By: Rénald Fortier
Ingenium – Canada's Museums of Science and Innovation
“The bomb that will kill the porpoise” – A shocking use of air power in interwar Québec: The bombing of the beluga whales of the St. Lawrence River, part 4
![A block of photographs showing some of the people involved in the bombing of beluga whales in the estuary and gulf of the St. Lawrence River. Anon., “La chasse aux marsouins [sic]. » Le Devoir, 15 August 1929, 6.](/sites/default/files/2024-09/Le%20Devoir%2015%20aout%201929%20page%206.jpg)
A block of photographs showing some of the people involved in the bombing of beluga whales in the estuary and gulf of the St. Lawrence River. Anon., “La chasse aux marsouins [sic]. » Le Devoir, 15 August 1929, 6.
As you and I begin the month of September 2024, it is with pleasure that yours truly will conclude in your company this article on a shocking use of air power in interwar Québec, that is the bombing of pods of beluga whales which lived in the waters of the St. Lawrence River. Let us therefore read the 4th part of our article on that bombing, carried out by Laurentian Air Express Limited of Québec, Québec, without further ado, and...
Do you already have a question, my reading friend? Let me guess. You would like to know more about the block of photographs with which yours truly launched the 4th part of this article? That is what I thought. Please enjoy the following information:
Photograph 1 – Standing, from left to right, Louis Cuisinier, president of Laurentian Air Express, and the pilot of the Curtiss-Robertson Robin floatplane of that firm, Édouard Octave “Fizz” Champagne; sitting on a float, the floatplane’s bomb aimer, J. Armand Gagnon.
Photograph 2 – The apostolic vicar of the gulf of St. Lawrence, Monsignor Julien Marie Leventoux.
Photograph 3 – The opening through which the handmade bombs were dropped.
Photograph 4 – The explosion of one of the handmade bombs.
And you have another question? What the devil was the apostolic vicar of the gulf of St. Lawrence of the roman catholic church doing in that bloody mess, you ask? Another good question. You see, Leventoux, a clergyman of French origin based in Havre-Saint-Pierre, Québec, blessed the Robin that Laurentian Air Express wanted to use to slay beluga whales. I kid you not, but back to the subject of this article: the bombing of those cetaceans.
It went without saying that this bombing continued despite the publication of the article that we perused in the 3rd part of this article. A message from the North Shore received at that time and translated here was most revealing in that regard: “Four bombs had the most devastating effect. Several porpoises [sic] were killed, a larger number injured and the remainder dispersed.”
Cuisinier and his team discovered that, at certain times, pods of beluga whales were found near small islands, at very shallow depths. They were then very vulnerable.
An examination of Québec newspapers of the time revealed little about the activities of Cuisinier and his team during their bombing campaign. One wonders if Cuisinier and / or the Québec government did not in fact wish to minimise the number of photographs of beluga whale corpses or, a contrario, the near absence of such corpses.
Wishing to see for himself how things were going and, more generally, how the people of the North Shore were faring, the Minister of colonisation, mines and fisheries of Québec, Hector Laferté, went there aboard SS North Shore, the ship of the British firm Clarke Steamship Company Limited which served that region, and this a little after mid-August. He made that journey in the company of 2 other people, the government deputy who represented the people of the North Shore, the lawyer Edgar Rochette, and the superintendent of maritime fisheries, the bilingual anglophone Gaspesian Francis M. Gibaut.
You will of course note that Laferté and his entourage did not fly to the North Shore. The speed of a seaplane was nice but the comfort of a ship was better. Sorry, sorry.
Cuisinier also made the trip but did not accompany the minister during his entire absence. He actually joined his bombing team at some point.
A delegation presented a request to Laferté during his visit. It asked him to reduce from $2 to $1 the subsidy given daily to any fisherman who equipped himself to hunt beluga whales. That reduction would significantly increase the number of fishermen participating in that activity. Moved, Laferté seemingly acquiesced to that request. Before I forget, those $2 and $1 corresponded to about $35 and $ 17.50 in 2024 currency, which was not huge given the potential dangers associated with that activity.
Incidentally, fishermen from at least some areas of the North Shore informed Laferté and Cuisinier that they had brought ashore better catches of cod since the start of the bombing campaign. In the opinion of some, it was not so much the explosions of the handmade bombs as their deafening noise which caused the beluga whales to leave. In any event, those fishermen warmly thanked Cuisinier and his team.
