whale already
being headlined,

Luck, which until then had run so heavily against her,
seemed to have veered in the whale's favour, and for a
reason which we could not have imagined.

Because of our long absence away from Canada, we had
not been aware of a story which had been running for many
weeks about a pod of White Whales (relatively small, por-
poise-like, toothed whales) which became trapped by
an early frecze-u^ in a long inlet on the arctic coast near
Inuvik, a small community near the mouth of the Macken-

152

zie River. Unable to escape to the open sea beneath fifty
miles of new ice, the seventeen whales in the pod were at first
able to keep a breathing space open by their own efforts.
But as the weather grew colder and their little patch of open
water inexorably contracted, their situation became critical.

The plight of these little whales roused great interest in
Inuvik, and a committee was formed to try and save them.
By early January, tlie ice had closed in so completely that
the whales only had a strip of open water forty feet long by
twenty wide in winch they could surface. The Inuvik com-
mittee had Hown in power saws with which to keep the
breathing hole open and the battle to save the White Whales
had become a national cause.

On that same balmy Sunday when the trapped Finner at
Burgeo, some 6000 miles to the southeast, was being harried
by sportsmen in motorboats, a full-scale arctic blizzard was
sweeping into the Inuvik region, sending the temperature
plunging to 40° below zero and preventing anyone from
reaching the inlet where the White Whales were trapped.
On Monday, even as my telegram was clicking into the
Canadian Press office in Toronto-, a wne was on its way to
that office from Inuvik, bearing the news that the breathing
hole had frozen over during the night and the White Whales
had perished.

The tragic conclusion to the Inuvik story and the break-
ing of the Burgeo story appeared on the desks of news edi-
tors almost simultaneously and the editors were not slow
to make the transposition from one story to the other. As
Monday wore on, the telephone circuits linking Burgeo
with the outer world began to overload to the point of col-
lapse with calls from radio stations, newspapers and wire
services, all seeking amplification of the briet C.B.C. report.
The young woman who operated the radio relay station at
Hermitage had to perform superhuman feats to keep com-
munications open. I never did know her name; but later on,

153

after a particularly hectic night during which she exhausted
herself on the whale's behalf, she so far departed from pro-
tocol as to call me personally and, in a voice tearful with
fatigue, assure me she would continue to do everything she
could to keep the line functioning "so that poor beast has
got a chance."

The media demands prevented me from visiting the
whale on Monday, but Danny Green kept me posted. "She's
swimming as smart as ever," he reported by phone. "Right
quiet, too, and blowing stronger than yesterday. The quare
thing though is t'other whale. He was right off the cove all
the time we was to the Pond, and the Hann boys says he
was there every toime they went in and out. Constable Mur-
doch and me watched for a good while, and here's the
quarest thing; both them whales was spouting right to-
gether; and both was sounding together, though they was
half a mile apart and never could have see each other. May-
be 'tis foolish, but I believes they's a pair and they talks
somehow- You say the one inside's a she? Well, bye, / says
the one outside's a he!"

Although the noises made by the smaller, toothed whales,
as they are used for sound ranging and echo location, have
been studied, we have barely begun to investigate how these
complicated sounds are used for communication. That they
are so used is not in doubt. The studies on dolphins of Dr.
John C. Lilly, while not as conclusive as some orthodox
scientists would wish, have made this point. Lilly, and those
who have worked with him, have shown that dolphins
possess intelligence - alien to ours as it must be - which is
nevertheless worthy of comparison with ours; and that these
relatively (as compared to the rorquals) primitive little
whales can not only exchange complex information but can
also transmit to one another rich emotional feelings to a

>
154

degree unsurpassed by any non-human animal of which we
have any knowledge.*

As yet we can only guess at the communicatory capabili-
ties of the rorquals and other great whales. Until two de-
cades ago it was actually believed by science that most, if not
all, the baleen whales were completelydumb! Although they
had been hunted for centuries, apparently no man had ever
heard one of them utter a single sound. However, the use of
super-sensitive hydrophones (designed to eavesdrop on
enemy submarines) has recently resulted in the astonishing
discovery that the rorquals are amongst the most "talkative"
of living beings. The range, complexity, and frequency of
their outpourings is so great that the few scientists who have
studied rorqual sounds admit to being completely baffled
when it comes to interpreting, or understanding, their
modes, purposes or meanings. Some of the weirdly melo-
dious sequences may very well be music in the highest sense
of the word. Other incredibly complex combinations of
high-frequency clicks and whistling sounds are uncommon-
ly like high-speed communication codes. It may be a long
time before we crack these codesr if indeed we ever do. In
the meantime, anybody with an open mind who listens
to underwater recordings of the Humpback Whale, for in-
stance, will find it extraordinarily difficult to resist the con-
clusion that these rorquals can and do communicate with
each other on levels of content and efficiency which we may
have reason to envy.t As to what they have to say to each
other, we have only the faintest of clues. Still, we can be
reasonably confident that they are not jusi talking tor the
sake of hearing the sound of their own voices. They seem
tar too intelligent for that.

•See Man and Dolphin, 1961. and The Mind of the Dolphin, 1967;

by Dr. John C. Lilly.
f Songs of the Humpback Whale, recorded by Dr. Roger S. Payne.

is available on Capital Records.

155

Whale talk needs no electronic aids in order to span greal
distances. Water is a much better conductor of sound than
is air, and even with our relatively inefficient hearing, we
can listen-in to Fin Whales talking underwater, with their
low-frequency ranges, at distances of up to thirty-five miles'
There is strong reason to believe that some of the great
whales can communicate with each other when they are
many hundreds of miles apart, and I know one scientist
who suspects that whale "talk" may be transmitted right
across ocean basins through peculiar "carrier corridors" of
water deep in the oceans. The exotic properties of these cor-
ridors have only recently been discovered by men, and they
are now being exploited for military purposes so that not
much has been said about the matter publicly. My friend,
who occasionally works tor the u.s. Navy. is convinced that
whales know about these global communication channels,
and may use them for "long distance" calls, free of any tolls.

The "Guardian," as we christened him, was still at his
post Tuesday morning when, despite snow squalls and a
wicked wind, I fled from the media monster I had un-
leashed, to the gentler company of the quiet monster in the
Pond. Onie took me in his dory and we were still some dis-
tance from the entrance cove when we saw the Guardian
send his "spray," as Onie called it, high into the murky air.

We cut the engine and let the dory drift down toward the
whale who was behaving in a most unusual way. He was
circling at speed in a space not more than two hundred
yards in diameter at the very mouth of the cove, and rising
to blow at intervals of only a minute or two. He appeared to
ignore our presence, lingering briefly on the surface even
when we had drifted to within fifty feet of him. It was then
I heard the voice of the Fin Whale once more, and this time
under circumstances which left no doubt about its source.
Again it was something felt as well as heard: a deep,

156

vibrant sound such as might perhaps be simulated by a bass
organ pipe heard from a distance on a foggy night. It was
a deeply disturbing sound, a kind of eery ventriloquism
out of another world and utterly foreign to anything Onie
and I were familiar wkh. Hoping for a repetition, we waited
silent in the dory until the little boat had drifted well past
the entrance, but the Guardian whale had sounded and we
heard the voice no more. I told Onie to spin the flywheel
and we nosed into the Pond.

We had no sooner cleared the channel than the lady
whale spouted close by ... spouted and instantly sub-
merged as a big, white speedboat roared down upon her at
such a clip that the four men in it did not even see us until
they had almost swamped us with their wash. They circled
and throttled down, and 1 recognized some of the enemy
from Sunday,

I jumped to my feet. "You get the hell out o£ here!" 1
yelled furiously. "Get out now and don't come back!"

The driver idled his outboard and grinned defiantly.
"I suppose you can make we go?" he challenged.

I bluffed. "The Mountie sure and hell can! Premier
Smallwood has taken over this whale. It's government prop-
erty now."

In the Newfoundland of 1967 there was but one God,
and Joey Smallwood was his Prophet. Although Smallwood
had as yet betrayed no interest in the whale, I did not
hesitate to take his name in vain. It was the only threat
which could have had any effect upon these men. There was
some muttering, but in the end the speedboat and its occu-
pants departed.

Onie and I went ashore and settled ourselves in the Ice
of a commanding rock. With the return of peace, the whale
resumed her circling rouline but at first she surfaced only
at the north end of the Pond, the farthest point away from
our moored dory. An hour passed before she came up close

157

enough so that we could see, with horror, a great slash some
three or four feet long across her back and Just forward of
her fin. The white blubber was laid bare to a depth of sev-
eral inches. When the sportsmen in the while speedboat
went back to Burgeo, they described to some of their friends
how they had bravely planed their boat at high speed over
the whale's back as she was submerging.

"Bust a sheer pin," one of them bragged, "but we cut a
Jesusly big hole into her!"

Despite the ugly appearance tit the whale's new injury,
it did not seem to distress her or to interfere with her acti-
vities which, on this day, included something I had heard
about from Uncle Art and others, but had not seen before.
Shortly before high tide she suddenly stopped her slow
patrolling and dashed, swiftly and purposefully, toward
the middle of the Pond where she began circling so close
to the surface that the water boils from her flukes made a
continuous pattern of interlocked rings. Then she again
altered course. There was a flash of greenish-white light
reflected from her undersides, followed by a swirl of water
and rising bubbles which signified that she had opened her
cavernous mouth.

"She got a smell of herring!" Onic cried excitedly. "Tides
up now. A bit of a scull must have slipped in through the
gut and she took a run at they!"

It must have been a very little school, for we were perched
where we could see the bottom of the channel and could
hardly have avoided noticing even a minor run of the
little fishes. Nor did the whale make any more attempts to
feed that day.

"I t'inks she'll starve on what herring comes into the Pond
of its own," was Onie's opinion. "She must be some hungry.
Too bad she wouldn't glutch down ary o' them young
connors in the speedboat. Put them to a mite of good, it
would."

158

We remained at the Pond until dark when, almost frozen,
we headed home. Apart from the incident with the speed-
boat, it had been a quiet day at Aldridges . . . but things
had been quite different at Messers. I had sown the wind
and poor Claire had reaped the whirlwind. She was numb
from listening to more than thirty phone calls and tele-
grams from newspapers, wire services, radio stations, and
even one from the Premier of Newfoundland.

DELIGHTED TO BE ABLE TO TELL YOU MY COLLEAGUES HAVE
ACCORDED MY REQUEST THAT WE PAY UP TO ONE THOUSAND
DOLLARS TO THE FISHERMEN OF BURGEO TO ENABLE THEM
TO SUPPLY HERRING FOR YOUR WHALE STOP WOULD YOU
UNDERTAKE TO ORGANIZE CARE AND FEEDING OF YOUR CATCH
STOP KINDEST REGARDS.

J R SMALLWOOD

As I was reading the telegram, Claire said. "I had a
phone call from a St. John's reporter. He told me the whale
story was national and even international news already,
and Joey was going to climb on the bandwagon. He also
said to tell you not to spend any"bf that thousand until you
had it in your hands."

The day had also brought photographer Bob Brooks from
the Toronto Star. Brooks had arrived late in the afternoon
aboard a chartered ski plane that had landed him two miles
inland on the ice of a small lake, from whence he had to
slog his way through knee-deep snow to the shores of Short
Reach. Luckily for him a passing fisherman saw him there
and ferried him across to Burgeo just before he froze.

He was still indignant about the isolation of Burgeo
when I arrived home to find him thawing out before our
stove.

"Hell," he said feelingly, "it's easier to get to Baffin Island
than here. What a place you chose to live!"

Not all the calls Claire answered that day were from

159

away. One of them came from the female member of the
doctor team. She was furious because I had dared tell the
outside world about the whale-as if I were some kind of
informer. But that hardly mattered because Smaltwood's
message had got around and it was beginning to dawn on
our businessmen, even on our politicians, that a real, live
whale right here in Burgeo had publicity value. FromJ>eing
no more than a massu e curiosity, fit only to provide a target
for the local sports, she now began to look like something
different-like money.

My first intimation of her new status came late that eve-
ning. Claire and I were discussing how we should handle
contributions of money which, we had been told by several
reporters, were already being collected to help feed the
whale.

"Why not ask the Sou'wcstcrs Club?" Claire suggested.
"They're a service club. They ought to be glad to do it."

I had my doubts. Nevertheless, I called one of the club's
officers. To my surprise, he not only listened with interest-
he was positively enthusiastic.

"Too bad you told them about the gunning," he began.
"But that's no great matter. The whale has sure put Burgeo
on the map. Even got Joey interested, I hear. Could be the
best thing ever happened here. Sure, we'll be glad to look
after the money. And anything else needs doing, you just
call on us."

I rang off feeling much relieved. Tlie backlash of resent-
ment which I had feared would result from my press re-
lease did not seem to have materialized.

My last task that Monday night was to visit the Hanns
to ask their opinion about whether herring were entering
the Pond in any quantity. They thought that few were
entering and that those few would soon be driven out again
by the whale's presence. So 1 arranged tor them to make a
trip to the Pond, just after high tide that night, and bar off

160

the entrance with a length of fine-mesh net which would
prevent any herring which might have entered at high
water from escaping again. This was only an interim
measure, of course. I knew we must soon find a really effec-
tive way of getting feed to her-in quantity.

Meanwhile, Claire had been busy painting a large sign
to be put up at the entrance to the channel. Maybe she
stretched a point in the wording but, after all, Joey Small-
wood had publicly appointed himself patron of the whale,
and he was the government of Newfoundland.

WARNING

THIS WHALE
MUST NOT BE
TORMENTED

Aldridges Pond Is
Closed To All Boats
Without Permission.

By order
Govt. of Newfoundland

161

Chapter 14

February opened with what promised to be a superb day;

frosty and windless, with an illimitable sky sun-faded to
pale azure. Onie Stickland was on hand even before we
finished breakfast, as anxious as I myself was to see how
the whale was making out.

Unmarried, and living with his nephew's family, Onie
seemed to lead a contented life. Everyone liked him, and
he was friendly with everyone, yet there was an elusive
quality about him-something untouchable, not to be fath-
omed. His long, melancholy face concealed its own mystery.
He was a background man, a slight, shadowed figure who
could pass unnoticed in any crowd.

If he had a confidante it was his nephew's black water-
dog, Rover. Sometimes man and dog would disappear to-
gether for hours on end. Once when I was scunning for
whales I happened to turn my binoculars on a strip of
beach some distance away, and there was Onie sitting on a
balk of driftwood. His hand was on the old dog's burly
head; his body strained forward in a listening attitude, im-
mobile, waiting or watching for something known only to
himself. For the rest, his interest in the Burgeo scene
seemed passive, almost a little vague . . . until the coming
of the whale.

From the first, Onie was strangely drawn to her. In his

162

unobtrusive way he would make himself and his dory avail
able any time I wanted to visit the Pond, and he never
asked for pay for his services. He would sit in his dory, or
on the shore rocks, watching the stately progress of the
whale as she circled round and round. He seldom took his
eyes off her. I was not fully aware of the depth of his absorp-
tion until one evening when we were leaving the Pond.
Ahead of us the Guardian surfaced and blew and, like an
echo, there came the whooshing exhalation of the lady
whale behind us. Onie stopped poling the dory through
the channel and quietly, but with great intensity, said:

"£wryt'ing ought to be free to go where it wants!"

