Farley Mowat

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Captive Whale of Aldridge Pond

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Fabulous events are rare and even rarer is a fabulist worthy of them. A Whale for the Killing is a magnificent instance of this conjunction, perhaps because Farley Mowat was not merely the chronicler of this little tragedy which provides a microcosm of our planetary condition, but also the fabulously conscious participant.

The scene was Aldridge Pond, a salt-water enclosure on the southern side of Newfoundland, not far from Burgeo. Burgeo used to be one of many small "outposts" from which fishermen would catch cod in the time-honoured way, but when Newfoundland was merged with Canada, Joe Smallwood, the Newfoundland Prime Minister, pursued a policy of industrialization at any price.

Burgeo became a fish-factory town, with independent fishing families from other outports now working as cheap labour for outside bosses….

In January 1967 a pod of fin whales appeard off Burgeo, as it had done for a few winters previously. The herring were in glut and the pod chased them into the cove near Aldridge Pond. Their method of hunting is far superior to, and more economical than, the most advanced human seiner with all its electronic sonar equipment….

In this pod, all members had had their fill, except the mother whale, which was pregnant (with a baby whale which at birth would have measured some 20 feet). The need to support herself and the baby led her to pursue the herring into Aldridge Pond….

Once in Aldridge Pond, she was imprisoned, despite outlets from either end, until the next spring tide four weeks later. By a freak of chance, man had been given an opportunity to study and to help his marine peer, whose mastery of the oceans by virtue of size, intelligence and natural grace had been unchallenged until man had, without avowing it, conducted a genocidal war.

The male fin whale could not join his mate in the pool. But for the next ten days he remained outside, "sounding" when she "sounded", driving herring into the pond by feigned attacks which panicked them towards his pregant wife….

The baiting of the mother fin whale began in a small way with the firing of soft-nosed bullets which embedded themselves in her blubber without apparent harm. Then some 400 nickel bullets were fired at this huge pregnant female desperately circling her prison in search of food and a way to return to her mate. Though Mr. Mowat does not say so, the imprisoned whale became the symbol of a creature out of its element. Fishermen who had become factory workers, smart boys from St. John's who had put them to hire, wanted to kill the whale because she stood for the sort of servitude in which both classes stood….

In this curious love story of a faithful male fin whale and his dying pregnant wife, who ended by being towed tail first out of the pond, floating easily because the gases of her dissolution made her so buoyant but might in ending the shame of Burgeo have sunk a dory or something bigger, Mr. Mowat has written a parable. This parable is an eloquent plea to stop industrial plunder not merely of whales, which may result soon in their extinction, but also of herring on which they feed and the whole submarine kingdom which we are devastating, while we wrangle nationally about who can annihilate most first.

"Captive Whale of Aldridge Pond," in The Times Literary Supplement (© Times Newspapers Ltd. (London) 1973: reproduced from The Times Literary Supplement by permission), No. 3702, February 16, 1973, p. 182.

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