As you might imagine, the assault launched against the beluga whales intrigued more than one person in the good city of Québec. And this was how Cuisinier found himself at the Château Frontenac, a magnificent hotel located in Québec which then belonged to a Canadian transport giant mentioned moult times in our blog / bulletin / thingee since April 2018, Canadian Pacific Railway Company. He gave a conference to a group of members of the world’s first francophone club of an American organisation dedicated to helping the poor, Kiwanis International Incorporated, and this a little before mid-September 1929.
After briefly describing a typical beluga whale, Cuisinier did not hesitate to assert that only the use of aircraft made it possible to effectively detect and attack that cetacean which, for him, was still a porpoise, in French a marsouin. Indeed, while the engine of a boat caused its flight, that of a flying machine left it indifferent, so to speak. And yes, Cuisinier also mentioned the profits that Québec fishermen could make from beluga whale hunting.
Interestingly, if only for yours truly, a self-confessed wingnut, Cuisinier seemed to think that the floatplane used by his staff moved a tad too fast. He therefore announced that Laurentian Air Express had just ordered an autogyro from the English firm Cierva Autogiro Company Limited, or from the equally English firm which then manufactured those flying machines capable of moving at low speed, A.V. Roe & Company Limited (Avro), an aircraft manufacturer mentioned many times in our dazzling blog / bulletin / thingee, and this since October 2018. That autogyro would be used during the 1930 beluga whale hunting season.
One of the two directors of Laurentian Air Express, Rosaire Myrand, an accountant, allegedly covered part of the cost of that aircraft, and…
And yes, you are right, my reading friend, our dazzling publication has indeed mentioned Cierva Autogiro in its virtual pages, namely in February 2019, December 2020 and May 2021. May we continue now? Thank you.
Do you know what an autogyro is? An autogyro, say ye, is a less complex and expensive cousin of the helicopter developed in the 1920s by the Spaniard Juan de la Cierva y Codorníu. Its rotor is not powered by an engine and rotates freely. An autogyro cannot take off or land vertically, or hover in flight, but it can operate from very small landing zones. An excellent answer, my reading friend. Take a gold star, and… One, not two.
Would you believe that Cuisinier had the luxury of reading the text of a telegram sent by Cierva Autogiro or Avro, a text presumably translated by hand for the good of the cause, and returned here to its original English: “Your machine made a special demonstration in the presence of the Prince of Wales. Big success.”
That statement was of course pure ballyhoo on the part of the English firm, or Cuisinier. Imagine my surprise when it turned out that said prince, Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David of house Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, mentioned in an August 2023 issue of our princely blog / bulletin / thingee, actually inspected a two-seat Cierva C.19 autogyro in England, in early September 1929. You could had knocked me over with a feather.
A brief digression if I may. Please note that the presence of the words autogiro and autogyro in this article is not a mistake on my part. The word autogiro refers to aircraft associated with de la Cierva y Codorníu. The word autogyro, on the other hand, refers to aircraft which were not so associated. End of digression.
Would you believe that, according to the important daily newspaper Le Soleil of Québec, Québec, this C.19 arrived in… Québec, yes, the city, around the beginning of October? That British autogyro was seemingly the first flying machine of that type intended for a Canadian user. It therefore dethroned the Pitcairn-Cierva PCA-2 registered in Canada, in July 1931, by Hubert Martyn Pasmore, the founding president of Fairchild Aircraft Limited of Longueuil, Québec – a well-known Québec / Canadian aircraft manufacturer mentioned several times in our blog / bulletin / thing since August 2018.
Before I forget, the fantastic collection at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa, Ontario, includes a PCA-2.
The problem was that no C.19 was registered on Canadian soil. This being said (typed?), the Laurentian Air Express C.19 could had flown in Canada legally until its British certificate of airworthiness expired, in April 1930, and… You doubt the claims contained in Le Soleil, right? Sigh… Please enjoy the following photograph.
The Cierva C.19 of Laurentian Air Express Limited of Québec, Québec. Anon., “Le premier du genre à Québec.” Le Soleil, 17 October 1929, 15.
The C.19 made its first flight on Canadian soil a little after mid-October. The chief pilot of the American firm Pitcairn Cierva Autogiro Company was at the controls. Satisfied with the results, James G. “Jim” Ray made a second flight with a Laurentian Air Express pilot. And yes, Ray piloted the C.19 because no pilot in Canada had the proper qualifications.
Dare yours truly repeat the suggestion that a little bird whispered to me according to which one or more people at Cierva Autogiro or Avro might have seen the interest expressed by Laurentian Air Express as a great opportunity to unload an underpowered and somewhat unsuccessful autogyro on some unsuspecting bumpkins from the colonies, as Englishmen of a certain class considered Canada to be at the time?