As it he had given away too much, he turned his back
upon me and quickly bent to the flywheel of the old engine.

Those few words stuck in my mind and led me to inquire
more deeply into the nature of Onie's apparently contented
life. Only then did I learn that, all through youth and
early manhood, he had supported his ailing parents and,
after they died, had supported and stood by a crippled sister.
His life, which I had tended to think about, romantically,
as that of an independent and solitary-minded fisherman,
spent of his own choice in the security of a quiet outport,
had, in bitter truth, been a life lived out in prison-trapped
-for he, too, had dreamed. All his life Onie Stickiand had
hungered to go to sea - not fishing and not coasting, but
deep sea; to roam the oceans of the world.

If I had known this earlier. I would not have been sur-
prised that he took the plight o£ the whaie so much to
heart. He understood, and he pitied her who had once been
free and now was free no more.

Accompanied by Bob Brooks (heavily garlanded with
cameras), we arrived at the Pond to find it deserted by man-
kind. We took time to erect the new notice board at the
mouth of the channel and to refasten the net which the
Hanns had used to bar off the entrance, and which had

163

unaccountably come adrift. Then we crossed the interven-
ing ridge.

The Pond was absolutely calm, faultlessly mirroring the
surrounding hills and cliffs. Sombre it may have been, but
there were many subtle colours in the rocks, and in their
reflections, floating faithfully upon a sheet of water tha;

seemed to burn in its very depths with a still, blue flame.

The whale rose into view almost at once, blowing near
an islet on the northern shore. I set myself up with binoc-
ulars, notebook and stop-watch to observe and record her
actions, while Brooks scrambled off among the cliffs to look
for camera angles. There was a marvelously dreamy quality
about the morning. The movements of the whaie were very
rhythmic. She swam clockwise-wuh the sun, as sailors say-
remaining submerged many minutes at a time before sur-
facing to blow once or twice, and then sinking slowly out
of sight again. Because of the calmness and icy clarity of the
water, I could sometimes see her whole body shimmering'
beneath the surface.

She was not fishing, for there was probably nothing to
catch. Nevertheless, she kept up her steady, fluid progress
round and round until, all at once, the illusion of content-
ment which the day had fostered was suddenly dispelled by
a flash of memory. I saw again the steady, deadly, hypnotic
pacing of a timber wolf in a cage . . . hour after endless
hour . . . the pointless and repetitive circling of a prisoner-
In mid-morning the little police launch cautiously nosed
her way into the Pond. She anchored and Onie put me
aboard for a word with Danny and the constable. As we
sat on the warm deck watching the whale, Danny told me
that a considerable commotion was developing in Burgeo.

"Them radio broadcasts sure stirred 'cm up! They's a
bunch would like to run you over the end of the govern-
ment wharf. Mad as hell at you for sticking your nose in
where it waren't wanted. But they's plenty others thinks you

164

done right. Trouble is, most of they aren't talking much,
and the first lot talks too much."

"What do you think, Danny?"

Danny's sardonic face eased into a slight grin. "Well now,
you're a bloody fool, a-course. Still and all, 'tis toime that
trigger-happy crowd was slapped in the chops. Getting
worscr every year, they is. Was a toimc, not long since,
when a man went gunning if he needed meat. Now, be
Jasus, I t'inks some of them carries a gun to the shithouse
... in case they get a chance to shoot the neighbour's cat!"
He paused and eyed the circling whale reflectively.

" 'Tis a quare thing. I hears the Sou'westers Club is all for
the whale now. Going to feed it and cosset it. But I guess
I knows why. Might be good for business. Might help get
the government off its rump and put a highroad into
Burgeo. But here's the joke, Farley, bye ... a good part of
that lot was right here pumping lead into the poor jeezly
whale less'n a week ago."

The launch departed and once again we three were alone
with the whale, though not for long. An Otter seaplane
roared high overhead and landed in the direction of Short
Reach. Soon afterwards a power skiff entered the Pond and
unloaded a C.B.C. television crew which had been flown
in from St. John's. I knew most of the crew and was pleased
as well as surprised to see them.

"Where's your cockeyed whale, Mowat?" the lanky cam-
eraman asked as he struggled up the ridge toward me. "Or
did it come out of the bottle too many you drank last night?
My God, you've started something! Columbia Broadcasting
System's flying a crew up here from New York. Toronto put
the bee on us to get them film for C.B.C,'s national newscast to-
night, or else ... so if you don't have a whale, you'd better
get one goddamn fast!"

"There's your whale," I said, pointing to the Pond where
she had just begun to surface.

165

The four men in city clothes turned to stare in the direc-
tion indicated. Somebody gasped audibly.

She had chosen to surface not more than thirty yards off
the point where we were standing, and less than fifteen
yards beyond Onie who was sitting in the drifting dory. As
she floated up out of the deeps, her massive, green-tinged
bulk seemed to be magnified to unbelievable propor-
tions by the distortion of the water. Current boils the si?e
of swimming pools marked the thrust of her flukes. Then
the sleek black dome of the breathing hump broke surface
and a column of mist shot twenty feet into the air, hung
like a diaphanous haze against the sun, and slowly began to
fade as the entire length of the beast's back wheeled into
view and sank below again. It was some time before anyone
spoke; then the cameraman turned to me and his usually
quizzical face seemed oddly solemn.

"Holy Mother of God!" he said softly. "You've got a
whale!"

After that I was ignored. There was a wild scramble to set
up the camera gear, and not until the last foot of film had
been shot did anyone have further time for me.

While they were taking down the tripods, the producer
offered me a drink from his flask. "You know, Farley.
they're treating this whole thing as a kook story on the
mainland. Ahab Mowat and Moby Dick sort of bit. Funny
cartoons in the newspapers. Max Ferguson did a hilarious
skit on national radio this morning about a fight between
Prime Minister Pearson and Smallwood, whether it was
a provincial whale or a federal whale. We thought it was a
kook yarn too. Not anymore. Did you ever see anything so
damned big? Poor bloody beast. I hope you save its life. I
hope you get it out of here somehow."

One of the things I tried to do that day was to determine
the damage done by the gunners. After the C.B.C crew de-

166

parted I joined Onie in the dory and we rowed some fifty
yards off shore and then sat motionless. Because of the ex-
ceptional cla.ity of the water, it was possible to get a look
at the whale's underbody when she passed close alongside.
On one occasion she surfaced within a dory-length of us and
I had the uncanny feeling that the gaze of her great eye-it
seemed to be as large as a man's head-was directed straight
at me. Certainly she must have had as good a look at us as
we did at her. Time and again she passed directly beneath
the dory, or a few feet to either side, as if she were deliber-
ately courting our company.

The slice across the base of her fin, a hand-breadth wide,
showed a layer of yellowish-white blubber about six inches
thick, with a dark red, almost black, cut in the underlying
muscle tissue. By comparison to this, her numerous other
wounds seemed trivial. I counted about a hundred and fifty
small white breaks in the black skin which were certainly
bullet holes; but on that huge animal they seemed of little
more significance than mosquito bites on a man. They were
not bleeding and their apparent unimportance strength-
ened my hopes that the shooting had perhaps done her no
serious harm. I was happy to believe that the vast bulk of
muscle and bone beneath the blubber could doubtless ab-
sorb rifle bullets as easily as a bull might absorb a charge
of shotgun pellets fired into his rump.

My optimistic assessment of her wounds, together with
the evidence of her apparently undistressed behaviour, con-
vinced me that the corner had been turned. With the out-
side help which I was now sure would soon be on its way, I
believed we might win the battle for her life and freedom.

But it could not be won until we had solved the prob-
lem of feeding her. I could see tor myself that she was
rapidly losing weight. Her back was becoming V-shaped,
and the bulges which marked the locations of her enormous

167

vertebrae, increasingly distinct. Her rapid loss of weight,
together with the absence of any very young1 whales in the
family pod, strengthened my suspicion that she was preg-
nant. There was no way I could be sure about this, but I
had to work on the assumption that she was carrying a calf,
and one, moreover, that could not be much more than two
months short of term.

The picture was not all dark. It herring were needed" in
quantity, at least they were to be found close at hand. The
difficulty was to get them into Aldridges Pond and hold
them there until they became whale dinners. One solution
might have been to hire a few men to run gill nets in Short
Reach and then haul dory loads of freshly netted herring
into the Pond and dump them there. However, I had my
doubts whether she would, or could, take dead food. A Fin
Whale's head is formed for engulfing living, swimming
schools of fish, or concentrations of plankton, in mid-water,
and not for scooping dinner off the bottom, even assum-
ing that a Finner would cat carrion at all.

The opportune arrival of the Hanns with a big load of
cod from The Ha Ha gave me an idea. We rowed over to
where they were cutting and I asked them to save the cods'
belly contents, which consisted almost exclusively of her-
ring. When they had finished, Onie and I took their big
bait-box, which now contained about 200 pounds ot dead
herring, and, balancing it precariously across the forward
gunwales of the dory, we rowed to a point off the islet where
the whale was in the habit of surfacing.               ,

We let her make several undisturbed circuits of the Pond
and on the fourth, just as the green-white mass of her chin
was rising out of the depths towards us, Onie pulled the
dory into her path, while I tipped the bait-box overboard.

The herring sank belly up through the clear water, glit-
tering like metallic confetti. The whale had only to open

168

her mouth and accelerate a little in order to scoop in the
entire mass. She did nothing of the kind. With an almost
imperceptible motion of her nippers, she swung gently to
one side, avoiding the cloud of dead food, and passing on to
surface and blow a hundred yards away. It was an experi-
ment which did not need to be repealed. Clearly she needed
a supply of living herring which she could catch for herself.

Reluctantly leaving the Pond (for I knew the superb
weather could not last and I hated to waste any of it), Onie
and I set off to visit the manager of the fish plant who at
my request had arranged a conference with my new allies,
the members of the Sou'westers Club.

I was a little nervous about my reception at the plant
which, according to Danny, had become hostile territory to
whale-lovers. Leaving Onie with the dory, I walked to the
office past a number of men whom I knew had been in-
volved in the gunning of the whale. Although nothing was
said, there was no masking their hostility. The atmosphere
at the office was quite different.1 The manager greeted me
warmly and called in several other senior employees who
were also Sou'westers. We began discussing the problem
of how to feed the whale. As a first step, the manager
volunteered to have his men construct an open-work barge,
ballasted so its hinged top would float just at water level,
in which live herring could be transported. The plan was
to tow the filled barge through the channel and release its
contents in the Pond. The manager thought the barge
could be ready the following morning.

This was fine, but we were still left with the basic prob-
lem of how to get the live herring with which to fill the
barge. While we were mulling this over, one of the Sou'-
westers asked if I had happened to hear a radio address de-
livered by Premier Smaltwood a couple of hours earlier, in
which the Premier had said not only that the whale was now

169

the official property of the province, but that the govern
ment intended to do everything necessary to save its life.

Because I had been at the Pond I missed this broadcast
but, hearing it now, remembered a telegram received the
previous day from a friendly sailor on the Harmon II, a
herring seiner owned by the Newfoundland government
and used for the training of outport crews. The Harmon
was lying inactive at her berth in Cornerbrook on the west
side of the island and the sailor wondered if she could be
put to work catching herring for our whale. I told the
Sou'westers about the telegram, and added;

"If Smallwood means what he says he can hardly refuse,to
send the Harmon. It shouldn't take her more than a day
or two to get here. With her gear she can seine a hundred
tons a day and we can turn Aldridges into the biggest damn
herring bowl in history!"

"Might take some time to arrange, though," the plant
manager said cautiously. "Government don't always move
too quick, you know."

"Well, all right. In the meantime why don't we call Brit-
ish Columbia Packers at Hermitage? They're fishing at
least a dozen seiners on the coast; some of them right here
among the islands. We'll ask them to donate a few tons of
live herring as a stop-gap until we get the Harmon."

I picked up the manager's phone and, after fuming
through the usual delays, reached a B.C. Packers official in
Hermitage. I told him our needs and waited expectantly
while he took a few seconds to think it over.

"Sorry," he said at last, "we can't spare the herring. Need
all we can get to keep our plant working full shift. Sorry
about your whale . . ."

He hung up before I could become abusive. The plant
manager calmed me down.

"Listen now. There just might be some old capelin seines

170

around. We could find out easy enough. We could maybe
hire a crowd and hand-seine into the cove at Aldridges to-
night when the tide's high. Might be able to purse what
herring there is in the cove and drag the seine right in
through the gut. Then all we'd have to do was keep the
entrance barred off till the whale had her feed."

Since this appeared to be the only course open for the
moment, we decided to give it a try.

171

Chapter 15

I arrived home to be met by a distracted Claire. "Thank
heavens you're back!" was her relieved greeting. "There ...
that damned telephone again! You answer it!"

The call was for Bob Brooks from his impatient editor,
ordering him to depart from Burgeo that very night.

"Bloody fool," Brooks muttered after he rang off. "Does
he think I'm going to call a cab, or maybe jump aboard the
next Air Canada jet? Where in hell does he think I am?"

It was a good question. Most of our callers seemed to
believe Burgeo was a suburb of Halifax, or maybe of
Boston. The very impatient producer of a major v s. net-
work show had telephoned to inform Claire that he and his
crew were catching the first scheduled flight to Burgeo and
would be on hand next morning.

"Tell Mr. Mowat to have 110 volt power available beside
the whale tor lights, and we'll need two half-ton trucks nnd
a station wagon to carry our gear from the airport."

Claire rose nobly to that one. In the most winsome ac-
cents, she replied: "We'll try to find you some gasoline
lanterns. I'm sorry but there is no airline and no airport.
It you can find a charter ski-plane to take you as far as Gull
Pond we can probably get a dog-team to pick you up there.
But do bring your snowshoes, just in case."

172

As we sat down to a hurried meal, I leafed through the
messages. There was another telegram from the Premier.

I HAVE THE PLEASURE AND HONOUR TO INFORM YOU THAT
YOU ARE APPOINTED KEEPER OF THE WHALE STOP THE
OFFICIAL DOCUMENT RECITING YOUR APPOINTMENT WILL
BE FORWARDED IN DUE COURSE STOP KINDEST REGARDS.

J R SMALLWOOD

"What the devi! is that all about?" I asked in bewilder-
ment,

"Joey was interviewed about it on the C.B.C. this after-
noon," Claire explained. "He said the whale is worth a hun-
dred million dollars in free publicity to Newfoundland.
Canadian Press wired a copy of an interview they did with
him. Here, read it for yourself."

St. John's, Nfld. c.p.

Author Parley Mowat has been officially appointed
Keeper of the Whale and an appropriate uniform for the
office is under consideration. Premier Joseph Smallwood
announced in the Legislature.

