Murray and his wife, Kathy, moved to Vancouver, where Newman was awarded the first ever H.R. MacMillan Fellowship in fisheries to help fund his PhD studies at the University of British Columbia. Newman’s life changed again when he met his scholarship’s patron— H.R. MacMillan. The Canadian lumber baron liked company on his 137-foot converted minesweeper, the Marijean. Sometimes he’d take friends—the most powerful men in the province—and catch fish for sport. Sometimes he’d take scientists and catch specimens. Sometimes he’d take both. Newman became MacMillan’s go-to naturalist for the next dozen years. MacMillan became Newman’s friend and patron, and Newman soon found himself on a first-name basis with the province’s powerbrokers.
In 1955, Newman was appointed head of the Vancouver Public Aquarium. It was more of a concept than an institution, but it came with $300,000 in funding commitments from various levels of governments. Newman became the first employee of Canada’s first ever public aquarium, and it was his job to create . . . something.
Although Newman’s UBC mentors were keen on their student’s candidacy, some board members wanted a flashier figure to spearhead the city’s new tourist attraction. Already balding at thirty-one, with a slow Midwestern drawl, Newman looked and sounded like a lab nerd—an ichthyologist, not an impresario. But despite his scientific demeanor, Newman was an explorer at heart—always happy to jump into new adventures, preferably when he was in his diving gear, ideally with his wife, Kathy, beside him.
THE AQUARIUM OPENED on June 15, 1956. Admission for adults was twenty-five cents. In the first two days more than 10,000 visitors showed up. By the end of the first year, 342,870 people had passed through the turnstiles. Since the population of Vancouver was only 344,833, Newman celebrated the aquarium’s first anniversary with a press release joking that “if you are one of those 1,963 unlucky Vancouverites who did not get around to see the fish in 1957, perhaps you will be able to make it in 1958.” He also raised adult admission by a dime.
In 1963, Vancouver city council held a plebiscite to determine whether residents were prepared to pay $250,000 to expand the aquarium. The provincial and federal governments committed to matching the city’s contribution. Newspaper columnist Jack Wasserman, the voice of Vancouver, warned that if the aquarium didn’t expand, it wouldn’t be big enough to contain Newman’s ambitions, and the province couldn’t afford to let their curator go. “If we lose Murray Newman it will be a tragedy of the first magnitude. Even greater than if we lost the Premier.” Newman got his funding. It was time to play Ahab.
“I felt that a lot of the aquatic wildlife was savagely treated and the public should really know more about all of these different kinds of animals. So in planning an expansion I thought, wouldn’t it be marvelous if we could sort of symbolize the waters of British Columbia by having a perfect model of a killer whale.” Newman wanted a proper sculptor to craft this model. And to make sure the model wasn’t just attractive but also accurate, he was determined to kill a whale and then measure it in the water, while it maintained its size and shape. This level of concern for precision was positively cutting edge for the era.
The media was fascinated by the idea of an expedition to track “the marine world’s public enemy number one.” And in 1964, there was nothing controversial about hunting a killer whale, or pretty much anything else.
A few years earlier, Newman had made headlines when the aquarium caught and killed one of B.C.’s last basking sharks as the model for a similar sculpture. The second-largest fish in the world after the whale shark (real whales are mammals), basking sharks (Cetorhinus maximus) grow to forty feet in length, weigh up to ten thousand pounds, have huge mouths with tiny teeth, and pretty much all they do is bask. According to fossil records, they’ve been preying on plankton for about 30 million years. Most sharks are in perpetual motion, but basking sharks live like middle-aged tourists at an all-inclusive resort—they float in the water, waiting for food to show up. Their dream diet is krill (small crustaceans). The shark’s huge open mouth may look like a death trap, but the only way it would hurt a fly is if the fly flew in with dinner.
They are, however, extremely lethal to gill nets (and vice versa), and there were enough sharks basking in the mid-twentieth century that they used to be seen traveling in groups of up to a hundred off the Pacific coast. In other parts of the world, basking sharks were hunted—and rendered—like whales. The fish have oversized livers— up to a quarter of their considerable body weight—which means they’re rich in oil. Their skin can be used as leather, their cartilage is sold as medicine, and their remains made fine fish meal. But in 1948, B.C. fishermen lobbied the provincial government to place a bounty on the sharks. A year later, basking sharks were declared “destructive pests” and received the same government-sanctioned death warrant as black bears, seals, and sea lions. It was the job of Canada’s fisheries officers to kill these creatures on sight.
The Department of Fisheries turned one of their boats into a killing machine, equipping it with a retractable, triangular steel spike. When sharks were spotted, the Comox Post would race to the fishermen’s rescue and lower the blade at their bow to save the endangered gill nets by filleting the giant fish. The device spiked more than forty basking sharks in its first month of operation. The Victoria Daily News declared on June 22, 1955, that “since no commercial use has been found for the shark, their presence in a salmon school is a fisherman’s nightmare.” They were also considered a nightmare for the tourist industry. If their submersible skewer wasn’t handy, the Post followed the same protocol as other large vessels and intentionally rammed the sharks head on—also an effective method of murdering them. Meanwhile, Sunday fishermen happily harpooned the sharks. Some thrill-seekers used them as water skiing ramps and, quite literally, jumped the sharks.
Wildlife was just another limitless Canadian resource, like minerals and trees. The day Newman’s appointment as aquarium boss was announced in the Province, an ad on the same page featured a sketch of an adorable whale spouting water. The whale was the logo for “100% organic blue whale compost and soil conditioner.” Acme Peat Products promised that their whale meal—available “at all garden supply stores”—was “ideal for all phases of gardening and fine green lawns.”
Yes, Canadians loved whales—as fertilizer.
Newman asked the Department of Fisheries to approve his plan. The officials didn’t just offer their blessing but steered Newman toward someone who could shoot the whale and a scientist who could choose the best spot to set up the harpoon.
The whale expert was one of the men who’d inspired Newman to move to British Columbia—Ian McTaggart-Cowan. Now the head of UBC’s Zoology Department—and Canada’s first celebrity scientist (his CBC TV show Fur and Feathers launched in 1955 and set the table for Dr. David Suzuki’s long-running environmentally themed series The Nature of Things)—McTaggart-Cowan suggested the aquarium set up camp on Saturna. There was a spot on the island—East Point— where the water was so deep and the whales were able to swim so close to shore that McTaggart-Cowan hoped to build a research facility there.
For the previous four years, June Fletcher, wife of East Point’s assistant lighthouse keeper, Pete Fletcher, had kept a detailed record of how many whales, seals, and sea lions she saw each day. According to her records, it was rare for a summer day to go by without a pod approaching the shore, and some of those pods numbered fifty or more.
The aquarium’s board put $3000 toward the expedition, and a Vancouver charity offered another $1,000 to the cause. When the project was announced, the media was captivated by the idea of a whale hunt. “The killer whale is more abundant in B.C. waters than anywhere else—it is really a spectacular animal,” Newman told reporters before launching his sea safari. “He deserves to be called king of the beasts more than the lion. He could swallow an African lion whole. The public just isn’t aware of the magnificence of this animal. We want to emphasize and dramatize the whale by making it the primary exhibit in the foyer.”
Newman surprised everyone,