One might also wonder if those Englishmen wondered what would happen to said autogyro given that no one in Canada would be able to pilot it until he received the required training.
Before I forget, the C.19 was the first series-produced autogyro, with up to 35 examples made in England and Germany, by Avro and Focke-Wulf-Flugzeugbau Aktiengesellschaft, an aircraft manufacturer mentioned in a February 2019 issue of our exceptional blog / bulletin / thingee.
It was during the month of September 1929, that a response to the article published the previous month by the weekly Le Petit Journal of Montréal, Québec, appeared. Yes, the one that we perused in the 3rd part of this article.
The aforementioned Champagne published his text in Le Soleil. That pilot saw no reason to create a marine biology research station in the gulf of the St. Lawrence River in order to confirm the name of the cetacean hunted in those waters. This would indeed have been ridiculous but, as you know, it was not for that reason that the unidentified resident of the North Shore wanted the creation of such a station.
A brief digression if I may. A non-profit organisation of Québec, yes, the city, dedicated to conservation, the Société Provancher d’histoire naturelle du Canada, had been recommending for many months the creation of 2 research stations.
In any event, Champagne believed that the only effective way to destroy beluga whales was aerial bombing. Contrary to what the unidentified resident thought, the engine of an aircraft did not scare them away. The aviator pointed out that fishermen were bringing ashore better catches of cod since the start of the bombing campaign.
Champagne admitted, however, that other, more effective approaches might be developed in the future. He also admitted that the beluga whale was not easy to kill. Champagne seemed to believe that its thick skin and blubber protected it to some extent from the effects of bomb explosions. The mind boggles.
Champagne in no way shared the resident’s opinion that the crisis caused by the beluga whales could resolve itself: “does that attitude not seem false, savouring a little of antiquity? Why hold back progress? The cod is essential and the porpoise [sic] is not. Death to the porpoise [re-sic] then – it is logical.”
The same argument was used to justify the mass slaughter of wolves in Europe and North America. Such a slaughter negatively impacted the environment on both continents. And let us not forget the ongoing slaughter of sharks all over the world. The world needs wolves and sharks, and that is a fact, but I digress.
Curiously, Champagne seemed to believe that beluga whales had only frequented the shores of the North Shore since 1925-26, that is since they were chased out of Europe.
Curiously, again, no precise information concerning the bombing of the beluga whales appeared in the Québec press before the end of the bombing campaign, on an undetermined date during the fall of 1929.
Interviewed in November, Champagne admitted that this type of operation required top-notch equipment, qualified personnel and lengthy preparations. It also did not allow a pod of beluga whales to be destroyed with a single bomb, or single flight. This being said (typed?), that type of operation had just proven that it could lead to the death of many beluga whales and scare others away.
It should be noted that Laurentian Air Express was seemingly unable to cause the death of any beluga in November 1929. You see, its bomb-dropping Robin was seriously damaged in late October, I think, while moving on the water. Its floats and left wing were in fact so badly banged up that they eventually had to be replaced.
And yes, you are indeed correct, my reading friend, Laurentian Air Express’ bombing campaign might have ended as early as October 1929.
During a long speech on the activities he supervised, a speech delivered at the end of January 1930 to the Assemblée législative de la province de Québec, the aforementioned Laferté shared the results achieved with regard to beluga whale hunting.
After 4 or 5 days of hunting by the Laurentian Air Express float plane and fishermen armed with rifles, fish catches had increased. A representative of the Ministère de la Colonisation, des Mines et des Pêcheries du Québec, Eugène Comeau, claimed to have seen 37 dead beluga whales and several others injured.
Laferté announced that he had asked the Commissioner General of Canada in Paris, France, Philippe Roy, to obtain information on the beluga whale eradication methods discussed at the Congrès des Pêches maritimes held in Dieppe, France, in September 1929.
Laferté also announced that Laurentian Air Express asserted it was ready to undertake a second hunting campaign in 1930, completely free of charge. The provincial government would only have to commit to provide it with bombs and, it seemed, grant it all the profits resulting from said hunt.
The government deputy who represented the North Shore, the lawyer Edgar Rochette, of course supports Laferté’s statements. He had himself seen the excellent results obtained. The money spent to hunt beluga whales was not misplaced. The catches of the fall of 1929 were indeed very interesting.