"We have not decided upon a uniform," Mr. Small-
wood said. "He normally wears a kilt. But I'm sure we
would not want him monkeying around with an 80-ton
whale wearing a kilt."

As laughter rippled through the House, the Premier
cautioned that no member or citizen should "take lightly
the extension of this great tradition in Britain's oldest
colony."

He quoted The Keeper of the King's Purse and The
Keeper of the King's Conscience as other examples of
the office, adding, "It has now been extended to New-
foundland for the first time with this appointment."

173

"The whale has a name now, too," Claire said. "You'd
never guess . . . it's Moby Joe! For good old Joey himself."

"It may strain his famous sense of humour a bit when he
finds out his namesake is a lady, and probably pregnant to
boot," I replied. "Well, let him have his (un. Main thing is
he's officially said the whale is under government protec-
tion, I'm going to wire him to send the liarmon down."

Smallwood and the mass media were not the only ones
to "climb aboard" the whale that day. There was a message
from an entrepreneur in Montreal offering me $100,000.00
if I would deliver her, alive and in good condition, to the
World's Fair, Expo '67. Another offer came from a circus
owner in Louisiana stating he would be happy to buy the
whale if I would have her stuffed or otherwise preserved for

exhibition.

Canadian marine science now also awoke, if only par-
tially. to its golden opportunity. A biologist, who was too
busy to come and see the whale for himself, sent the follow-
ing telegram instead.

DESIRE OBSERVATIONS OF WHALE BY CRITICAL OBSERVER
SUCH AS YOURSELF LIKE TIME IN SECONDS BETWEEN BLOWS
OVER TWENTY-FOUR HOUR PERIOD STOP CORRELATION
ACTIVITIES WITH A DECREASED BLOW RATE STOP FEEDING
BEHAVIOUR IN DETAIL INCLUDING SPEED AND RADIUS OF
TURNING STOP AVOIDANCE OF OBSTACLES AND DEFINITE
PLAY BEHAVIOUR STOP HOW MANY EXCRETIONS OBSERVED
TWENTY-FOUR HOURS . . .

Not all the responses from the outer world were as
absurd. There were a number of telegrams from individuals
whom I did not know, and would never meet, which were
simple and moving affirmations of the fact that some human
beings could care about the unhappy plight of a distressed
member of another species. These messages were some-


174

thing of an antidote to the unpleasant suspicion that I had
got myself involved in a public circus. And, too, they helped
ease the guilt I was feeling at the brutal and unthinking
assault upon the people of Burgeo as a whole by the media-
an assault which I had been instrumental in unleashing.

Almost every story printed or broadcast during those first
few days took pains to stress the attack made on the whale
by the riflemen, making it sound as though the entire
population of Burgeo had taken part in an orgy of blood-
letting. Many writers and broadcasters took a tone of holier-
than-thou revulsion against the barbarism of an uncouth
band of savages.

For years I had been publicly extolling the virtues of
people on the fringes of "civilization," whether they lived
in arctic igloos, aboard ocean-going tugs, on prairie farms
or on the coasts of Newfoundland. I had celebrated their
unsophisticated honesty, defending them against the smug
contempt of admass man. I had sought to be their cham-
pion-and now, because of my feeling of kinship for the
whale, I was being made to look as if I had turned against
the outport people and had joined their detractors.

The seining effort had been arranged by the Sou'westers
during the afternoon and now they called me to say it
would consist of the two Anderson brothers -a pair of dour
little men who owned the only capelin seine in Burgeo;

Kenneth and Douglas Hann;,and Curt Bungay and Wash
Pink. The Hanns and the Andersons would each provide a
dory to assist in working the seine. Although high tide was
not due until after midnight, I thought it would be wise to
make a preliminary reconnaissance soon after dark. Curt
agreed and we set off in his boat.

The sea, black and motionless as stretched silk. was liter-
ally alive with herring. Immense schools drove off on either

175

bow. They were right at the surface and, as they dashed
away from the boat, the ebony face of the waters suddenly
glowed in pale bands of saffron phosphorescence. Occa-
sionally one shoal overrode another and thousands of
herring broke through the surface and sparkled in ihe
beams of our running lights like myriad shards of mirror
glass. When I turned the spotlight downward, it revealed
layer upon layer of silvered fishes as far as the light could
penetrate.

Only once before had I witnessed such a stunning aggre-
gation of living things. That was in 1947 when I watched
the mass migration of tens of thousands of Barrenland
caribou over the Keewatin tundra. At the time it had
seemed inconceivable to me that anything could diminish
such multitudes of living creatures; yet, before a decade
had passed, the caribou had been virtually eliminated from
much of their immense arctic range.

On that winter night in 1967, it seemed inconceivable
that such vast numbers of herring could ever be signifi-
cantly diminished even by man's monstrous predation; and
yet by 1972 those vast schools had been so heavily decimated
that informed biologists were predicting an end to the
herring fishery in the entire North Atlantic before the end
of the decade.

The little cove outside the Pond was jammed with her-
ring. "Lard Jasus!" cried Curt with the uninhibited enthu-
siasm of a true fisherman. "Would you look at that! I don't
say as what a man couldn't git out and walk ashore and
never wet his feet!"

» For fear of disturbing the schools, we did not enter the
cove but instead landed a few yards farther down the open
shore. With the aid of flashlights we scrambled over the
slippery rocks to the channel in order to remove the barrier
net the Harms had put in place. Someone had been before

176

us. The head-rope of the net had been cleanly sliced and
the net itself had already been hauled ashore in a tangled
heap.

When I asked the Hanns tor an explanation of the ruined
barrier net, they were evasive. Not until later, when Curt
and I were alone in his kitchen awaiting the arrival of the
Andersons with the seine, did I get an explanation.

"Seems as if some of the people down to The Reach is right
ugly about you barring off the Pond," Curt said. "Claim
nobody got the right to bar off a boat passage. Not you, nor
the Mountie, nor Joey hisselt."

"But," I protested, "the Hanns fixed the net so anybody
could slip one end of it and pass a boat through with no
trouble. The fishermen must know it's not intended to keep
them out of the Pond. It's just to keep the herring in."

"No matter, Parley. 'Tis partly that sign you put up say-
ing the Pond is closed. We . . . them fellows been free to
come and go on the water anywhere they wants, all their
lives. If you was to bar the channel with anchor chain I
don't say they wouldn't cut it clear somehow."
I was getting angry.

"That's just damn stupid! Surely they realize we have to
hold herring in the Pond. And it won't be forever . . . not
more than a month at most . . . Well, the hell with it! The
channel's going to be barred and it's going to stay barred
so long as need be."

Curt's round, red face was impassive and he made no
reply. I got to my feet, "Let's get the crowd and go. It's mid-
night and we've work to do."

The moon was up by the time our three-boat flotilla
deployed off the mouth of the cove. Quietly the men fed
the hundrcd-yard-long seine over the stern of Curt's boat
as she slowly moved parallel to the shore. The Andersons,
in one dory, were left to hold the free end. When the net

177

was all paid out, t^ie second dory, manned by the Hanns,
took the remaining end. Then both dories moved landward
toward the cove.

The curved net began inching shoreward, as Curt, Wash
and I waited, watching silently. Then, as-if there had been
an explosion down under, there came a violent eruption
and a surge of water that set us rolling wildly. I instinctively
grabbed for the gunwales to brace myself just as a sonorous
whoosh sounded so close at hand I thought for a moment it
was in the boat itself. A fine mist: settled over us. Trans-
fixed, we stared astern where the streaming back of the
Guardian was arching smoothly under, not a dory's length
away. Curt was the first to recover.
"Lard God Almighty! That was close enough! Hope the
buggar's got his radar working! What the devil do you
suppose . . . ?"

He was interrupted as the usually imperturbable Wash
Pink shouted:

"Look, bye, look there! Look at them herring drive!"

Fifty feet to port, between us and the entrance to the
cove, the water was surging with the bodies of wildly flee-
ing herring. In the glare of the spotlight it looked like
a groundswetl running to shore after a storm. The swell
seemed to break against the right-hand section of the seine
and along the remaining gap between the Andersons' dory
and the shore.

Curt and I looked at each other.

"You don't think . . . ?" I began hesitantly. "You don't
think he did that on purpose, do you?"

"Purpose or no, Farley, bye, he sure and hell druv a couple
hundred barrels right straight into the cove."

Later the Hanns told us the rush and flow of herring
under and around them had rocked their dory. Kenneth
had no doubt at ail as to what had happened.

178

"That whale you calls the Guardian, we t'inks he has his
own way of doing for the one inside. Me and Doug've seen
he rush the cove like that afore. 'Tis certain he be trying
to drive herring into the Pond for she to eat."

Fortunately for our nerves, the Guardian did not re-
appear. In a few minutes the two ends of the seine were in
shoal water. Wearing hip waders, the four fishermen went
over the sides of their dories and began pursing the seine
through the cove toward the mouth of the channel- Penned
ahead of them was what we later estimated to have been
about five tons of milling little fishes.

When the trapped school was almost in the mouth of the
channel, the men began wading back and forth along the
perimeter of the seine, banging the surface oE the water,
shouting, and shining flashlights into the seething mass.
Finally an arrow stream of fishes sped into the channel and
in a moment the entire school was pouring into Aldndges.

It was too dark to see what was happening beyond the
channel, but the swoosh and surge of water, and a mighty
splashing of flukes, told us that the prisoner was hungrily
enjoying the bounty we had provided.

The first sweep was a great success, but a second failed
when the seine snagged on the rocky bottom and allowed
most of the herring to escape. Nevertheless, the men man-
aged to bag four or five barrels in one end of the net, and
they decided to tow the bag right through the channel.
Kenneth Hann described what followed:

"We was no more'n ten feet inside the Pond when we
opened up the bag and let the herring go free. I had a holt
of the seine and was leaning overside to see was they all
clear, when Dougie yelled for me to look arter myself. I
turned me head and there was the whale coming straight
for we with her mouth open wider'n the main hatch of the
Baccalieu. She was pushing water ahead of her like one of

179

them ocean liners, and the dory rose right up and near cap-
sized.

"By the time I got me bearings she was gone again. And
I tells you, bye, it never took we long to be gone out of
there ourselves. IE they was a herring she never got, he must
have been some slick. She could have had we just as easy,
but she never bothered. 'Twas just as well. I never did
envy that fellow Jonah anyhow."

All in all it had been a good day. Temporarily, at least,
we had solved the feeding problem. And we knew for sure
that the lady in the Pond had a good appetite and was
able and anxious to fill her belly.

ISO

Chapter 16

I woke late, to the familiar whine of a sou'west wind and
the dry rustle of snow blasting against the house. Already,
great grey seas were pounding the headlands of the offer
islands. It was clear there would be small chance to visit the
whale this day. I viewed the storm with mixed feelings. We
could do no further seining while the sou'wester lasted but,
on the other hand, the whale would be left in peace, free
of human interference and intrusions, to feed on the her-
ring we had already driven into the Pond.

But if she was to have a day of peace, we were not. Before
I had been up ten minutes I was called to the phone, and
for the balance of the day was engaged in dealing with an
almost continuous telephonic siege.

Many of the calls were querulous requests for help from
newsmen and camera crews stranded in storm-bound air-
ports all the way from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to St. John's,
Newfoundland. Some of them seemed to take the storm,
and Burgeo's isolation from the world, as personal affronts.
How was it, asked one television interviewer, with an edge
in his voice, that he had recently been able to cover stories
in Helsinki, Tokyo and Chile, all within the space of a
week, but couldn't reach a godforsaken little burg in his
own country?

181

A bit impatiently I explained that he could always do as
we natives did and catch the weekly steamer to Burgeo from
Port Aux Basques. This suggestion seemed to give him
little comfort.

It also gave small comfort to Bob Brooks. He was now
in a fever of impatience to be gone with what was still a
photographic scoop on the whale. However, although the
westbound coastal boat was due in Burgeo this day, he
could not be persuaded to book passage in her. Apparently
modern media man, deprived of winged machines, is some-
thing of a cripple. And it was obvious that the only wings
we were going to see over Burgeo for the next day or two
would belong to storm-tossed gulls.

I did not feel much sympathy for the problems of the
news people but it was quite another matter when I got a
call from Dr. William E. Schevill at the marine research
station. Woods Hole, Massachusetts. I knew Schevill to be
one of the world's foremost whale biologists. He told me
he had heard about our whale and was ready to come to
Burgeo at once. His difficulty was how to get to us. I sug-
gested he try to arrange something with the u.s. Naval air
base at Argentia in southeast Newfoundland. This he did
with such dispatch that he was able to call me from Argentia
late that evening with ihe news that not only had he reached
Newfoundland, but he was standing by with an amphibious
Navy aircraft at his disposal, ready to descend on Burgeo
the moment the weather cleared.

"It may not clear for days. If you want to be sure of getting
here, you'd better come by sea," I told him, adding halt-
facetiously that he might ask the Navy to lend him a des-
troyer.

Alas, the Navy was not to be persuaded. The storm had
worsened and the Naval commander at Argentia decided
that the roaring rock wall of the Sou'West Coast was no
place for one of his ships.

182

The Burgeo whales seem to have decided that the inshore
waters were no place for them that day either.

Early in the morning the Canadian government ship
Montgomery, which maintained and serviced lighthouses
and navigation aids on the coast, put into Burgeo for shelter.
She dropped two anchors in the mouth of Short Reach only
a few hundred yards from the entrance to Aldridges Pond
and there she rode out the gale for the next two days. One
of her people, an oceanographer, made the most of this
opportunity to watch the Burgeo whales.

Shortly after the Montgomery came to anchor, a pod ot
four appeared in the mouth of The Reach. They were fish-
ing hard, as if perhaps they knew it might be some time be
fore they would teed again. Time after time they worked
shoals of herring in toward Greenhill Island and the ocean-
ographer could see sudden flurries of little fishes break the
surface at the end of each whale's rush.

About noon, by which time the sea was building to for-
midable size, three members of the pod swam past the ship
in close formation, heading resolutely southeast toward
open water. When their spouts were last seen they were
nearly a mile offshore.

"I guessed what they were up to," the oceanographer told
me later. "We'd heard the marine forecasts and we knew
there was a devil of a blow coming. Our skipper had to
choose between running in to the lee of the land for shelter
- which he did - or heading out to sea to get as much of an
offing as we could. And I think the whales must have had
just about as good an idea of what was brewing as we did.
Only their choice was to go offshore. It made sense. Even in
as good an anchorage as ours, the groundswell was bad
enough to keep the ship tugging at her anchors like a wild
horse. The surge coming right up from the bottom would
have made lying uncomfortable for a whale. But once away
from land they could go way below the turbulence and drift

183

around in comfort with just the occasional trip back up to
spout. It's the same principle submariners use in a storm:

go deep and find the quiet water."

Though three of the pod made this choice, one of the
whales remained "on station," as the watcher put it, seldom
more than a quarter of a mile from the mouth o£ Aldridges
Pond.

