“Nearly one-quarter of all orcas captured for display during the late sixties and early seventies showed signs of bullet wounds. Royal Canadian fighter pilots used to bomb orcas during practice runs, and in 1960, private fishing lodges on Vancouver Island persuaded the Canadian government to install a machine gun at Campbell River to cull the orca population.”

“Orcas can be spotted from the shores of Seattle, Tacoma, Port Angeles, Bellingham, and the popular San Juan Islands in Washington State; and Vancouver, Victoria, Nanaimo, Campbell River, and other cities in BC. These venues not only offer easy access to the whales, they are scenic and pleasant places to live: Researchers who study orcas tend to gravitate more toward this region than, say, Iceland.”

“Actually, orcas aren't quite as complex as scientists imagine. Most killer whales are just four tons of doofus dressed up like a police car.”

“The way you might fear a cow sitting down in the middle of the street during rush hour, that's how I fear Canadians.”

“The Cypress Hills massacre,...one of the final outrages of the literally lawless West...came...along that practical and symbolic divide, between the Canadian system of monopoly trading and the American system of competition, whiskey, bullets, exploitation, and extermination.”

“Hartwell’s subconscious was treated to a lengthy reel of the evolutionary tract of cetaceans – from their early days as hoofed creatures with triangular teeth like wolves, to cat-like creatures, to early variations of the hippopotamus, to bottlenose dolphins and Orca, the ‘killer whale’, which is the largest species of dolphin. The hybrid mammal also had the ability to convert to a smaller aquatic mammal, capable of diving into water and hiding beneath the surface to avoid birds of prey.”