The only member of the Parti ouvrier du Québec in the Assemblée législative de la province de Québec, William Tremblay, showed a certain sarcasm in his response to the speech of the Minister of colonisation, mines and fisheries, yes, Laferté, a response quoted in several Québec daily newspapers, including L’Action Catholique of Québec, words translated here.
There was one question I did not want to touch. But the minister of Colonisation was so kind that I would like to draw his attention. It is about fisheries. His predecessor told us about a remedy to frighten porpoises [sic]. It had been suggested to him by Eskimos [sic], he said. The latter had organised a fanfare of tin boxes. If he wanted to find something like that, he should go to Sorel during a by-election.
The porpoise [sic] issue is very important. The minister told us that he had scored a great shot, 37 porpoises [sic] out of 2 000 000 were killed. The minister said that after this the fishing had been good. My information is not the same. I took a trip to the area last year and was told that the fishing was completely compromised.
Do we not think that it would be better to try to catch porpoises [sic] with the aim of using them? This is my suggestion. If it is followed, I believe that next year we will be able to learn that 38 porpoises [sic] instead of 37 were killed.
Tremblay added, in translation, that “we need something other than throwing bombs, even those of parliament.” He subsequently criticised other elements of the minister’s speech.
The next day, a member of the official opposition, the lawyer Albéric Blain, in turn criticised Laferté’s speech, including his comments about beluga whale hunting. He recalled that the previous Minister of colonisation, mines and fisheries, Joseph-Édouard Perrault, had gone to France to learn how to kill those cetaceans,
“That is enough,” asserted, in translation, the Premier of Québec, the lawyer Louis-Alexandre Taschereau, visibly annoyed.
As you and I know very well, Perrault had crossed the Atlantic to attend several congresses and conferences, not to learn how to kill beluga whales.
Blain nonetheless continued his remarks, words translated here.
Bombs were thrown and thirty-seven porpoises [sic] out of two million were killed. What a magnificent result! I learned that after that massacre the shores of the North Shore were littered with dead fish and that the new war was more harmful to the fishermen than to the porpoises [sic] themselves.
Blain subsequently criticised other elements of Laferté’s speech.
And yes, my reading friend, there were now 2 000 000 beluga whales in the waters of the St. Lawrence River, in other words 200 to 250 times the actual number of animals present. Where the heck did Tremblay and Blain trawl up that absolutely laughable number, you ask? Yours truly wonders if a government deputy might have shouted that number after Tremblay mentioned that 37 beluga whales out of 200 000 had been killed, to mock him.
Another member of the official opposition, the member for Sherbrooke, my homecity, the Québec civil engineer / consulting engineer / land surveyor Armand Charles Crépeau, stated he was surprised that Taschereau had chosen a man as peaceful as Laferté to act as his minister of war, for his wars on beluga whales and bears. And yes, Crépeau subsequently criticised other elements of Laferté’s speech, and... Yes, the war on bears.
You see, at the end of July, beginning of August 1929, Laferté had reinstated the reward of $15, a non negligible sum, given to any person who killed one of the bears which, it was said, infested the North Shore, on the condition that this poor animal be located less than 8 kilometres (5 miles) from a home. That sum corresponded to just over $260 in 2024 currency.
I know, I know, what could those bears possibly have done to justify the reinstatement of that reward? Yours truly is probably fabulating here but did Laferté reinstate that reward to provide some additional financial assistance to the fishermen of the North Shore?
It was not until mid-February 1930 that information on the bombing campaign appeared in newspapers. The number of beluga whales cut down in 1929, all methods combined, was approximately 230, compared to 23 in 1928, asserted Laferté in response to a question asked by a member of the official opposition, the furniture dealer Pierre-Auguste Lafleur.
And yes, that total might, I repeat might, have included the beluga whales, said to number around 190, cut down on the banks of the St. Lawrence River under the direction of Joseph Lizotte, a resident of Rivière-Ouelle, Québec.
Interestingly, if one added those beluga whales cut down by Lizotte and his team to the 37 dead animals seen by the aforementioned Comeau, the number thus obtained was for all intent and purposes 230, a simple coincidence of course, or was it? Food for thought, but back to the information transmitted by Laferté.
The sums spent between 1927 and 1929 by the Québec government in its fight against beluga whales amounted to a little more than $27 200, including a little less than $18 500 given to fishermen who hunted that cetacean from longboats and close to $5 300 donated to Laurentian Air Express. Those amounts respectively corresponded to just under $480 000, about $325 000 and about $93 000 in 2024 currency.