"That would have been your Guardian whale, I expect.
And I'll tell you, he never shirked his duty. Except when the
snow drift got too thick, or at night, every time I looked
that way I'd soon see his spout. It was curious how often he
spouted, too. When the pod was fishing together they only
blew about once every ten minutes, but this chap was up
and down every two or three minutes and he'd sometimes
stay up for quite a while, usually when he was right at the
entrance to Aldridges Pond. I got the idea he was thinking
of having a go at the channel himself, though I never
actually saw him try ic."

While the rest of the family went seaward, leaving the
Guardian at his post, the lady whale remained unmolested
in the Pond. But when Danny and Murdoch made a patrol
in mid-morning, before the weather got too rough, they
found that the barrier net, which we had replaced the pre-
vious evening, had again been cut adrift and badly muti-
lated.

"The whale seemed right contented," Danny reported.
"We stayed about half an hour and she swam right up to
we, as it she recognized us and was glad to have a visit. Once
or twice I thought she was going to rub along our side like
a cat'll rub against a man's leg. Thank God she didn't do it.
She'd have heeled the old launch right over on her side."

Danny had one disquieting thing to say. "Remember
when we first saw her, her back was smooth as a baby's bum?
Now she looks sort of lumpy over pretty near the whole of
her topsides. Don't know what to make of it."

184

Without giving it much thought, I assumed this "lumpy"
appearance to have been due to a continuing loss of weight,
and it made me even more concerned a'-out the food supply.
There was no way of telling when our barrier net had been
cut, or how much of the herring school had escaped.

Since by Thursday noon Premier Smallwood had not
replied to my request for the Harmon, I sent another even
more urgent wire in which I also asked that the R.C.M.P. be
empowered to protect the barrier net and to restrict boat
movement in the Pond.                         y

Although there was no direct response from the Premier,
rumours began to filter in from St. John's to the effect that
the Harmon would be sent; that she was already on her way,
and even that Smallwood himself would make an official
visit to his ward on Saturday.

As the gale increased during Thursday night, so did my
problems. Curt Bungay stumbled through the blizzard, his
crimson face positively blazing from the wind, to tell me
that the Hanns and Andersons wanted to be paid immedi-
ately for their work.

"Wash and me," Curt explained in some embarrassment,
"we's satisfied to wait, but the others says on account of Joey
give you a t'ousand dollars for whale teed, some of it rightly
ought to go.to all of we right now."

"But I haven't got the money yet. It's only promised."

"I believes it, but they fellows thinks you got it in your
pocket. They won't believe no different."

"How much are they asking?"

"Well... they figures each man should get $25.00 for each
fishing, and $10.00 for each dory, and $20.00 for the seine."

"That's $200.00 a time!" I protested.
Curt nodded. " 'Tis high, that's certain ... but they's lots
of hard feelings in Burgeo right now. Some says it's a cruel
waste for the government to give money for to feed a whale
at all. Some says . . ." he paused, reluctant to continue.

185

"What do 'some' say?" I asked grimly.

"Well, Parley, bye, 'tis this way. Some says you and that
Sou'wester crowd is only looking out to yourselves. They
can't stomach the way some of they fellows shot at the whale
one day and set theyselves up to save it the next. They.
thinks you fellows is going to pocket whatever money
comes."

"Anything else?" I snapped.

Curt was almost too upset to answer. However, he also
had a temper, and it was rising.

"Well, . . yiss. .. since you asks. There's people so ugly at
the closing off of the Pond, they says they'll finish off the
whale afore they lets you bar they out. They got their rights,
you knows. Nobody takes easy to it when they gets their
rights took from them!"

The defiant note in his voice gave me pause. "Al! right,
Curt, I'm sorry. Nobody's going to stamp on anybody's
rights. You can tell the crowd I'll pay them what they want
only they'll just have to wait until the money comes."

"Me and Wash'11 wait, sure. and no charge for our boat
neither . . . but I don't know about them fellows." Curt
stood up and began buttoning his pea jacket. Then, hesi-
tantly, he fished out a damp piece of paper and laid it on the
table. "Don't know as you see this . . . 'twas posted up at the
plant today."

With a quick "goodnight," he was gone into the storm,
leaving me to study a mimeographed hand-out.

Citizens of Burgeo

Dear Neighbours:

You are well aware that in the past week or so there
has been more publicity about Burgeo than there has ever
been before. At this time when the citizens of the town
and their elected representatives are doing everything in

186

their power to get urgently needed facilities - i.e., Water,
Sewer, Streets and Highways - this publicity is of im-
measurable value.

Moby Joe is and will continue to be one of the most
important "inhabitants" of our town as long as we can
maintain it. As more and more people learn that Burgeo
has a whale, we will have more and more people coming
here to see and study it. The more people who come, the
more important the town is and the more imperative it is
that those in authority provide the facilities which are so
urgently needed.

Will you cooperate with your neighbours in their
efforts to keep Moby Joe alive and healthy? You can do
this by not using your boat in the Pond for pleasure
cruising. We do not ask fishermen or those carrying water
to stay out because they usually do not disturb the whale.
It is imperative though that speedboats do not enter the
Pond since this does scare the whale and could cause him
to ground.

We, your neighbours, are depending on you, and we
trust you will cooperate.

By all means go and see your whale. If you go to
Richards Hole and cross over from there, you will have a
perfect view and you will not disturb Moby Joe.
Sincerely yours,

THE SOU'WESTERS

I was annoyed, tor I could see how this flier, a copy of which
was later mailed to every family in Burgeo, would fan the
hostility against the Sou'westers, with whom I now found
myself bedded.

My mood was lightened by a phone call from Marie
Penny, the "Queen of Ramea," as she was affectionately
called, a widow woman of formidable ability and almost
equally formidable presence, who owned and operated a

187

small fish plant on Ramea Island, some fifteen miles from
Burgeo. Marie was an old friend of ours.

"Hear you've got a new pet, Farley? Having trouble- feed
ing it, are you? Asked Joey for a seiner, eh? Heard it on
the radio just now. Well, boy, my guess is your whale'll be
dead of old age before you see the Harmon. You should
know better than to frusta politician! Nowthen.we'vegota
big capelin trap over here- Cost us $5000.00 and it's as good
as new. Should work as well on herring as on capelin. I'll
put it aboard the Pennyluck when she gels back from
Hermitage where she's holed up waiting out the storm. You
get somebody with some sense to set it and your whale will
have a stomach ache from overeating. No ... no ... never
mind the thanks. Just see you don't tear the bottom out of
it."

Marie's was the last call that night. The telephone went
dead and we were able to go to bed. But the conflicts in my
mind kept me from sleeping. I lay listening to the thunder
of the seas and the pulsating howl of wind, feeling the house
quiver on its granite rock.

What, I wondered, was the whale doing in the bitter
darkness of this raging night? What had she felt during the
long days of her captivity?

Pain, she had surely felt - and fear. Had she felt despair?
Did she have any hope of eventual escape? As she circled
the confines of the prison Pond, did she ponder the horror
of her probable fate? What wordless thoughts were passing
between her and the Guardian? What did she feel about
the two-legged beasts who at first tried to kill her and who
were now driving herring into her prison?

No answers . . . none. Her mind was as alien to mine as
mine to hers. Strangers . . - strangers ... we were all aliens,
one to the other, even those of us who were cloaked in the
same fleshly shapes. What did I really know of the inner-
most feelings even of my Burgeo neighbours... or they of

188

mine? What did the world beyond Burgeo know, or care, of
the passions the whale's coming was unleashing in this com-
munity? Was there any real comprehension or true com-
munication even between the human actors involved in
this bizarre drama? The more I thought about it all, the
more I realized that the inter-human conflict would grow
worse for want of understanding. It might well become
intolerable. Suddenly I wanted nothing quite so much as
to see the trapped whale freed ... not only for her sake now,
but for my own ease as well. I wanted her away from Burgeo
where her presence had become a threatening shadow of
disruption.

... I dozed, and dreamed vividly of the whale. She had
become a veritable monster and I was fleeing from her . . .
drowning in the unfamiliar element. I woke, sweating, and
knew the truth.

The whale was not alone in being trapped. We were all
trapped with her. If the natural patterns of her life had been
disrupted, then so had ours. An awesome mystery had in-
truded into the closely circumscribed order of our lives;

one that we terrestrial bipeds could not fathom, and one,
therefore, that we would react against with instinctive fear,
violence, and hatred. This riddle from the deeps was the
measure of humanity's unquenchable ignorance of life.
This impenetrable secret, which had become the core of our
existence in this place, was a mirror in which we saw our
own distempered faces ... and they were ugly.

189

Chapter 17

On Friday the gale built to hurricane strength. By evening
the anemometer was registering gusts of 80 miles an hour.
During most of the day it was hardly possible to leave the
house, let alone visit; the whale. We remained apart: she in
her prison, I in mine.

I spent [lie morning considering ways to free her. At
noon I telephoned some friends in the Canadian Navy at
Halifax. Between us we worked oul a scheme. If I could get
clearance from Detence Headquarters in Ottawa, they told
me, the Navy would be happy to send in a team of frogmen
to manhandle the boulders out of the south channel and
deepen it as much as possible. (We could not risk using ex-
plosives.) Wuh the next spring tide, which would come in
three weeks' time, a section of steel-mesh anti-submarine
net, floated by 43 g.illon drums, would be rigged across the
Pond like a gigantic seine to shepherd the whale toward the
entrance. If she refused to attempt the passage on her own, I
was prepared to use tranquillizer darts which would im-
mobilize her so she could literally be hauled, or pushed,
through the channel by main force.

I knew that the use of drugs would be terribly risky
because too large a dose would render her unconscious and
she might drown. So I phoned a whale expert in California

190

who had had experience tranquillizing large porpoises. He
was appalled by the magnitude of the undertaking.

"It'll have to be by guess and by God. I can tell you what
specific drugs might work and help you get a supply by air,
but I can only guess at the dosage. It's the hell of a chance,
but if it's that or letting her die where she is, I guess it's
worth trying."

Finally, I again called Jack McClelland in Toronto, ex-
plained what I had in mind, and asked him to obtain the
cooperation of the Department of Defence. lie groaned, but
agreed to do his best.

I also called an officer o£ the Sou'wesiers Club to ask if
they and the town council would put additional pressure on
the Newfoundland government to send the Harmon. I had
heard a radio report, which later proved false, that she had
been dispatched to Burgeo but had been recalled because of
the storm. Since the forecast called for a fine day on Satur-
day, I could see no reason why she could not reach us by
Saturday evening. The Sou'westers' spokesman agreed to
speak to the council but when I went on to describe the
plans for freeing the whale, he became noticeably cool.

"Why turn her loose?" he asked. "She's doing good in the
Pond. When we get the Harmon we can put enough herring
into it to teed her for months. We ought to keep her there.
No place else in the world's got a tame Fin Whale. It'd be a
sin to turn her loose when she can do so much for Burgeo."

I was learning to be cautious, so I only mumbled some-
thing noncommittal and rang off. There was no point in my
adding more fuel to the fires that were already smouldering
in Burgeo.

I tried to shut my mind to what was happening in the
community and concentrate on the three essentials: keep-
ing the whale fed; keeping her protected; and arranging to
set her tree when the moment came.

By midnight Friday there was still no message from

191

Premier Smallwood about the Harmon and I was beginning
to despair of ever seeing her. However, I hoped we could
repeat the seining operation at the cove on Saturday night,
and by Sunday I expected to have Marie Penny's capelin
trap in operation.

As for protecting the whale ... in the continued absence
of any firm orders to the R.C.M.P. constable, this would have
to remain my personal responsibility and I decided that the
only way 1 could ensure her safety was to camp out at the
Pond. The Sou'wcsters agreed to erect a small tent for me
on the shore at Aldndges, and supply it with a sto\c and
fuel. It could also serve as a field headquarters for the
scientists if, and when, any of them should arrive. Schevill
was still trying hard to reach us. He called at one o'clock in
the morning to say the u.s. Navy was now planning to fly
him to Burgeo before noon on Saturday.

In the outer world, interest in the whale had flared far
beyond anything I had anticipated, and was becoming a
nuisance. Radio stations from as far away as Texas and
Colorado tried to tape interviews with me on the crackling
telephone. There were wires from a Swiss newspaper syn-
dicate and a magazine in Australia demanding information.

During Friday night the storm blew itself out, leaving a
silence that was almost palpable. Saturday dawned an arctic
day, icy clear and fiercely cold, with near zero tempera-
tures. It was ideal weather, at least in Burgco, for the ski-
and float-equipped planes that were poised in a great semi-
circle to the west, north and east, ready to descend on us
with their loads of scientists, media people and, possibly,
even Joey Smallwood himself.

One of the aircraft standing by at Gander had been
chartered to pick up Bob Brooks, whose editor had in-
structed him to get some aerial shots of the whale as he
departed. I consented to this on the understanding that the

192

plane would stay at least 2000 feet above the Pond, and
would not make more than two or three passes.

Brooks agreed, and Onie and I dropped him off at the
country path leading to Gull Pond before going on to Ald-
ridges. We had to sheer through a skim of cat ice that was
forming in the protected runs between the islands, and the
possibility that the Pond itself might freeze occurred to me.
It was not an immediate danger since I expected that an
eighty-ton whale would be able to break its way through
a considerable thickness of salt-water ice-
Near the mouth of Short Reach we saw the spouts of at
least two whales and assumed they were members of the
family pod returned from their deep-sea sanctuary. As we
had come to expect, the Guardian was in his usual place,
patrolling between Fish Rock and the cove. We had grown
so used to his presence - and perhaps he had grown so used
to ours - that when our courses threatened to meet, Onie
did not even slow the engine, but the whale sounded in
good time to avoid a collision.

Onie smiled his gentle smile.

"That one knows the rules o' the road. Skipper. Vessel on
t'port tack always gives way."

"Maybe he does, Onie, but I wouldn't push it too far. I'd
hate like hell to have to swim ashore today."

There were no people at the Pond when we entered. The
whale was circling in a counter-clockwise pattern and it
was soon clear that something was amiss. Her movements
were sluggish, lacking the powerful and fluid grace of
earlier days. Also, she was blowing at very short intervals
and her spout seemed low and weak. When she lethargically
curved her way past our perch on a shore-side cliff, we saw
that the full length of her spine showed clearly in a chain of
knobby vertebral projections.

Another thing that troubled me was the presence of an
irregular pattern of great swellings that showed under her

19S

gleaming black skin. Onie thought these might have re
suited from bruising contacts with underwater rocks when
she was being pursued by the speedboacs or when she was
trying to escape through the channel. I doubted it, but
could think of no better explanation. Those peculiar swell-
ings worried me, so we got back into the dory and rowed
out to take a closer look. We let the dory drift directly in her
path, for we had no fear that she would strike us, either
deliberately or by accident.

