My Dear Kavna,
I feel like I've lost a very dear old friend. Yet it's much more than that. Since hearing the news of your death, I have felt the loss of an extended family member -- one who had a profound impact on me. Kavna, meeting you moved me so deeply it changed my life.
You were the most adorable creature I've ever seen. Your playfulness struck such a sweet cord within me I scarcely had words for it, for how graceful you were and how cheerful. To me you're not just any beluga. You're Kavna, the one who played with me and gently kissed my cheek during our first meeting in 1979 at the Vancouver Aquarium. In the years since I came back to see you several times in sheer delight: of seeing your face; admiring your body's sleek moves; your effortless way in the water; your antics before the crowds who'd throng to see you.
Oh Kavna, where do I begin to describe what wells up inside me when I cast my mind back over the 32 years since you inspired me to write "Baby Beluga." Did you like the album cover drawing? Did you like how we embossed the beluga and the bubbles? Trust you liked the song; millions can't be wrong, right?
I'm glad I made it about an imaginary baby beluga, and that dolphins get a mention in verse 2 -- after all, you belugas are related to them. How I've enjoyed hearing audiences sing the chorus with me over the years. And such fun seeing children move their arms and hands to "waves roll in and the waves roll out."
You were the star of that CBC TV special we did in 1981, remember? I sang "Baby Beluga" to you over and over, with great love. I couldn't get enough of seeing your air bubbles and rings in the water, and how you loved chasing those rings all round the pool!
Only five years earlier, in 1976, you were brought to Vancouver from Churchill, Manitoba. However did you survive that shock? And especially when your calf Tuaq died after birth. How did you regain your spirit?
How did you go give so much in captivity after having lost so much? Or was it that in the care of aquarium staff and trainers you rebounded? Was it that in the love of countless children -- who squealed with delight to see you up close -- you felt refreshed? Did you feel their love? Were you singing to them all the while? I like to think so. To me, your spirit felt as pure as the spirit in little children.
They say you've brought joy to more than 30 million people lucky enough to see your aquarium shows. The first time I saw the show with your leaps and playful moves, I felt like a kid again. You squirted water and nearly soaked us, but we were too happy to care.
The aquarium pool enclosures were enlarged some years ago and you had much more space to swim in. Even so, we can still imagine your sacrifice. I'm just glad you had other belugas near you, and some dolphins too. When I heard that you lived to be 46, at least 15 years longer than most belugas in the wild, that gave me pause to reflect.
In 1988 at the Toronto Science Centre I attended a lecture on the St. Lawrence River belugas. Autopsies of the river beluga revealed they carry a huge load of toxic chemicals. This news was very hurtful. My beloved belugas, swimming in an environment so polluted that it poisoned them.
I went out to Tadoussac (Quebec) and got a glimpse of belugas in the river. The following year I took a year's sabbatical from my children's entertainment career and went on to record an ecology album, "Evergreen Everblue." The second verse of the title song goes: "Ocean's wave is rumbling with voices from the seaway..." and ends "beluga whales are singing 'Help this planet Earth to stay: evergreen, everblue'..."
Clearly the threats to beluga well being are also threats to humans: pollution, development, consumption and garbage. And now the culmination of many crises is in climate change, a global threat to our collective future.
That's why I've worked to spread a message of ecology awareness: so this world might be fit for both human babies and baby belugas! So people might feel the spirit to care for & protect what's precious to every child: friends like you, sweet Kavna. For your world is our world, and your friends are our friends. And yes, the more we link together -- Earth and Child -- the happier we'll be.
The point of being alive is to know our loving nature, to reduce suffering and increase joy. It's certainly not about selling more things at any cost. During my career I've never advertised to kids, because that's wrong. I've shunned commercial endorsements. Did you know I even turned down an offer for a Baby Beluga Film? --because it was to be marketed to kids and marketed with junk toys sold through junk food joints. I'd never go for that. I'm waiting for a socially responsible company to agree to do the beluga film in a whole new way: to create and market a family film responsibly.
Reflecting on all this, I'm so grateful for the magic that brought us together. And it's no wonder: belugas are called "sea canaries" because they sing so much, heard even above the water! How lucky for me that "Baby Beluga" is about a creature who loves to sing, just like humans do. We love to sing -- it's our nature.
Now we seem to be mimicking your species. We have pod-pals, and social media lets us podruple our power! (Ha ha.) Millions on every continent want fair trade and social justice for children of all cultures, for generations to come. We can pretend social media is our "wePod" and together we make waves. (Pun intended.)
Over 10 million adults who sang "Baby Beluga" in childhood now sing it with their young. I affectionately call them "beluga grads" and they tell me they love that. How fortunate I am to be in this dance at a pivotal time in history. It's why I wrote "A Covenant For Honouring Children."