And yes, my reading friend, each beluga whale put down was quite expensive, especially since the vast majority of the cetaceans put down was seemingly not killed from longboats or by the handmade bombs dropped by the Laurentian Air Express seaplane. That said, many fishermen from the North Shore received a sum of money which helped their families better get through the winter of 1929-30.
Given the results obtained by Lizotte, the new president of a cannery, Le Poisson de Gaspé Limitée of… Mont-Louis, Québec, and professor at the École d’agriculture de Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pocatière, in… Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pocatière, Québec, the Québec agronomist and fisheries expert Louis Bérubé, believed that beluga whale hunting could give rise to an important industry. Aerial bombing and hunting from longboats were not long-term solutions to the depredations of those cetaceans.
At the end of March 1930, both Cuisinier and Laurentian Air Express were forced to declare bankruptcy. While the causes of their financial problems are unfortunately unknown, insufficient revenues perhaps, the purchase of the aforementioned C.19 probably did not help. What happened to that aircraft is also equally unknown, which is a shame.
This being said (typed?), in May 1932, the daily newspaper La Presse of Montréal described Cuisinier as being, in translation, “the owner of the first autogyro in the Dominion,” which could perhaps suggest that the aircraft was still in existence at that time. I know, I know, I am grasping at straws.
A brief and somewhat disturbing digression if I may. Around mid-March 1930, the daily Le Devoir of Montréal highlighted the presence, words translated here, of “a ‘goglu’ aviator, famous for his hunting of porpoises [sic]…” during a noisy meeting of members of the Ordre patriotique des goglus, in the good city of Québec. We are entitled to wonder if the individual in question might, I repeat might, have been Cuisinier.
How was his presence at said meeting at all disturbing, you ask, my reading friend? A good question. You see, the Ordre patriotique des goglus was a right-wing, if not far-right wing French-Canadian nationalist movement, founded in 1929 by Québec journalist Adrien Arcand. Arcand and his right-hand man, the Québec printing administrator Joseph Ménard, subsequently created a series of newspapers and political parties which became downright anti-Semitic and national socialist during the 1930s, but back to the beluga whales.
During a debate in the Assemblée législative de la province de Québec, the aforementioned Blain asked the equally aforementioned Laferté if he had consulted experts before launching his hunting and bombing campaign. The minister replied that he had acted in response to requests from fishermen and all people interested in fisheries. The 1929 campaign had provided work for fishermen and put beluga whales on the run.
Behind the closed doors of the Ministère de la Colonisation, des Mines et des Pêcheries du Québec, Laferté and his senior officials knew very well that, although many lessons could be learned from various aspects of the 1929 campaign, the results obtained were not exactly spectacular. Indeed, a new action plan had to be developed.
Laferté ultimately decided not to resume the beluga whale bombing campaign in 1930. The lack of success of the 1929 campaign obviously had something to do with that. Mind you, the stock market crash of October 1929, kick-off of the Great Depression, not to mention the bankruptcy of Laurentian Air Express, might have contributed to the minister’s decision.
For all intents and purposes, Laferté publicly acknowledged the poor success of the bombing campaign at a joint meeting of the Canadian Fisheries Association and American Fisheries Society in Montréal in September 1930. The campaign had produced only “certain results.”
Would you believe that, no later than May 1930, a little-known Québec author and inspector of the postal district of the city of Québec, Joseph Lallier, published a well-forgotten novel entitled Angéline Guillou, in which the young and charming eponymous heroine, a native of the North Shore, led a young and brave pilot, Jacques Vigneault, who had come to the North Shore to hunt beluga whales, to burn with love, a chaste love obviously, we were after all in Québec?
At a certain point, Vigneault disappeared without a trace. Desperate, Guillou fell seriously ill. Once recovered, she became a nun and founded a small congregation.
Time passed. One fine day, a man showed up at the door of the hospice run by Guillou or, more precisely, Mother Saint-Vincent de Paul. It was obviously Vigneault. He told his great love how he had fallen into the hands of an indigenous tribe that he evangelised over the months, before showing it a clean pair of heels.
Realising very well the strength of Mother Saint-Vincent de Paul’s faith, not to mention his own, Vigneault left the hospice with a heavy heart. He would soon become a missionary to evangelise indigenous peoples. I know, I know, as endings went, that one was a real bummer.
That tear jerking lyrico-romantic ending was, however, typical of the clerico-nationalist thinking of the hyper-conservative secular and religious elites present in the Québec of the time for whom agriculture, the family, the French language and the roman catholic religion were the foundations of Québec’s francophone society, a society they wanted to keep isolated from the changes taking place beyond its borders.