On her first circuit she changed course slightly and
passed fifty yards away but on her next she came straight
for us. When she was about a hundred feet off, she did some-
thing we had seen her do only a few times before and then
always at a distance. She rose to blow, but instead of break-
ing the surface with her hump, she thrust her whole head
high out of the calm waters. The gleaming white, deep-
pleated expanse of her throat, with its curving and appar-
ently endless jaw line, seemed to belong to a creature three
times her actual bulk, for such are the proportions of a
Finner's head to the rest of its body. That gigantic head
appeared to rear directly over us, like a moving, living cliff.

It might have been a moment of terror, but it was not.
I felt no fear even when her eyes came out of water and she
swung her head slightly so that one cyclopean orb looked
directly at us. She had emerged from her own element as
far as she could in order to see us in ours, and although her
purpose was inscrutable, I somehow knew it was not ini-
mical.

Then she sank forward and her head went under. The
hump appeared, she blew and sounded and, a few seconds
later, was passing directly under the dory. It seemed to take
as long for the interminable sweep of her body to slip by as
it does for a train to pass a railway crossing. But so smoothly
and gently did she pass that we felt no motion except when
the vast Hukes went under us and the dory bobbed a little.

194

It was then I heard the voice of the Fin Whale tor the
third time. It was a long, low, sonorous moan with unearthly
overtones in a higher pitch. It was unbelievably weird and
bore no affinity with any sound I have heard from any other
living thing. It was a voice not of the world we know.

When the whale had passed on, Onie sat as if paralyzed.
Slowly he relaxed. He turned and looked at me with an
anxious and questioning expression.

"That whale ... she spoke to we! I t'inks she spoke to we?"

I nodded in agreement, for I will always believe she de-
liberately tried to span the chasm between our species -
between our distant worlds. She failed, yet it was not total
failure. So long as I live I shall hear the echoes of thai
haunting cry. And they will remind me that life itself - not
human life - is the ultimate miracle upon this earth. I will
hear those echoes even if the day should come when none
of her nation is left alive in the desecrated seas, and the
voices of the great whales have been silenced forever.

That Saturday morning at the Pond was a strange idyll.
Nobody came near and nothing happened to break the
companionable mood. Onie and I drifted in the dory, rapt,
and unaware of the cold biting into our bones. The whale
performed her slow and stately dance through the still
waters, making a point of coming close to us as she com-
pleted each new circuit of the Pond. I cannot know how she
felt, but I felt almost happy. I kept hoping to see her swirl
into sudden action in pursuit of some small school of
herring which might have entered the Pond, but it was a
forlorn hope.

Just before noon I decided to go to the fish plant to see
if there was any further news of the Harmon, or of the
capelin trap from Ramea, and also to see that preparations
for a further seining effort had been put in train. Onie had
just opened the petcock, preparatory to starting the dory's

195

engine, when we heard the nasal whine of an approaching
aircraft. It was a ski-equipped Cessna which had slipped in
to Gull Pond for Bob Brooks. Having picked him up, the
pilot was now climbing over Aldridges where the plane
began to describe wide circles as Brooks took his pictures.

I looked anxiously at the whale, but at first she seemed
unperturbed. The plane made five or six circles at a rea-
sonably high altitude, but then, instead of going away, it
began to descend, circling lower and lower until it was
snarling across the Pond at less than three hundred feet. I
sprang to my feet and shook my fist at it, screaming useless
imprecations. The plane ignored me, making pass after pass
over the Pond while the engine's roar reverberated deafen-
ingly between^thc rock walls of the hills.

The whale became panic-stricken. At what must have
been almost her maximum speed she burst down the centre
of the Pond toward the channel, turning only at the last
possible moment, in a wall o£ foam, before racing back
toward the shallow eastern arm.

Onie was also on his feet and he, too, was yelling - which
was an act of which I had scarcely thought him capable.

"She be going to ground! Lard God, she be going to run
ashore!" he cried in a voice sharp with fear.

Had I possessed a rifle I think I would have tried to shoot
down that plane. I was quite beside myself when, after forty
minutes, Brooks evidently decided he had enough photo-
graphs and the plane climbed away and disappeared,

In retrospect I do not particularly blame Bob Brooks. I
suppose he was only doing what any media man is paid to
do: get the coverage and to hell with the local consequences.
But I was still shaking with rage when we reached the fish
plant and I entered the manager's office. He had no good
news with which to allay my fury. He had tried to call the
Harmon on the ship-to-shore radiophone but could not
raise her. Finally he succeeded in raising another seiner in

196

Bay of Islands and learned that the Harmon was still lying
at her dock, apparently under no orders to sail anywhere.

There had been no word at all from Premier Smallwood.
But Gander airport reported three ski-equipped planes
laden with press and camera people standing by for take-off.
The delay in their departure tor Burgeo seemed to be due
to uncertainty about the thickness of the ice on Gull Pond.

The only hopeful news was a message from Ramea saying
that the capelin trap was on the dock there, and would be
picked up and brought to Burgeo on Sunday by the refrig-
erator ship Caribou Reefer. However, that delay meant we
would not be able to use it until Monday, and might not
get a catch from it until Tuesday. I was afraid the whale
could not wait that long. The Sou'westers Club had agreed
that we should mount another seining effort Saturday eve-
ning, but the Club officers were worried about paying for
it. I assured them that, it necessary, I would bear the cost
myself.

When Onie and I returned to Aldridges we found the
solitude had been broken. There were ten or fifteen boat
loads of curious people present. Although most of them had
left their boats in nearby Richards Hole, or in the entrance
cove, one large trap skiff was dead in the middle of the
channel, her propeller hopelessly fouled in the barrier net,
which we had earlier replaced for the third time.

This boat belonged to a man named Rose who fished a
little but whose preferred work was guiding mainland
hunters who sometimes visited Burgeo to shoot moose.
Rose had once come to me for help over a cancelled guide
licence and I had been instrumental in getting it restored.
I could hardly believe that he would now repay me like
this. I shouted at him, asking if he had not read the sign
asking boats to stay out of the Pond. Rose looked up at me,
red-faced and hostile.

"I can't read!" he shouted back-and I was ashamed of

197

myself for not remembering that he, like many another out
port man of his generation, had never had a chance to get
much schooling.

"No matter could I read," he added defiantly, "I got me
rights to go where I wants on the water, and 'tis what I
aims to do!"

The timely arrival of the police launch saved the situa-
tion. Rose's boat was freed and he was persuaded by the
constable not to motor into the centre of the Pond. But
Murdoch could only use persuasion and, as the afternoon
wore on, this was not enough. Several boat loads of young
men challenged the police, and me, by roaring into the
Pond. In our presence they did not quite have nerve enough
to chase the whale, but they disturbed her sufficiently so
that her erratic attempts to keep clear of them took her into
dangerously shoal waters.

In contrast to the quiet of the early morning, it was now
growing into a tense and miserable afternoon. Although
most of the people present were seemingly content just to
watch, the hostility between myself and the speedboat
crowd hung over the Pond like a miasma. I was afraid that
not even the presence of the policeman would be enough
to restrain them, and I dreaded the possibility of another
outburst such as had occurred on Sunday.

The tension was eased somewhat when a party of officers
from the C.G.S Montgomery came ashore to see the whale.
The oceanographer was with them and he proved to be as
sympathetic as I could have hoped. He told me the Guard-
ian was still standing watch beyond the cove, but that he
had sheered off and sounded when the press of visiting boats
became too heavy.

Danny and Murdoch agreed to remain at the Pond until
all the intruding boats had gone, since I had to return to
Messers to organize the next seining expedition. I could
only hope their mere presence would deter the "sportsmen"

198

in the speedboats. and I was in a depressed state o( mind as
Onie piloted us homeward. He sensed it, and as he dropped
me at Sim's stage, he said quietly:

"Don't you take it too hard now, Skipper. They's a good
many people don't want that whale hurted. They thinks
you's doing the right thing. Seems like Burgeo's gone adrift
these times. People moved in from all along the coast, all
mixed up together like mackerel in a puncheon. And some
of they gone sour because of it, and don't rightly know what
they's about."

The attempt at herring seining that evening was a fiasco. A
porpoise expert from Florida had suggested that we try
using lights to attract schools of small fish so they could more
easily be seined. So I had borrowed a Deico generator from
the fish plant and. when we reached Aldridges. I installed
it on shore and set up a pair of lights which flooded the
mouth of the gut.

The generator and lights worked well but when the men
made their first sweep across the cove, the seine hooked on
the bottom and tore to shreds. When I went aboard one of
the dories to look at the remnants of it, I found I could pull
it apart as easily as if it had been made of rotten straw. I
could get no credible explanation from anyone as to why
the net, which had functioned well enough only two days
earlier, should suddenly be rotten now. When I asked Curt,
he refused to answer or to meet my eyes. The Andersons,
on the other hand, were defiantly defensive at the implica-
tion that they had substituted an old and useless net.

" 'Tain't the net's fault, bye. Nothing wrong with she. 'Tis
hard use beat her up on the rocks. 'Tis only foolishness to
fish a net on foul bottom. We only risked her to pleasure
you, and now we's lost our net. Who's going to pay for it,
we wants to know?"

Disgusted, I sent the Andersons on their way. The rest

199

of us remained and kept the floodlights burning, hoping
they would attract at least some herring into the Pond. A
few barrels did in fact enter the mouth of the channel but
they were reluctant to swim through it, and we could easily
see why.

Undeterred by the brilliant glare, the lady whale had ap-
peared at our end of the Pond where she swam back and
forth as close to the inner opening of the gut as she could
safely go. At times she came into such shoal water that she
had to swim on the surface to avoid grounding. It was
heartbreakingly obvious that she understood what we were,
trying to do and that she was desperately hungry.

It was two o'clock in the morning before we finally ac-
cepted the uselessness of our efforts and packed up the gear.
I retained a faint hope that, in our absence, the Guardian
might succeed where we had failed, and so we left the
channel open.

It had been a long, distressing day. There had not even
been the solace of seeing reinforcements arrive in the shape
of Schevill and his party, for the u.s. Navy had decided
that weather conditions were still not good enough to risk
the flight. When I wearily stumbled up the steps and into
the kitchen of our little house, it was to find Claire waiting
with a table piled high with mail. During the afternoon
the coastal steamer, s.s. Baccalieu, long delayed by weather,
had finally reached Burgeo- Claire had walked to the post
office and had staggered home under the weight of a full
mail bag.

I was too tired to do more than glance at the mountain
of letters from all over North America. Many of them con-
tained small cheques and some held coins, gifts from all
sorts of people: school children, the manager of a Chicago
automotive works, a stockman from Calgary, a radio disc-
jockey from New York, and a housewife from Labrador
City. The gist of what they had to say was all much the same.

200

They begged me, sometimes in extravagant words, to save
and free the whale. Some were sentimental; but the words
were of no importance. What mattered was that these scat-
tered and diverse people in tar distant places had alt been
moved by one thing, by compassion for a strange, great
creature, trapped and endlessly circling in a small Pond on
the remote coast of Newfoundland.
They gave me hope again.

201

Chapter 18

Schevill called early Sunday morning from Argentia to say
that, despite the uncertain look of the weather, he and
three other "whale watchers" would be taking off in an
amphibious Catalina immediately. He wanted to know how
landing conditions were in Burgeo.

"Good enough. Tell your pilot to find Short Reach on his
chart- He can moor to the fish plant wharf."

"How's the whale?"

"Haven't seen her today, but we didn't get her a feed last
night and she's getting desperately thin and awfully logy."

"Let's hope she'll make it. We'll be there soon to lend a
hand."

The imminent arrival of professional support stirred me
from a lethargy of fatigue and depression, and I bolted my
breakfast, barely remembering to wish Claire "many happy
returns" on this, her birthday. Soon there was a dull roar
from eastward. We ran out on our porch and watched exul-
tantly as a Catalina lumbered over Burgeo and began
circling the village.

It circled and it circled.

"Why the hell don't they land?" I cried in a fever of im-
patience.

Almost as if he had heard me, the pilot put the plane's
nose down and she began a ponderous descent toward Short

202

Reach. As she slipped out of sight behind the intervening
hills, I was already sprinting for Onie's house to ask him to
get the dory; but before I reached it there was a snarl of
engines running up to tuil power, and the Catalina re-
appeared, climbing laboriously into the overcast.

I watched, incredulously, as she headed northwest toward
the interior barrens and disappeared. When I realized she
was not coming back, I went into the kitchen, glumly
poured a cup of tea, and listened to the weather forecast on
the marine radio. Strong southwest winds increasing to forty
knots by mid-afternoon, with visibility lowering to zero in
fog and snow flurries ... I did not need the weather-man to
tell me this was the beginning of another two- or three-
day storm during which no aircraft would reach Burgeo.

Schevill called a couple of hours later from Stephenville,
a "rented" u.s. Strategic Air Force base on the west coast of
Newfoundland. It seemed that his Navy pilot had changed
his mind about landing because he was afraid he might be
marooned in Burgeo by bad weather. Rather than risk that
awful fate, he h'ad continued on to the comforts of the
Stephenville base. Schevill was as disappointed as I was, but
he remained optimistic.

"Never mind. I think I can talk the Air Force into bring-
ing us in by helicopter. Look tor us about noon."

We looked hard enough. God knows, but the helicopter
never came. Instead, a Beaver on skis slipped in under the
lowering overcast and landed on Gull Pond. It was some
days later before we learned it had brought a television
crew who, when they found they would have to hike cross-
country from the landing Pond, got back into the Beaver
and flew home again. No whale was worth that much effort.

By early afternoon we were experiencing a proper
sou'wester and, since there was no longer any chance of
visitors arriving, Onie and I set off through the grey stornij
scud for Aldridges Pond.

It was a forbidding son of day. Streaming clouds, whipped
by a whining wind off the black and frigid ocean, completely
concealed the peak of Richards Head. Snow flurries driving
across the runs and tickles obscured even the familiar
shapes of nearby rocks and islands. It was savagely cold, and
the lop which was beginning to kick up in the mouth of
Short Reach warned us we could not stay long at the Pond.

As we bucketed into the cove, visibility was so bad we
did not realize we were not alone until we nearly rammed
a whale, head-on. The whale was so deep inside the cove
that there was hardly enough room for it to swim, let alone
submerge. I glimpsed the gleaming mass o£ its head surging
toward us when it was less than twenty feet away and, at my
startled yell, Onie swung the tiller hard over and cut the
engine. The whale also went into a hard turn, but in the
opposite direction, and with such acceleration that the boil    %
from its flukes heeled the dory far over on her side. Then    %
another snow flurry swept down, obliterating everything   ^
from view. When the flurry passed, the whale had dis-    ^
appeared.                             *                  , J]

The wild thought flashed into my mind that, aided by a    'j'
high tide raised higher still by the sou'wester, the prisoner

had escapedl

In jubilation, I yelled at Onie to start the engine.
"I think that's her! I think she's out, Onie! Head into the
Pond. Quick, man, quick!"

The old Atlantic barked into life and we shot through
the narrow gut, propelled not so much by the engine as by
wind and tide. The water in the channel was very high,
higher than I had ever seen it before. Inside the Pond there
was no sign of the trapped whale. I was now almost sure
she had succeeded in escaping.
"Circle the Pond," I cried to Onie.