All around the world people are inventing benign technologies, supporting clean renewable energy, and renewing democracy. I'm calling for embracing a children-first sustainability that can transform our world! With oceans at risk and Mother Earth in crisis, we have all the more reason to sing out: for beauty, for love and, most of all, in honour of our young.
Your memory will refresh "Baby Beluga" for all who know it. My new verse for beluga grads ends with, "Sing a song of peace, sing with all your friends, we need to hear you!" Many will be moved to join the Child Honouring movement for respecting Earth and Child. We will advance a positive vision born of conscience and collective joy. We'll have emissaries called Joy Envoys.
Can you hear me, Kavna? Thank you so much for the joy you gave to me and to countless others. We will never forget you. Your beauty lives on in our hearts, and you shine every time we sing a little love song on the go.
Follow Raffi Cavoukian on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Raffi_RC
If you cared about whales, instead of writing puerile songs about captivity and championing captivity, you would work against cetacean captivity. You would know that in the wild, orca whales live as much as 100 years. You would know that orca whales typically live 50 - 80 years in the wild, but die after 6 years in captivity. You would know that SeaWorld's "shamu" is not one whale, but several, as another whale is used to replace one who has died of captivity and heartbreak. If you really cared about whales, you woudl be working to keep the US from delisting from the endangered species the remaining 86 free orcas in the Salish Sea. If you really were in touch with whalekind, you would know that captivity breaks their hearts and spirits and makes miserable these socially-bonded creatures.
Sorry, but writing sappy songs praising the captivity of whales and anthropomorphizing that a captive whale is happy because of children is not helping whales. Justifying captivity harms whales. No whale is happy in captivity. Every whale in the oceans is presently in grave danger from human pollution and toxification, from the Navy's testing of low frequency acoustic sonar, from marine noise pollution, from propellers and ship collisions, from Japanese whale killers. If you really cared about whales, you would work against captivity and the threats to whales and whale freedom.
This is SO WRONG !!
Kavna did NOT live a long and healthy life and in the wild, Beluga whales reach more than 60 years (read : «Bomb Radiocarbon Dating Calibrates Beluga (Delphinapterus leucas) Age Estimates», Canadian Journal of Zoology, vol. 84, no 12, p. 1840-1852)
Cetaceans, taken away from their families & friends in the wild, are reduced to circus clowns, forced to perform in a concrete chlorinated prison filled with screaming people. It's similar to slavery. It's a death sentence.
So don’t visit parks or zoos that have captive marine mammals. These parks and zoos are part of a billion-dollar business built on the suffering of intelligent social beings who are denied everything that is natural and important to them.
NO MORE WHALES AND DOLPHINS IN CAPTIVITY !!
And now, can we please end the imprisonment of wild animals in zoos and aquariums? These are all beings with minds of their own, family relationships, instincts set by nature, etc. They should be free to live their lives as nature intended, not shut up in some small space so people can gape at them for a few minutes. And while I'm at it, I also think that factory farming should be ended now. It is incredibly cruel, very polluting, and folks, we are just getting fatter and sicker by eating meat, pork, etc.
Humans are ruining the world with pollution and greed. Let's make the memory of Kavna be the start of something better.
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Pardon me??? How do you know this whale was "cheerful"? Because whales and dolphins have permanent upturns of their mouths? How can it have been "graceful" swimming around in such a tiny space and performing gross tricks for the masses? Unfortunately the sad facts are that the aquarium PROFITED from this beluga's 45 years of prolonged captivity and so did Mr. Raffi. THIS IS JUST WRONG! I hate the way human beings have to always "control" everything on this planet!
One chink in the armor does not an evil person make. It's entirely possible for Raffi to have profited from a beluga in captivity and still be a champion of the rights of children and human beings.
After all, Jefferson owned a slave and had children by her, Gandhi was sometimes an ass to his wife, Socrates only married HIS wife Xanthippe to test whether he could be happy even with a shrewish wife, Martin Luther King Jr. was a womanizer, Lincoln only wanted the slaves freed so he could deport them to Liberia, Aristotle had unpleasant ideas about women and slaves, Confucious had uncomfortable ideas about servitude and piety, etc.
But all of them also contributed great boons to the human race. So it's possible for someone to be flawed in one area, and brilliant in the next.
Even Van Gogh cut off his ear, and Hemingway committed suicide. Yet do we doubt their artistic genius?
Keep on with the slavery analogies though. You're on the right track. You veer horrible off-course, however, when you try to justify it by pointing out that... well, Jefferson wasn't *all* bad - you know, even after he raped and impregnated his slaves.