The podcast was originally created to tell the stories I was finding out from the people I’d met while researching my book, The Killer Whale Who Changed the World. That book opens with a quote from my favourite artist, Bill Reid, that is embossed under his statue of an orca located outside the Vancouver Aquarium: “Above all else is God. Above God is the killer whale.”
The statue’s name: Skaana… The Haida word for orca. And the name of the orca who inspired Greenpeace to save the whales.
Skana (one a) was the name of the first orca displayed at the Vancouver Aquarium back in the 1960s and she was the orca who convinced scientist Paul Spong to approach Greenpeace about broadening their mission from fighting to stop nuclear testing to fighting for whales.