Obediently he put the tiller over and we puttered
through the driving scud. As I stood in the bow peering

204

about, I was vaguely aware that my initial surge of jubila-
tion was fading and in its place was a growing and aching
sense of anxiety; but I had no time to dwell on that. For
then I saw her.

She was on the surface and moving very slowly. Almost all
of her great length was exposed. She could easily have been
mistaken for one of those colossal sea monsters which deco-
rate ancient charts. The illusion was intensified by the
vagueness given to her outlines by the drifting snow.

I hardly know how to describe or explain my reaction.
Instead of feeling sick with disappointment as I realized she
was still a prisoner, my spirits rose. I felt something akin to
elation. The only explanation I can offer, and it is no easy
one tor me to accept, is that if she had managed to escape
without my help, it would have made a travesty of my
attempts to save her. Or was it, perhaps, that I needed her
continuing presence in the Pond to justify my own actions
and attitudes toward those who had tormented her? Had I
come to rely on her presence in order to maintain my role?
Had my need of her become greater than her need of me?

I have no answers to these questions, and I think I want
none.

She stayed on the surface an unnaturally long time. Onie
kept the dory running close alongside so we would not
lose sight of her in the snow flurries, and I was horrified by
the difference a single day had made in her appearance. Not
only had her back become steeply and ominously V-shaped,
but the inexplicable bulges under her skin had grown much
larger. There was no longer an aura of almost supernatural
vitality about her - an aura which had strangely affected
everyone who had seen her, including even those 'who
wished her dead. She seemed less like a living beast than like
some monstrous lump of flotsam.

She gave no indication of knowing we were so close to

205

her, but when she blew - a thin, almost instantly erased
wisp of vapour - there was a sign, an omen. The stench
from her blow was a fetid assault upon our nostrils.

At length she sounded, but slowly, as if with great effort
or reluctance. The snow scud streamed down over the sur-
face of the Pond, obliterating the last faint swirl from her
flukes.

Because of the increasing violence of the storm, we could
not stay with her any longer. Drawing our parka hoods close
about our taces, we headed out through the channel into the
cold fury of the storm. The Guardian, for it must have been
he whom we had met in the entrance cove, was not in sight.
As we bucked homeward through cascades of freezing spray,
I thought about the encounter with him. I should have
guessed that his presence so close to land, in such danger-
ously constricted waters, and on a lee shore, was also a
portent. But I chose to believe he had simply been trying
to drive herring into the Pond; and perhaps that is what he
had been trying to do, although I now suspect he had an
even more pressing urge to take the risks he did.

Clairc and I had a little birthday party that stormy night,
but our hearts weren't in it. A belated message had finally
arrived from Premier Smallwood, informing me somewhat
loftily that, although a Fin Whale could live six. months on
its stored blubber, he was nevertheless sending a certain
Captain Hansen down by air to show us how to attract
herring into the Pond with floodlights! Although he was
not forthright enough to say so, it was obvious we would not
get the Harm on.

God alone knew when, if ever, Schevill and his team oi
experts would reach us now. And there were rumours that
the main herring run had already begun, prematurely, to
move off the Sou'west Coast-

The cloud of foreboding I had been under during our

206

visit to the Pond hung over Claire's birthday celebration
which was, at best, a disjointed one. The telephone rang
almost constantly as one unknown voice after another de-
manded fresh news of the Burgeo whale. When I could
stand it no longer, I took the receiver off the hook and we
went to bed.

When I awoke on Monday morning I was amazed to dis-
cover it was after ten o'clock. Sleepily I wondered how it
was that the imperious demands of Mr. Bell's incubus had
not dragged me from my bed at dawn. Then I remembered.
Reluctantly I shuffled through the icy kitchen, automatic-
ally noting from the dial of the wind gauge that the gale
had swung around into the nor'east. I restored the receiver
to its cradle and barely had time to turn up the oil stove
when the bell Tang. A fisherman from Smalls Island, for
whom I had once done a small favour, was on the other end
of the line.

"Skipper Mowat? Is it you, bye? I'se been trying to raise
you for a couple of hours now. We was out to The Ha Ha
when the wind dropped out for a change at dawn, to see
was our gear carried away by the starm, and the whale is
beached. Aye, hard aground just inside the gut. 'Tis bleed-
ing bad . . . looks to we like some'uns been at she with a
lance- . . ."

Fear knifed through me more piercingly than the arctic
cold brought by the nor'easier. I ran to the window and saw
at a glance that no dory could live in such a sea. Frantically
I called Curt Bungay and that good man agreed to chance
the voyage to Aldridges in his decked motorboat.

The harbour waters were "feather white," but Curt was
undismayed. He pushed his boat at full throttle until I
thought he would drive her under. As he struggled with the
wheel he yelled something into my ear that turned my fear
to livid rage.

"Not surprised . . . was word some of they . . . going to

207

Strand she it they could ... must have ... lull this morning
when . . . wind shitted round. . . ."

The fury that filled me verged on the homicidal. When
Curt grounded the bow of the boat on the shore of the
cove. I leapt to the slippery rocks so impetuously that I tell
tull-length into the landwash. Stumbling to my feet, I ran
recklessly across the broken rocks of the intervening ridge.
As I cleared the crest I saw her. She was lying directly below
me. Her vast white chin was resting on the shore but, thank
God, she was beached at a point where the water ran deep
almost to the shore line so that most of her immense body
was still afloat.

As I plunged down the slope toward her, I became aware
o£ a foul stench - the same I had smelt the day before when
she blew alongside Onie's dory. I also saw that the beach
near where her head was resting was white with the par-
tially digested bodies of herring. However, I saw these things
without really seeing them, for I was totally engrossed in
the urgency of getting her off that beach before the falling
tide doomed her to die from. her own great weight.

My memory of the next few minutes is hazy, but Curt,
stumbling along behind me, saw it all and remembered the
scene vividly.

"When I cleared the crest you was already on the beach.
1 could hear you yelling your head off before I even see you.
" 'Get off, you crazy bitch,' you was yclling-
"Thcn the next thing I sees you was pounding on the
head of her with your fists. You was acting like some fellow
what's drunk too much white lightning, trying to launch a
ship with his bare hands. Cause that's what she looked like
to I. Like a ship with her bows ashore."

Curt was so dumbfounded and disconcerted by my be-
haviour that he remained on the ridge while I berated the
whale and screamed imprecations at her, commanding her

208

to shift herself. Finally, in utter desperation, I flung myself
down with my back against an upright slab of granite,
thrust my feet against the hard, rubbery curve of that im-
mense mouth, and tried to shove her off by main forcel

It was insane ... a hundred and sixty pounds of puny
human flesh pitting itself against the inertia of eighty tons
of leviathan. Nevertheless, I pushed and I kicked and I
yelled, and I may also have wept out of sheer frustration.

Then, almost imperceptibly, she began to move! I saw
the flippers, big as dories, shimmer as they turned like hands
on wrists. Slowly, so very slowly, she backed herself off the
shore, turned, and cruised on the surface to mid-Pond.

Curt stumbled down the slope to join me.
"You done it, bye, you saved her, sure!" he cried.

But I knew better. The scales were off my eyes, and now
I saw the truth. She had not grounded by accident, neither
had she been beached by the malice of men. She had deliber-
ately gone ashore because she was too sick to keep herself
afloat any longer. I had misread the evidence, but now it
was unmistakable. There was the vomit stirring in the
shallows where her head had lain. There was the stench. It
was familiar now and well remembered ... the same rancid
stink which had made me retch away from the gangrene-
rotted bodies of soldiers in Sicily in 1943.

There was more. As she moved slowly away from us she
left thin ribbons of dark discoloration in the water. These
were coming from the great swellings which had formed
beneath her skin. I could sec one of them pulsing out a dark
flow of blood; and I realized that those swellings were vast
reservoirs of pus and infection, some of which were break-
ing open to discharge their foul contents into the cold sea
water.

As I watched, stunned and sickened, the whale continued
to move across the Pond. She did not submerge. I doubt if

209

she had sufficient strength to do so. Almost drifting, she

reached the opposite shore and there she again rested her

mighty head upon the rocks.
"Lard Jasus, she's beached again!" Curt shouted in alarm.
"No," I replied dully, "She's sick, Curt. She's too sick to

even swim. If she stays in deep water she knows she'll sink;

and then she'll drown."

-*

Curt could not take that in. It seemed incredible to him
that any beast which lived its life in the sea could drown.
He shook his head in bewilderment.

The barriers of illusion had crumbled so suddenly that
my mind was in chaos. How could I have been so blind as
to believe she would suffer no real harm from the hundreds
of bullets that had plowed into her flesh? Yet, in all honesty,
how could I have imagined that this gargantuan creature
might succumb to the attacks of infinitesimal microbes
entering her wounds? Nevertheless, this was what was hap-
pening. What could I do about it now? Was it too late to do
anything except curse my own stupidity?

I was in an almost paralytic state of indecision. I wanted
desperately to get to a phone and talk to Schevill or anyone
who had some knowledge of whale pathology; who could
perhaps suggest what to do for the sick whale, and how to do
it. On the other hand, although I now realized she had not
been driven ashore by anyone, or lanced, I was very much
afraid the news that she was beached and completely vulner-
able would swiftly spread through Burgeo and convince
some of her enemies that the time was ripe to finish her off.
It was a measure of how deeply the virus of suspicion, anger
and ill-will had entered into the human fabric of Burgeo,
of which I was a part, that I was afraid to leave her unpro-
tected.

That problem was solved by the arrival of the police boat
after a hard punch out from The Reach Danny Green had
heard rumours that the whale had been attacked again, and

210

he and Murdoch had risked the passage^) the Pond. They
anchored, and rowed ashore to join Curt artd me upon the
ridge. As I explained the situation, Murdoch ^fca red across
the leaden waters through his binoculars at the^ast and
motionless shape on the far shore. When I finished"^ king,
he lowered the glasses and turned to me. His face s^»'ed
how he felt . . . sickened at the sight of her; sickened afld
angry.

"We've still got no authority to stop people coming here,"
he said shortly. "But orders or no orders ... no boat'll
come near her again while we're about'"

I thanked him and turned to go ... and then I heard the
voice of the Fin Whale for the fourth time . . . and the last.
It was the same muffled, disembodied and unearthly sound,
seeming to come from an immense distance: out of the sea,
out of the rocks around us, out of the air itself. It was a deep
vibration, low-pitched and throbbing, moaning beneath the
wail of the wind in the cliffs of Richards Head.

It was the most desolate cry that I have ever heard

21 U

Chapter 19

On the way back to Messers we put in at Firbys Cove so I
could collect a second bag of mail from the post office - mail
from more well-wishers of the whale. As I hurried back to
rejoin Onie at the dock, the heavy bag over my shoulder, I
was confronted by a man I had known since my first arrival
in Burgeo; a man for whom I had great respect and who,
only a few days previously, had expressed his sympathy with
the whale and with the attempts to save her. I greeted him
warmly. He responded by deliberately spitting just to one
side of my feet.

"What's that for, Matt?" I asked, bewildered.
" "Tis for the likes of you! Strangers come here from away,
telling lies about the people. Making troubles like we never
had atore!"

He was a big man, and his words were delivered with
such intensity I thought he was going to strike me. I stepped
back; but he had no intention of using his fists. Words
would serve.

"You and that bloody whale! Well, bye, she's finished now!
And you're the same. Finished in Burgeo. I'll tell you that
without a lie!" He turned on his heel and strode away.

Shaken by this outburst, I reached the dock where the
dory lay and here was another unexpected confrontation.

212

The two doctors were there talking to Onic. They looked
up as I approached.

"Onie's told us the whale's sick," said the male doctor in
a concerned and friendly manner. "Sounds as if it might be
septicaemia. Is there anything we can do to help?"

I was astounded. From open advocacy of killing the
whale, this couple had made as total a volte face as Matt...
but in the other direction. It was all just too damned con-
fusing. Those whom I had thought were my "natural" allies
seemed to be turning violently against me, while those who
were my "natural" antagonists were now offering to help
... but at this juncture I would have accepted help from the
devil himself.

"There might be something. What about antibiotic treat-
ment for a whale? Is it possible? Could you give it?"

The wife, an aggressive and impetuous woman, answered.

"We could try. Only there aren't enough antibiotics in the
hospital to make one dose for an animal that big. If you can
get the drugs somewhere, we'll see if we can administer
them."

I nodded gratefully. "Right. Ill sec what I can do."
Twenty minutes after reaching home I had written a
press release. It was an intemperate piece of work, reflecting
the anger that I could no longer control. It began with a
statement that the whale was probably dying of mfection
resulting from the wounds inflicted on her by the men of
Burgeo. There followed the most harrowing paragraph I
could compose describing the agonies the great animal was
enduring-had been enduring for many days as her wounds
turned septic. I concluded with a plea for help, for dona-
tions of antibiotics and injection equipment, "in order that
we can try to make amends for the atrocious behaviour of
those who inflicted such tortures on the imprisoned whale."

I handed the paper to Claire to read before attempting to
phone it out. She was horrified.

213

"You can't send this, Farleyl It's . . . it's vindictive. It's as
vicious as what they did to the whale! Please, don't send it."
It was not sent.

When, about seven that evening, I finally got a call
through to Canadian Press, the story I gave was as dis-
passionate as I could make it- c.p. promptly put it on the
Canadian wires and relayed it to the international services.
The C.F. district manager in Toronto took the dictation
personally, and when I finished he thanked me and added:

"Moby Joe is front-page news across the continent. The
story's stirred up the hell of a stink. It's crazy, but people
seem more worked up about your whale than about the mess
in Vietnam. I hope you know what you're doing down
there, Parley."

I was not sure what he meant by that parting shot, but I
did not ask. The truth was that I was no longer sure what
I was doing, or of what I had already done. Fortunately,
there was no time for reflection. Within an hour the c.B.c.
was broadcasting a special bulletin:

Moby Joe's keeper tonight issued an urgent appeal for
massive donations of antibiotics after it was discovered
the trapped Burgeo whale had a huge infection in its
back from bullet wounds. Parley Mowat said the whale
was very sick. He said a husband-and-wifc medical team
in the hospital in Burgeo had volunteered to administer
the antibiotics if they could be made available. They need
160 grams of petracyclin hydrochloride for each dose and
a minimum of eight doses will be required. They also
need a three-pint syringe and a three-foot stainless steel
needle...

The response began to reach us almost immediately. A
pharmaceutical manufacturer in Montreal phoned to say

214

that 800 grams of antibiotic was being shipped to us from
St. John's by charter flight at dawn - weather permitting -
and a further supply would be flown from Montreal to
Gander. A second message told me that suitable syringes
existed only at the Bronx Zoo and at the Vancouver
Aquarium, and that both institutions had been asked to
air express their syringes to Gander, from which point
another charter flight would ferry them to Burgeo in the
morning.

