Whale Meat Anniversary

Wednesday, April 19, 2017

I ate whale meat, canned, 35 years ago this week, on April 17, 1982.  It was chewier and oilier than beef.

The Ottawa patriation party that featured this delicacy also offered back bacon and Molson's beer.  All three were Canadian items then, but Molson's is now owned by foreigners, whale meat is rarer, and bacon has cancer links.  At age 20, fresh off my bicycle, I did not worry about such things.

I had just ridden from Parliament Hill in Ottawa to the house where I rented a second-floor, 6 x 8-foot room during the winter I finished a Bachelor of Arts degree in English at Carleton University.  My landlord, the law professor and judge Richard David Abbott, a cousin of Stephen Leacock, had rented me the room for $68 per month.  "It's the same size as a cell in the Kingston Penitentiary," said Abbott, who was from Kingston, and studied at Harvard University.  Perhaps he was telling me to avoid a life of crime.

Why had I ridden to Parliament Hill that morning, in light rain?

Queen Elizabeth and Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau signed the patriated Canadian constitution that day, at a table in front of the parliament buildings.  I stood a couple hundred metres away, kittycorner from the table, beside my bike, at the edge of the crowd that covered the hill to watch the event.

Then I rode about three kilometres south to Abbott's house, where he threw a party to celebrate the day.   I don't think he was related to John Abbott, an 1890s Canadian prime minister; I think he would have told me, and I don't recall him mentioning it.

The beer, bacon, whale meat, and other party items for a few of Abbott's friends, and for us three boarders, were nice surprises that cool spring day.  It was the only meal he offered us, who otherwise ate in the residence cafeteria at Carleton University, across Bronson Avenue from the house, the closest I ever lived to a university I attended. 

Before moving out that month, the other boarders, one studying architecture, the other studying social sciences, each gave his photo to Abbott, as I did, to put in the large frame of small photos of young men who had boarded in his house since the late-1960s. 

When I visited Abbott in August, 1987, he did not have a room for me, and I rented a room in a house across the street to start graduate studies in English.  He showed me the frame, with my photo still in it, among more than 30 photos.  He was over 60 then and I'm sure he's long dead now, but my memory of his April 17, 1982 patriation party endures.

I ate whale meat, back bacon, and Molson's beer.  I wonder what the queen and prime minister ate that day.