Whale should stay on P.E.I. says opposition MLA Mike Currie

By Wayne Thibodeau

FOR THE SOU’WESTER

The 26-metre blue whale being exhumed in western P.E.I. is a provincial treasure that shouldn’t be handed to British Columbia, says Conservative Mike Currie.

During question period on Friday, May 16, Currie called on Premier Robert Ghiz, Tourism Minister Valerie Docherty and Cultural Affairs Minister Carolyn Bertram to do something to stop the big blue whale from being exported to Canada’s west coast. He said they have let this “treasure” walk off P.E.I. like a load of gravel.

“This is a Prince Edward Island artifact,” Currie said from the floor of historic Province House. “This is a treasure and we’re allowing this treasurer to leave this province.”

Dr. Andrew Trites, a University of British Columbia (UBC) professor, is leading the 10-member team that is now collecting the bones of the blue whale. UPEI and Holland College also has 30 students and staff assisting with the project.

The process from digging up the whale to having its skeleton ready to be put on display will cost about $600,000. The glass atrium being constructed to house the whale will cost close to $3 million.

Bertram said the deal to hand the whale to UBC was made after it came ashore 20 years ago. She said the university paid for the burial with the understanding that it would return to exhume the carcass.

The minister said one also has to realize the size of the whale. It is the same length as two school buses parked end-to-end.

“The whale is not native to Prince Edward Island,” she said.

There are only 20 blue whale skeletons on display around the world. The P.E.I. whale will become the fourth largest on display.

P.E.I. does get to keep something — the blubber.

The agreement signed 20 years ago allows “any flesh flensed or otherwise removed from the blue whale must be deposited back into the hole from which it was removed.”

“It is an important artifact. I think it should be preserved here,” said Currie. “But apparently from the answers from the premier, and the other two ministers, is very little work has been done on it. The only thing they want to seem to keep here is whatever flesh is

left after the bones are gone . . .”

Currie said an atrium could have been constructed in Tignish to display the whale, which would have increased tourism in western P.E.I.

He said Island students, especially those at the Atlantic Vet College could have benefited by having it on display in P.E.I.

“We can build buildings here to the same size as British Columbia.”

(Wayne Thibodeau is a journalist with Transcontinental Media’s Guardian newspaper, which is a contributor to the Sou’Wester.)