The Whales of Pender Harbour

By early 1968 , Cecil Reid Jr. had given some thought to orcas. A gill net fisherman based in Pender Harbour, the thirty-one-year-old Reid—“Sonny” to his friends—had seen many killer whales over the years. As a boy growing up in the 1940s, he heard locals grumble about blackfish, and he watched family members take shots at the animals as they passed by. “My grandfather lived out around the corner from Irvine’s Landing,” he recalled, “and when the whales showed up, they would get the guns out and start shooting them.” Yet Reid knew live killer whales had become lucrative commodities, and when his father suggested catching one, he decided to give it a try. It was winter, however, and there weren’t many orcas around. Then, to his surprise, they came to him. In the late afternoon of Wednesday, February 21, a pod wandered into Pender Harbour, passing Reid’s waterfront home on Garden Bay. Momentarily stunned, Reid raced down to his boat, Instigator One. “I just happened to have my San Juan net still on the drum—which is a lot deeper and touched bottom,” he later recounted. “So when they came into Garden Bay the first time, I just set my net across.” The whales eluded his first attempt, but they lingered in the harbor, and the following morning Reid convinced other fishermen to help him, including several of his brothers and members of the local Cameron and Gooldrup families. In all, nine fishermen worked to seal off Garden Bay, and as the sun set over Irvine’s Landing, Reid felt certain they had trapped at least three orcas. But that night, one of the nets tore loose, and in the morning only one whale remained. Disappointed, Reid and his partners secured the animal—a fifteen-footer they believed to be male. Like those caught previously, the trapped orca hesitated to challenge the frail net surrounding him, much to the fishermen’s relief. Within minutes, the animal was swimming placidly in its makeshift enclosure. “Maybe it likes it here,” mused Reid.