B.C.'s pipeline battle has parallels in 1975 standoff over killer whale capture

The B.C. government's pipeline standoff is not the first time a NDP premier has fought the federal government over the use of coastal waters, a University of Victoria historian says.

In 1975,premier Dave Barrett tried to block the transfer of a captured killer whale to an Ontario amusement park,Jason Colby writes in hisforthcoming book,Orca: How We Came To Know and Love the Ocean's Greatest Predator.

Colby, an associate professor of history, believes the whale tale has parallels with the present-day skirmish over the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline project.

That battle ended poorly for B.C., withMarinelandin Niagara Falls, Ont.,getting its whaleand the federal governmentputting downthe province's bid for a sayover marine resources.

However,Colby arguedthe episodemarked the end of killer whale capture in the region and the birth ofB.C. government advocacy forthe ocean environment.

Inspired by Greenpeace

"It's really connected to the fascinating story of Greenpeace," Colby told On the Island host Gregor Craigie.

Right now, B.C. is locked in a dispute with Alberta and the federal government over Trans Mountain's future after Premier JohnHorgan'sgovernment announced it is looking at limiting shipments of diluted bitumen from the west coast, pending a review of spill-safety measures.

In the 1970s,Victoria's Sealand of the Pacific, an aquarium that closed in the early 1990s, had captured six orcas in Pedder Bay, on the south coast of Vancouver Island. One of them was earmarked for the Marineland amusement park, he said.

In September 1975, Greenpeace activists Bob Hunter andPaul Spong, who had been wagingan internationalcampaign against commercial whaling,implored Barrett to intervene to prevent the whale's transfer to Ontario.

Federal environment officials had issued permits to capture and move the whale, Colby said.

"Barrett's government had to figure out how do you make this case that even though the feds have jurisdiction, this is a provincial matter as well," he said.

The province's recreationminister, Jack Radford, drew onEnglish common law as well as well as emerging environmental values to issue a declaration that orcasandall whales, were Crown property,and therefore under provincial control.

"He declares a moratorium on killer whale capture in provincial waters even though he has no legal way to do that, and he demands that Sealand and Marineland release these whales ... because the practice of capture was 'neither morally nor biologically justified,'" Colby said.

Banned from BC Ferries

But the B.C. government soon discovered itsoptions for acting upon that sense of moral obligation were limited.

So Barrett pressured ferries and an airline to refuse to transport the whale, namedKanduke.The former premier was "a fighter and he was a character," Colby said.

The whale was going to be flown from Vancouver to Ontario, so Barrett started barredBCFerries from transporting the whale.

"Then Marineland and Sealand try to fly this whale out of Victoria airport by Air Canada, and Barrett and Greenpeace pressure Air Canada to refuse service, which it does," Colby said.

Finally, Colby said, "there's this fascinating scene where this whale is finally loaded up onto a truck and taken to the airport to be flown out on a private charter plane."

Colby said as thetruck transportedKanduketo the Victoria airport, the routewas lined with people, including some provincial officials, protestingthe theft of the whale by the federal government and by the province of Ontario.

"Marineland ultimately gets its whale, but the long term impacts are, I would argue, profound."

"It was really the first time that the provincial government had made a statement about the shifting provincial values around the marine environment and especially this charismatic species that was coming to mean so much to people in the region on both sides of the border," he said.

With files from CBC Radio One's On the Islandwith GregorCraigie.