Whales, tales and trails: Can dead whales be as much of a tourism draw as live ones?
CBC
No matter how many times you've seen a whale breach, it never gets old.
Whale-watching brings thousands of tourists to Newfoundland and Labrador each year. Living whales are, of course, the biggest draw, but do tourists have an interest in dead whales too?
That was the question posed by David Hayashida many years ago in his community of King's Point in Green Bay — a question at the heart of the latest episode of CBC's Land and Sea.
He had an idea to create whale pavilions in various towns in the region, showcasing skeletons of whales found in waters off this coast.
"So we did a travelling roadshow going from community to community to community saying, 'We've got a crazy idea, it could work. What do you think?'"
Many towns in Green Bay and White Bay liked the concept of a kind of whale trail around the region.
And, at that time, there was federal funding for the venture.
Once towns were on board with the concept, the challenge was finding the feature attraction: dead whales.
Hayashida says they were lucky to have someone very knowledgeable in their corner.
That was Jon Lien, PhD, still known affectionately as the whale man.
Lien was an animal behaviourist who dedicated much of his life to releasing whales and dolphins from entanglements.
He was always eager to help others understand the underwater world.
"So with Jon there, we had the right of first refusal to any whale that was washing up on the beaches. If the Royal Ontario Museum [or] some other big museum wanted a whale, they had to go through Jon, and Jon was giving us the first opportunity. So that was an incredible situation," said Hayashida.
A humpback whale that washed up in Cobb's Arm was assigned to the community of King's Point, and a sperm whale that washed up in the Codroy Valley was assigned to the town of Triton.
Shopping local may be the desire, but affordability might decide where shoppers spend their money this Christmas season.
As classes across New Brunswick pause for the holidays, it’s not yet clear which schools are making a dent in chronic absenteeism — a stubborn post-pandemic trend that mostly afflicts the high school cohort, especially in the Anglophone West school district.
CBC Quebec has launched its Make the Season Kind campaign. It's our annual campaign that focuses on food insecurity, while also celebrating kindness, generosity and community spirit around the province.
Premier Wab Kinew says Manitoba will hold a public inquiry as soon as 2026 into the former Progressive Conservative government’s post-election efforts to approve an environmental licence for sand-mining company Sio Silica.
Premier Scott Moe has led the Saskatchewan Party through two straight elections, winning majority governments each time.
Eight weeks after adding a GM BrightDrop van to the fleet of his plumbing and heating business, Marty Salliss has no complaints, only praise.
Nearly half of Alberta’s Grade 6 students failed the provincewide math test in 2024, three years after the province started rolling out its new elementary school curriculum.
Toronto could get new cars on the road whose drivers will never get frustrated by gridlock — because the cars would be driving themselves.
Amidst a cost-of-living crisis, some London-area organizations say they have noticed a decline in donations this holiday season.
Prominent northern leaders have been touting the Arctic economic and security corridor as a "nation-building" project that will bring economic benefits to the two territories it straddles, but others are split on how much good will come out of it.
When the federal government tabled its 2025 budget last month, it included a proposal that tax fraud experts say is long overdue — if also a belated acknowledgement that the Canada Revenue Agency has been repeatedly duped into paying out untold millions in bogus tax refunds to scammers.
Talking with an AI chatbot can successfully convince people to change their votes and could affect the outcome of future elections, according to a new study.
While some are writing wishlists for Santa Claus, a group of Newfoundland and Labrador youth are writing their wishlist for the provincial government.