Schevill, still stranded at Stephenville, heard the first
radio bulletin and spent hours on the long-distance phone
consulting experts as far afield as Puerto Rico; obtaining
opinions on the treatment the whale should receive, and
setting into motion shipments of drugs from the United
States. Then he called me.

"There's a good forecast for tomorrow. We'll make it in by
helicopter in the morning, for certain this timet"

A veterinary surgeon from St. John's wired that he was
flying to Burgeo ai his own expense to give us a hand.
Dozens, scores, of wires and phone calls plugged all South
Coast circuits with offers of advice, encouragement and
money. By midnight the response of the outer world had
mounted to such a crescendo that the poor Hermitage
operator, willing as she was, could not handle the flood. So
we arranged to have a friend in St. John's accept and deal
with the overflow.

The incredible and almost instantaneous response to the
radio and television appeals had a curious effect upon me.
The anger and grief of the early part of the day were sub-
merged and washed away in an intoxication of excitement.
The constant ringing of the telephone, and the blaring of
radio voices describing the reaction to our plea for help,
acted like a powerful stimulant. I felt like someone who
discovers he can command miracles. I no longer doubted

215

that I would save the whale. Realities were dimming in
the euphoric glare of attention which played on Burgeo
throughout that long, cold night.

Just before midnight I had a call from one of the Sou*-
westers. He was exultant.

"Are you listening to the radio? It's fantastic, eh? The old
town's really on the map! Another couple of weeks like this
and Joey'11 be pushing the highway down to us. Thank the
Lord for that whale! Moby Joe's going to put Burgeo into
the modem times for sure!"

He paused, and when he continued there was a note of
anxiety in his voice.

"She is going to pull through all right, isn't she?"

"She's sick and getting sicker," I replied. "Look, there's
supposed to be at least five charter flights coming in early
tomorrow with drugs and experts and I'll have to stick to
the phone until I hear. Will you get someone to go to Ald-
ridges as soon as it's light and keep an eye on things? The
Mountic can't be there all the time, and I don't trust those
bastards who peppered her. And ask someone to call me
early on to let me know how she looks."

"Sure, Farley. Nothing easier. I'll go myself. Can't take a
chance on something happening to her now."

It was another almost sleepless night for me. The angry
tensions of the day, and the high excitement of the evening,
had brought me to such a pitch that I could not even lie
down for more than a few minutes-1 kept the kitchen stove
going and swilled endless cups of tea as I waited for the
dawn.

When the first greenish tints of the new day washed the
eastern islands, I went outside. There was hardly a breath
of wind and, as the light strengthened, it revealed a cloud-
less sky. The fog-bank that always lurked a few miles off-
shore, ready at any time to roll in over the land and smother
Burgeo, was only an indistinct dark line on the far horizon.

216

It was going to be a perfect flying day along the Sou'wcst
Coast.

Claire was up and cooking breakfast when I went back
inside. We ate almost in silence while she eyed me anxiously
from time to time. Finally she said:

"Why don't you lie down for a little while. It'll be hours
before any planes can get here and you've got to get some
rest. It isn't a one-man Job anymore, you know. There'll be
all sorts of experts to look after her now."

The good breakfast, the red sun streaming low into the
kitchen, and Claire's words, combined to ease my tensions
so that I was hardly able to get up from the table. The worst
was over. I felt as a man might who has stood a long and
lonely siege and at last hears the distant sounds of an ap-
proaching relief column.

I lay down on the bed and instantly tell into dreamless
sleep. Nevertheless, it was a light sleep and I was brought
bolt upright by the harsh Jangle of the telephone. Clairc
answered it. A moment later she was beside the bed.

"You'd better talk to them," she said in a stiff, almost frozen
voice. "It's from the plant. The-whale's gone. They can't
find her anywhere."

It was exactly ten minutes past nine when I picked up
the phone. I remember, because I automatically glanced at
the kitchen clock to see how long it would be before the
first plane could arrive.

- "Parley? I'm just back from AIdridges, We was there just
after dawn and we spent two hours looking all over the
Pond and there isn't a sign of the whale. She's not there.
She must have made a run for it last night. She's gone right
out of it, boy. She's gone for certain."
"Gone?" I echoed stupidly.

And then I knew. I knew with absolute certainty.
"Gone? . . . She's not gone. She's dead."

My caller, who was a member of the town council as well

217

as an officer of the Sou'westers Club, was not slow to grasp
the implications ot my flat statement. Probably he had al-
ready considered them during the search. Nevertheless.
there was something close to panic in his voice.

"My God, man, she can't be deadt She must have swum
clear! There'll be living hell to pay if the papers and radio
get the idea she died here. They'll murder us!"

The whale is gone ... the whale is dead. . . . The words
echoed and re-echoed in my mind, and they lit the hard,
white flame of hatred.

"You're right about that. Indeed you are. They'll murder
you . . . just as Burgeo murdered the whale. Wouldn't you
say that was fair enough?"

"Can't we agree to keep it quiet?" he pleaded. "If she is
dead, she won't come to the surface for days in this cold
weather. Can't we just say we think she's got free? By the
time she floats, the whole thing'tl have died down -.. You've
lived here for five years. . . It's your town tool"

"No," I said. "It isn't my town anymore. I guess it never
really was."

He was still expostulating when I hung up. I got Hermi-
tage and, after the usual delays, the operator connected me
with a newspaper reporter who had become the whale's
unofficial agent "outside." I asked him to contact all those
who were preparing to fly in to Burgeo, or who might al-
ready be airborne.

"Tell them it's all over," I said. "Tell them I'm sorry. Tell
them they can all go home again."

"Parley .. . are you sure she's dead?"

"I'm sure. There's no way she could have escaped. She was
so sick last night she could hardly stay afloat." And then,
with an uncontrollable burst of bitterness, I lashed out at
this good friend. "She's dead, do'you hear me! Christ, do I
have to rub your 'face in her stinking corpse to make you
understand?"

218

He was a very good friend, and he forgave me.
Word spreads fast in the new world of technological
wizardry. I had hardly finished putting on my parka when
the program of music from the C.B.C. station to which we
usually listened in the mornings was interrupted by an an-
nouncement that Moby Joe, the trapped Burgeo whale, had
disappeared and was presumed dead.

Word spreads fast in the outports too. Even as the an-
nouncement was being made, the kitchen door opened and
Onie came quietly in.

"I t'ought you might be needin' the dory," he said softly.
"She be ready when you is."

The rambling, scattered and brightly painted houses of
Burgeo; the wide-spreading, ice-encrusted islands; the glit-
tering waters of the tickles and runs had never looked more
beautiful than they did this morning as the dory made its
way eastward. But now I was seeing it all as I had not seen it
for many years . . . through the sudden eyes of a stranger.

When we turned into Short Reach we passed a longliner
outbound tor the fishing grounds. I knew all three of the
men who stood in her wheelhouse. yet none of them waved
to me, and I did not wave to them.                    '

As we approached the cove, a jet of white mist shot up-
ward, hung for a moment and dissolved, as the Guardian's
long back slipped beneath the waters. His presence was
final proof that the imprisoned whale had not escaped, in
the flesh at least. He was down a long, long time and when
he rose he lingered for a while upon the surface, motion-
less, it seemed, I am sure he was listening - - . listening fo-
a voice he would not hear again.

The R.C.M-P. launch was in the Pond when we en
tered and together we searched. Although the waters were|M
so calm and crystalline that we could scan the boCtoni^i

2l«

to four fathoms, the deeper reaches were too dark to pene-
trate. We could not look into the mystery where she lay.
I do not know, can only wonder, why she did not die
with her head upon the shore. I can only guess that, in the
darkness of her dying, something in her weary mind willed
her to seek the deeps, the lightless ancient womb of ocean-
When we had given up our fruitless search, the launch
and the dory came together and lay idly in the middle o£

the silent Pond.
"Do you think there's any chance she might have got

away?" Constable Murdoch wondered.

I knew his question was asked out ot innocence and out
of hope, and so I repressed a sharp reply and only shook
my head. It was Danny who answered.

"Don't be so daft. She's laying in nine fathom right under
your feet. In three, four, days she'll blast and come back
on top. And won't that be something for the sports to crow
about! Aye, eighty tons of rotten blubber to remind them

what heroes they is."

Then Danny turned to me. His lean, sardonic face was,
as usual, almost expressionless; but when he spoke, the scorn
had faded from his voice . . . almost.

"Don't rightly know who was the foolishest . . , them fel-
lows and their gunning, or you, Parley, me son. The way I
sees it you done that whale no good. You done Burgeo no
good. And I don't say as you done yourself much good." He
I .oked directly at me, and I had nothing to say. He shook

.is head. "Ah, well, t'hell with it."

220

Chapter 20
i

JOE LEADS MOURNING
FOR ILL-STARRED
FINBACK. MOBY JOE

St. John's, Nnd. C.F.

Moby Joe, apparently dead. was eulogized in the legis-
lature today.

The tale of the trapped Finback whale in a salt-water
pond near the South Coast fishing community of Burgeo
ended earlier in the day when it disappeared, believed
to have died and sunk.

Premier Joseph Smallwood, benefactor of the 80-ton
creature, rose at the opening of the sitting to announce
the news.

He said: "I'm sure that all of Newfoundland, all Canada
and even all North America, will hear this news with
regret."

. . . The battle to save the whale ended today in defeat
when it succumbed to what experts believe was a massive
infection resulting from gunshot wounds ten days ago ...
it is presumed to have died during the night and sank in
nine fathoms of water.

Wednesday, February 8th, began in normal Burgeo fash-
ion, At dawn it was blowing a gale o£ wind from the

221

sou'east. Clouds streamed so low that the black islands
were almost lost to view. Stinging slants of driving snow
beat like whip-lashes amongst the scattered, silent houses
of Messers Cove. Then, all at once, the storm abated. The
wind still blew, but gently, over a cleansed world shining
under a pallid sun. In her journal Claire wrote:

"How sad we are on this bright and lovely day. Burgeo
looks so beautiful, and I don't care anymore. Our whale is
gone. We sat together and listened to the radio news ac-
counts and I could not stop thinking about the savage
mentality of the men who stood around the Pond and
emptied their rifles into that huge and harmless animal.
Surely they are the beasts, not the whale.

"Now it is over. Parley and I are alone with ourselves,
having to face the depressing reality of what life will be like
if we stay on here. . . ."

It was a lovely day . . . but one of the loneliest I can
remember. There was no meeting between us and the peo-
ple of Burgeo. Nobody called. Not even our closest neigh-
bours crossed the unmarked stretch of new snow around
our house. No children came, as they had always come be-
fore, to sit quietly in our kitchen after school. I felt as it
we were marooned on a cold rock in a lifeless world. Our
only human contacts now seemed to be with the thin and
disembodied voices of strangers tar away, heard over the
metallic whimpering of the telephone. And soon, now that
the whale was gone, those voices too would fade into silence.

The oppressive sense of limbo grew too much to bear,
and in the late afternoon, as the light was fading, I took
Albert, our water-dog, for a walk. Deliberately I headed
east along the rough path leading toward the main part of
Burgeo. I met a few people but, although they returned
my greeting with civility, I was not comforted. I was sure
they were concealing their real feelings, I became certain

222

of it when I passed a group of young men and women,
employees of the fish plant, making their way homeward at
the end of the day's work.

They parted to let me by, but had nothing to say until
several yards separated us again. Then I heard girls' voices
chanting raggedly, and not very loudly:

Moby Joe is dead and gone . . .
Farley Mowat, he won't stay long . . .

We turned back then, Albert and I, and made our way
out to Messers Head from whose lonely summit I had
watched the Fin Whales fishing only a few weeks earlier.

It was too dark to see very well. I could barely make out
the old stone beacon on Eclipse Island where, almost three
centuries earlier, Captain James Cook had taken observa-
tions on a transit of Venus.

I sat for a long time on the crest of the Head, locked in
the confines of my mind, savouring the bitter taste of my
defeat. Then slowly I became conscious of the eternal
sounding of the seas, and my thoughts drifted away from
myself and the world of men, turning outward to the void
of ocean, and the world of whales.

For the first time since the trapped whale vanished, I be-
came fully aware of a rending sense of loss. It was dark, and
there was none to know that I was weeping . .. weeping not
just for the whale that died, but because the fragile link
between her race and mine was severed.

I wept, because I knew that this fleeting opportunity to
bridge, no matter how tenuously, the ever-widening chasm
that is isolating mankind from the totality of life, had per-
ished in a welter of human stupidity and ignorance- some
part of which was mine-

1 wept, not for the loneliness which would now be Claire's

223

and mine as aliens among people we had grown to love, but
for the inexpressibly greater loneliness which Man, having
made himself the ultimate stranger on his own planet, has
doomed himself to carry into the silence of his final hour.

It was well past supper time when Albert and I came home.
Saffron light streamed over the snow from the bay window
of the little house. I pushed open the kitchen door , . . and
the house was full of people! Uncle Job was there with
a drink in his hand and a grin on his weather-scarred old
face. There was Sim, and Onie, and several other fisher-
men. Claire, looking Hustcred but happier than she had
seemed for days, was bringing chairs in from the dining
room to accommodate Dorothy Spencer and a number of

other youngsters.

Uncle Job raised his glass in salute.
"Foine weather, Skipper. But I believes she be a weather
breeder. Aye. Don't say but 'twon't be some dirty day in
the marning."

The visitors did-not stay long and, as was their custom,
they did not say much. But it was what they did not say
that counted. Nobody spoke one word about the whale.

Sim was the last to leave. He lingered in the door for a
moment then, with patent embarrassment, said what he

had come to say.

"Don't you fret. . . you and your woman, now .. - you got
good friends in this place ... the foinest kind. .. ."

He could say no more, but he had said what was in his
heart and we had understood. Sim Spencer will never know
the gratitude we bear him still. The solace of his words was
so effective that when, on Thursday morning, some of the
fishermen who had worked the capelin seine arrived in a
glum, demanding mood, I was able to deal with them with-
out rancour.

They told me they wanted payment, in full and at once,

224

tor what they claimed was owing them for their work. It
came to more than $500.00. I explained that they would
have to wait until the money promised by Premier Small-
wood came (not knowing then that it would never come).

"Someone's lying!" one of them replied truculently.
"We'se sent off a telegram to Joey, telling as how you and
they Sou'westers won't pay we the money he sent."

"Aye," added another. "And we knows you fellows be
going to sell that whale; and she worth a fortune, surel"
This was too much.

"What the devil are you talking about! The whale is dead
at the bottom of Aldridges Pond. How do we sell a whale
we haven't got, supposing anyone was fool enough to want
to buy what's left of her?"

They exchanged uncertain glances and then the spokes-
man said:

"Well, bye, she's back. She's floating in the Pond. An' we
hears they Sou'westers has already sold she to a whaling
, company from up along Nova Scotia way for ten t'ousand
dollars I"

He paused, then added with sudden belligerencc:

"Dat money belongs to Burgee folk. Not to they fellows.
No . . . nor to no strangers, neither!"

