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4 - Sunday, April 3, 1988 ~ North Shore News

' | WAS at a party. We were!

all having such a good time.
My host had visited the Nor- /

thwest Territories severa! times! He

talked about the Arctic with awe. I
had been there a few times, tao, so

" we had a common love to discuss.

- But there were a couple of.
specific arctic-related issues we
‘avoided talking about. One; “was
thei issue of whaling. The other,

‘sealing.’

I oppose whaling by afiybody
_. because the whales are st) few and

threatened now as much by pollu- o

tion as by man. . if ji
AE NS

“Hav aving hada fiw drinks,

my tongue .was loose, and

before I realized jhow my

tone: had changed, T blurted

out: “If you tried to smuggle

this across the jborder into /
' the States, they'd bust you

- and throw y iin the. .

slammer."

be rational, but the ;

“memory of'ome of those moments.

bi, gives tie goose-bumps. .
As fo ing, ithe gov-

‘ago,the Vandsmen in New-' °
‘foundtand and the Labrador and ,

sriipting the’ ition yea balance. ,
: Afybody who admires the in-.

: def pendence: and heart of either ©
Newfoundlanders or r Inuit, and is is.

RECENT ‘CONVICTIONS |
* North: Shore courts’ have. resulted
in'the’ following fines ‘and [penalties
for: drinking: ‘and: driving: related °,

-” Michael: Duncan, 21,2337 Atkins”.

q itlam: (impaired,:

mirrors ee tired on’ ‘page
6..should have. read:
‘outstanding savin .
assorted’ mirrors, c }00SE.

“yo
frame. : :
assorted designs of etched .
mirrors.” We apologize for:
inconvenience this .

> the U.S., and it is-against the law

}

’ deeply distressed by their current

plight — their markets for pelts
legislated away — is bound to be
ticked-off, to say. the least, at con-
servationists as a whole. I ap-
preciate their feclings entirely.
Next topic.

I did not intend to talk about
whales, either. But as i was admir-
ing my host's colisction of Eskimo
carvings, I discovered an Orca
tooth — a five-inch fang that puts
any land-based predator's tecth to
shame.

Having had a few drinks, my
tongue was loose, and before I re-
alizéd how my tone had changed, J
blurted out: “if you tried to
smuggle this across. the border into
the States, they'd bust you and
throw you in the slammer."'

The point being, as he knew,

- that Canada's **Killer whales" are /

considered a protected species in i

1

i}
to traffic i in their parts.

We got off that subject quickly
too. But J continued to stare at the
tooth, cupping it in my palm. '

». Into my mind, as vividly as ever,
’ flashed the memory of the mo-

* ment, years ago, when J stuck my |
- head into the mouth of an Orcinus -

,, Orca named Skana.‘] had looked,

_ Out at the world from insidea

double row of tecth like that.
The experience: changed my life,,
1 think. It might just have been

timing, of course, but ai short time |

later, I set out on a journey that !

had never expected to go on, en-
ding upin places I certainly never

expected to.be. |

“. “Including this room, at this par:

ty, umpteen years later, holding an
Orca tooth. | set it back down, not
wanting to spoil anybody’ 's mood,
including my own. if this had been
a sequence ina movie, you would

have read that gesture — seiting,

!

he

the great fang down — as an act of
Tejection, maybe even of betrayal.

A little while jater, having had a
few more drinks, } found myself
sitting around a table with half a
dozen people, iaughing and al} be-
ing terribly witty, when a wine
glass got knocked on to the floor
near my foot, and broke.

We had been discussing the

. leaning of metaphors in life as

well as ar{, and somebody joked
that the broken glass had to be a
metaphor.

Remembering a similar scene in

‘a recently-viewed film, 1 bent,

down, picked up a Jagged shard of
glass, ‘and went to imitate an
overly-dramatic character slashing
himself.

It was the kind of clowning that
happens at parties. Only Mashinaly
did it enter my mind that the
broken glass was shaped very
much like.the tooth of the Orca.

My action was intended entirely
— at least, consciously — as'a
piece of theatre. But my movement

" was clumsy and the glass caught
_my necklace, and the force of my
 Upward-swinging hand snapped it,

sending my medallion flying across
the room and disappearing behind’
adesk.. -:

The medallion was sculpted i in
the shape of -- you guessed it? —

an Orca. It had been given to me

over a decade ago.

.. My host and J scrambled to find

it, although he had no way of

: knowing the significance the
: medallion had for me, or what it
' depicted.

We did find it, although the a
chain itself mysteriously vanished.
And | went home, thinking:
Metaphor. Life. Magic, Mystery.

Still, going on. Maybe it never,
Ops. @ . .

From the people with everyday tow
_ paces — otlenng serice with a smile!

Pete

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