And what about the fishermen of the North Shore, you ask, my somewhat concerned reading friend? According to the superintendent of maritime fisheries, the aforementioned Gibaut, who had returned to Québec, yes, the city, around mid-June 1930 from a long stay in the region, the pods of beluga whales were less numerous, for one reason or another, and the catches of salmon and cod were quite good, if only in certain places. Approached again in October, Gibaut asserted that the cod catches for the year 1930 had not been good in more than one place. Salmon, for its part, was abundant almost everywhere.
With your permission, my reading friend whose patience is admirable, yours truly will bring to a close the 4th part of this article.
It went without saying that the setbacks of North Shore fishermen continued in 1931, as did the beluga whale hunt in fact. Even so, in March 1931, as the Great Depression began to hit harder, the Québec government cut its $50 reward for each animal killed to a rather less interesting $15, sums which corresponded to about $1 000 and $300 in 2024 currency. As you might have imagined, that measure proved rather unpopular.
Indeed, in early July, in response, he said, to a request from a government deputy, Joseph Arthur Bergeron, physician-surgeon in Saint-Jérôme-de-Matane, Québec, and mayor of the place, the aforementioned Laferté announced that he would once again offer a reward of $50 for each beluga killed, which was no small change.
Laferté’s about-face provided an opening to a weekly published in Montréal which was no friend of the provincial government. Just before mid-July 1931, not too long before the writs were issued and an election held in the province of Québec, in August, Le Petit Journal published a fairly long article entitled, in translation, “Let us all hunt the porpoise [sic], and make a fortune!” As hard as it tried over the ensuing days, that newspaper could not sway enough voters. The aforementioned Taschereau was re-elected.
In 1932, the Great Depression striking harder and harder, Laferté reduced the reward to $15, an amount which corresponded to about $325 in 2024 currency.
In February 1932, the aforementioned Rochette declared, in translation, that “it would be up to the Federal Government to undertake a campaign to get rid of porpoises [sic] as well as all other things harmful to Maritime fisheries in general.” According to that government deputy in the Assemblée législative de la province de Québec, since it transferred to the government of Québec control of the fisheries in its waters, with the exception of those around the Îles-de-la Madeleine, in February 1922, the federal government had left its provincial counterpart to its own devices, which were rather limited. That call remained unanswered.
In any event, several thousand beluga whales were killed in the waters of the St. Lawrence River during the 1930s. In other words, a significant percentage of the total population. In 1935, the value of the various products derived from the beluga whales killed during that year came to $ 12 565, a sum which corresponded to slightly more than $ 280 000 in 2024 currency.
In 1938, the Ministère des Mines, de la Chasse et des Pêcheries of Québec subsidised a scientific investigation of the marine mammals living in the estuary and gulf of the St. Lawrence River. The main purpose of that investigation was to determine the impact of the beluga whale on commercial fishing. The Ukrainian Canadian zoologist Vadim Dmitrij Vladykov, then assistant for ichthyological research at the Institut de Zoologie of the Université de Montréal, in… Montréal, was charged with carrying out that research.
As early as 1940, said research seemed to indicate that cod was not the main source of sustenance of the beluga whales of the St. Lawrence River, and salmon even less so. This being said (typed?), it is likely that the Second World War considerably slowed down Vladykov’s research.
In 1946, Vladykov and his team concluded, in volume 4 (Nourriture du marsouin blanc (Delphinapterus leucas) du fleuve et du golfe Saint-Laurent) of their report entitled Études sur les mammifères aquatiques, that the legendary voracity of the beluga whale was a myth. That cetacean had never been a threat to the cod or salmon fisheries.
While it is true that the federal government banned the killing of beluga whales for sport in March 1973, the hunting of beluga whales in the St. Lawrence River was seemingly not fully banned until 1979. The total number of animals which survived the hunts was then more or less unknown.
According to researchers, there were between 1 530 and 2 180 beluga whales in the waters of the St. Lawrence River in 2022 – a fraction of their population a century before. Many of those cetaceans unfortunately suffer from serious health problems caused by the accumulation in their organism of toxic chemicals created by our species, toxic products accumulated throughout their life, which can, in rare cases, last up to 80 or even 90 years.
This writer wishes to thank the people who provided information. Any mistake contained in this article is my fault, not theirs.
And yes, the 4th part of this article was excessively long. The presence of an autogyro in the good city of Québec came as a complete surprise. It could not be ignored.
Rénald Fortier
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