There was little point in trying to argue against such
wild rumours, and I did not want to argue. The whale had
risen, and so there were some final things tor me to do. I
gave each man my personal cheque for the sum he claimed
was owed to him. When they had left I called the manager
of the fish plant. Had he heard that the whale had risen?
He had not. And he was appalled.

"The devil you say! If I'd heard I'd have had her carcass
towed out of there and turned adrift at sea before anyone
knew a thing about it. Would be the best thing for Burgeo.
I'll send a boat and crew to do the job right nowl"

"You'd better think about it a bit first," I told him. "That

225

carcass weighs about eighty tons. If you turn it adrift it'll
become a menace to navigation. In a collision it could sink
a good-sized ship, and you'd be responsible."
"Then what'll we do? You're the keeper ot the bloody

thing!"

"That's where you're wrong. I was the keeper of a living
whale. The corpse is Burgeo's. It belongs to Burgeo, ano
especially to those who had a hand in killing it. Let them

look after it!"

Radio bulletins were soon announcing the news of the
whale's resurrection and shortly thereafter I had a phone
call from the woman doctor, who was also Burgeo's public
health officer. According to her, the corpse was extremely
dangerous. The infection, if transmitted to a human being,
might well prove fatal, she explained. It was imperative that
I issue a public warning over the radio telling everyone to
stay away from the carcass.

. I should have refused, for it was her responsibility, but
I did as I was asked; and shortly thereafter all hell broke
loose. The plant manager, almost inarticulate with fury,
called to demand that I repudiate the warning. He re-
minded me that the plant drew some of the water tor its
operations directly from Short Reach, less than a mile from
where the dead whale floated. He was obviously frightened
that the federal fish inspectors would get wind of the matter
and close the plant.

He got no sympathy from me.

"You might have given that some thought a couple of
weeks ago, when someone down there was issuing army
ammunition to the sports so they could have their bit of

fun."

I was being vindictive, but I make no apologies. In my

journal notes for that day I wrote:

"The Ancient Mariner had nothing on Burgeo. He only

226

had an albatross slung round his neck. Burgeo has eighty
tons of poisonous meat and guts and blubber. Maybe the
people here will get the message."

They did, indeed, get a message, but it was not the one
I had hoped for. In the face of a renewed outburst from
the mainland press and radio, highlighted by a scurrilous
article by Bob Brooks in the Star Weekly, the majority of
the Burgeo people, even those who had been blameless in
the tragedy or who had shown sympathy for the whale, now
closed ranks. The media attack was a shotgun blast fired at
random,, and it was only to be expected that many of the
residents, hurt, angry, and unable to reply or to defend
themselves, should have reacted as they did. Almost over-
night the lines became clear-cut. The men who had killed
the whale began to be regarded as innocents, if not as vic-
tims, and it was widely agreed that they had been Justified
in doing what they did.

In such circumstances it was inevitable that the Sou'west-
ers Club, composed as it largely was of the town's business
and professional men, should change sides again.

Late Thursday evening I had a call from one of them. He
was polite, but the gist of his message was that the club was
publicly dissociating itself from me and that, from this
point forward, it would be concentrating its efforts on re-
storing the good name of Burgeo.

I wished him luck, and I sincerely meant it.

Not until late Friday morning was the weather good
enough to allow Claire and me to pay our last visit to
Aldridges Pond. Once again it was a frigid day, with frost
smoke rising from the tickles, and cat ice crackling under
the bow of Onie's dory. Although it was a fine day for
whale spotting, we saw none. There were no distant puffs

227

of vapour hanging like exclamation marks above the dark-
skinned sea. The calm waters of Short Reach were un-
broken by the swirl of the Guardian's great flukes. The sur-
viving members of the family had vanished, and they were
not seen again that winter nor, as far as I have heard, have
they or any of their kind again returned to what was once
their sanctuary among the Burgeo Islands.

It would have been a lifeless scene save that, far above
the still waters of the Pond, three eagles soared on the up-
drafts over Richards Head. Like silent mourners, they
drifted in the void of air above the void of sea. As I stared
up at them, I thought how fitting it was that these masters
of the aerial world, themselves already doomed, should
have chosen this time and place to describe their majestic
arabesques. - . For when I dropped my gaze we were in the
Pond and there before us floated all that was left of one of
the true masters of the sea, a portent of the almost certain
extermination of the Great Whale nation.

Even after the lapse of years, I grieve to write about her
as I saw her then. She had been immense in life-now she
seemed twice as huge. She was floating on her back, high
out of the water, and the pallid mountain of her swollen
belly was like a capsized ship. From a being of trans-
cendental majesty and grace she had been changed into an
abomination; grotesque, deformed and horrible. She stank!
She stank so frightfully that, as we cautiously approached
her, we had to fight down our nausea.

The most revolting aspect of the scene before us lay in
the final confirmation that she was female and, judging
from the condition of her breasts, had been far advanced
in pregnancy.

I do not know what Onie felt as we drifted beside the
monstrous corpse; but Claire was quietly crying. I think
we were all grateful for the distraction when the chugging
of an engine announced the arrival of another boat.

228

It was a work boat, manned by three men trom the fish
plant. It came busily through the channel and, ignoring us,
went directly to the whale. The men had handkerchiefs
tied over their mouths and noses, giving them a sinister
look. They worked quickly to secure a loop of wire cable
around the whale's tail just forward of the mighty flukes.
Then the work boat, dwarfed to insignificance by her tow,
put her stern down and white water foamed under her
counter as she took the strain. Slowly, ponderously, the
whale began to move. The bizarre cortege slowly drew
abreast of us and turned into the mouth of the south
channel.

And the great Fin Whale, who had been unable to pass
that barrier alive, floated easily over it in death ... return-
ing, now that there was no return, to the heart of mystery
from whence she came.

229

To Make Amends

To Make Amends

Before that most rapacious of predators, the human animal,
set about annihilating them in earnest during the 17th cen-
tury. the eight species of Great Whales are believed to have
numbered as many as four and a half million individuals.

By 1930. three centuries later, they had been reduced to
ibout one and a halt million.

Less than half a century after that, in 1972, there were
estimated to be no more than three hundred and fifty thou-
sand survivors.

One race, the Atlantic Grey, which was known as the
Scrag Whale to the New Englanders who destroyed it, be-
came extinct even before science realized it existed. Four
others: the Southern Right or Biscayen, the Northern
Right or Bowhead, the Blue, and the Humpback, are now
so close to extinction that, despite nominal protection, it is
doubtful if they will endure. Three species: the Fin, the
Set and the Sperm, now bear the brunt of our unremitting
assault on the whale nation and their numbers are melting
away with appalling rapidity. Only one race, the Pacific
Grey, which has been protected tor more than forty years,
seems to be tentatively edging away from extinction, rather
than plunging toward it.

233

THE PASSING OF THE GREAT WHALES*



Estimated Numbers Before Intensive Hunting Began	Survivors in 1930	Survivors in 1972
Grey Whale 100,000 (Atlantic race)	Extinct	Extinct
Right Whale 200.000 (Southern or Biscaycn)	Rare	80 A 250 ,
Right Whale 500,000 (Arctic or Bowhead)	Rare	100 to 500
Blue Whale 600,000	100,000	600 to 1,500
Humpback Whale 300,000Grey Whale 100,000 (Pacific race)	Rare Rare	1,500 to 2.000 8.000 to 10.000
Fin Whale t,000.000	600,000	50,000 to 60,000
Sei Whale 400,000 Sperm Whale 1,200,000	300,000 600,000	60,000 to 75.000 150.000to200.000

4,400,000 1,600.000 270,280 to 349^50

Because of the catastrophic decline in the numbers of
Great Whales, many nations which were once prominent
in the "industry" have given it up as being of no further
economic interest. These include the United States, Great
Britain, Holland and Germany. In 1972 only Japan and the
U.S.S.R. continue pelagic whaling on a major scale, although
Norway-by all odds the most successful whaling nation in
human history - is snapping at their heels in this last
paroxysm of slaughter. Japan and the U.S.S.R. between them
take about 88% of the forty to forty-five thousand Great
Whales, which, under the quotas set by the International
Whaling Commission, may be legally butchered. The re-

•These figures h<ive been compiled from a careful examination of all
available sources. The estimates for the period before the begin-
ning of intensive whaling are probably conservative, those for the
surviving numbers of Great Whales in 1972 probably err on the
side of liberality.

234

mainder of the "legal" kill is mainly taken by shore stations
under Canadian, Norwegian, Japanese and South African
control.

The official figures issued by the i.w.c. are bad enough -
but they do not, by any means, tell the whole story. Most
members of the i.w.c. (and several whaling countries are
not even members) routinely fail to report the "accidental"
killing of undersized whales, cows with calves, and whales
of "protected" species, as well as direct quota violations.
Since the i.w.c. does not provide either effective sur-
veillance, or meaningful sanctions against offenders, the
quotas which it sets have always been, and continue to be,
as much honoured in the breach as in the observance. To
make matters worse there is an increasingly large number
of catcher vessels (and even some small catcher-factory
ships), mostly operated by Japanese and Norwegian na-
tibnals under flags of convenience, whaling on the high
seas with a total disregard for any regulations or conven-
tions. These "pirate whalers" are known to take whales of
any size, sex or species - including all of the nominally pro-
tected species - whenever and wherever they can. Some-
times operating with the connivance of maritime states,
particulary in South America and southern Africa, they are
believed to kill between two and five thousand Great
Whales every year, none of which appear in "official" statis-
tics of the i.w.c.

About 50,000 of the larger whales will die in 1972 at the
hands of men. Yet, although such continuing slaughter must
-result in the virtual extermination of most species of whales
before the end of the present decade, no action to signifi-
cantly reduce the size of the annual kill is being taken by
the nations most involved in whaling. As has been the case
since its inception, the International Whaling Commission
was, as late as 1971, still setting annual quotas tor each
species which were so unrealistic as to sometimes be in

235

excess of the numbers of such whales that the ships and
shore stations of the member states co\ild handle. This is
not conservation ... it is legitimatized mass destruction.

The Great Whales are not alone in being hustled to
ward extinction. We are now seriously threatening the sur-
vival even of those relatively little baleen whales, the
Minkes and the Brydes (now being actively hunted by
catchers from Norway), as well as the White Whales^Be-
luga) and the Potheads (Pilot Whale). Canada permits
tourists to shoot Beluga for sport, as part of the entertain-
ment offered to arctic trippers! To make matters worse,
man is now making purposeful war on many species of
dolphins and porpoises. During 1971, more than two hun
dred thousand of these little toothed whales were taken by
the Japanese for commercial purposes, while an almosr
equal number are believed to have perished "accidentally'
in tuna seines in Pacific waters. As the last Great Whales
are converted into pet food and cosmetics, the Japanese will
certainly intensify the pressure on the dolphins and por-
poises although, apparently, the Russians do not intend to
follow suit, Mr. A. Iskov, the Soviet Minister of Fisheries,
recently prohibited the killing of these small whales, on the
grounds that they are "the maritime brothers of mankind."
There is even some reason to hope that the Soviets would
be willing to reduce, or even stop, their part in the slaughter
of the last of the Great Whales -if the Japanese could be
persuaded to do likewise. So far the Japanese, whose repre-
sentative on the i.w.c. is also a director of a major Japanese
whaling company, have adamantly refused to cooperate.

It is abundantly clear that if we are to save any of the
whales, Great or Small, we must reject the i.w.c. as our
instrument for preventing the ultimate commission of a
crime against life which is of such magnitude that it has no
equal in human history. The i.w.c. has never served the
whales ... it has only served the whalers.

236

If the whales are to survive, mankind mu<t declare and
enforce a world-wide moratorium on the killW of all and
any whales. Such a respite must be of at least ten years'
duration if the terribly depicted stocks of Great Whales arc
to have any real chance to recover. During the moratorium
there must be a strictly enforced world-wide embargo on
trade in all whale products, otherwise many whaling com-
panies will simply transfer their operations to flags of con-
venience so that their ships may join the growing fleet ot
pirate whalers.

As this book goes to press it appears that a modicum of
progress is being made toward saving the remaining whales.
The United States has unilaterally declared an embargo on
the importation of oil, meat, or any other products derived
from the eight species of Great Whales. On June 9, 1972, a
resolution was passed by fifty-one of the nations attending
the United Nations Conference on the Environment, in
Stockholm, calling for a ten-year ban on commercial whal-

. ing. Although this appears, at first glance, to be a major vic-
tory for the whales, it is by no means sure that it will amount
to much more than a gesture. It will surely be no more than
that if, as has been recommended, the i.w.c. is given the
responsibility for arranging such a moratorium. Although
a two-thirds vote by the members of the i.w.c. might result
in nominal acceptance of a ban on whaling, such a ban
would only be binding on the member states on a voluntary
basis, and any member could simply withdraw from the
i.w.c. and continue whaling as it chose - something that has
happened in the past. On the other hand, it is by no means
certain that the recommendation of the Conference on the
Environment will ever come before the General Assembly

of the United Nations; but, even if it does, and even if the
General Assembly were to vote in favour of the moratorium,

it would still not be binding on any nation which chose

to reject it. Consequently, nothing short of a full-scale

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international treaty can provide the protection which is so
urgently needed. It is therefore imperative that the various
governments which are in any way involved in whaling, or
with the use of whale products, be subjected to a sustained
and insistent pressure demanding their participation in a
legally binding treaty of international scope.

A number of organizations are strenuously supporting
the need for such a treaty. One of the leaders among these
is Project JONAH, which operates under the auspices of
Friends of the Earth. JONAH welcomes inquiries as welt as
offers of assistance. It maintains offices at the following
addresses:

Project JONAH,

Box 476, Bolinas,
California 94924,

U.S.A.

Project JONAH,
25 Quai Voltaire,
Paris 7e,
France.

Some additional organizations concerned with the pres-
ervation of whales, porpoises and dolphins, are:

Fauna Preservation Society (U.S.A.)

International Society for the Protection of Animals

International Union for Conservation of Nature

and Natural Resources
New York Zoological Society (U.S.A.)
The Environmental Defence Fund (U.S-A.)
The Fund for Animals, Inc. (U.S.A.)

Individuals who wish to make their voices directly heard
on behalf of whales and of the moratorium may write to
the International Whaling Commission, care of its Presi-
dent:

238

Hon. J. L. McHugh,

Marine Science Research Centre,

State University of New York,

Stony Brook, N.Y. 11790,

U.S.A.

Citizens of the United States can also make their feelings
known to:

The Secretary of the Interior,
Department of the Interior,
Washington, D.C.
U.S.A.

and Canadian citizens should express their wishes to:

The Minister,

Department of the Environment,

Ottawa, Ontario,

Letters requesting the cooperation of the governments
of Norway, Japan and the U.S.S.R. in establishing a mora-
torium under international treaty should be addressed to
' the Ambassadors of these nations at their embassies in the
country of the letter writer's origin.

If we are to make amends to the whale nations for the
despicable savagery with which we have treated their mem-
bers in the past, we must do so now. In a few more years
there will be nothing left that we can do for them .. . except
to write their epitaph.

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