When journalists Suzanne Chisholm and Michael Parfit arrived
in Nootka Sound, on the west coast of Vancouver Island, in June of
2004, they expected to spend three weeks reporting on an attempt to
reunite a young orca with his pod.
Three years later, they left with a movie.
“We thought it was going to be a simple relocation story,” says
Chisholm over the phone from the “teeny-tiny island” she lives on with
Parfit, her husband and co-director of Saving Luna, near Sidney,
BC. Once the couple landed on Nootka Sound with an assignment from
Smithsonian magazine, they found that there was more to the
story than a lost baby whale.
“We’ve done a lot of work for National Geographic magazine over the
years,” says Chisholm. “In 1998 we started carrying cameras, primarily
as a note-taking technique. We started producing stuff for the
National Geographic channel around 2000. And we decided whenever
we go on assignment, we’re gonna take cameras.”
Thus filming began with no plan in mind, resulting in astonishing
footage of Luna playfully bumping boats, allowing himself to be petted
and, in an initially terrifying scene, opening his mouth and letting
people pet his tongue, their whole arms inside the jaws of an animal
commonly referred to as “killer.” It’s easy to see why the whale became
such a beloved and defended resident of Nootka Sound—he’s puppy
levels of adorably clumsy and endearingly needy, with the added
exoticism of being a frickin’ whale.
But the situation, as Saving Luna deftly lays out,
even-handedly, was more than just a folksy small town and its quirky
mascot. Luna’s playfulness was also destructive, banging up boats of
area fishers. Some didn’t see his interaction as cute, but a nuisance.
When the filmmakers arrived as journalists, the Department of Fisheries
and Oceans was trying to capture him and send him back to his pod. The
nearby First Nations community of Mowachaht-Muchalaht believed it was
nobody’s right to interfere with the whale and was actively thwarting
DFO’s capture attempts. All the while, the government had a boat on the
water to deter visitors from interacting with the whale, and posted
signs on the docks warning people not to touch or even look him in the
eye. (“Luna couldn’t read the sign,” notes Chisholm.)
“It’s so compelling on so many levels,” she says. “It’s almost like
a Hollywood plot—you have a sympathetic character who wants
something, and he’s so close to getting it, and then it’s taken away
from him.”
In the beginning, Chisholm and Parfit believed the DFO was
right—hanging out with Luna was not good for him, not the way nature
intended. But, as Parfit’s narration repeats throughout the film,
things changed.
“When we first started, we really believed he shouldn’t have
interaction with people. We’re very grounded in science, we’re
law-abiding people,” says Chisholm. “His best chances for survival
meant we had to leave him alone. But the more time we spent on the
water, we realized this policy wasn’t working. He’s hard-wired to be
social andin the absence of other whales, he went for people.”
The couple ended up lobbying the DFO to change its policy for this
case, meaning they had to put themselves in the film, a difficult
choice for practicing journalists trained to stay out of the story. “It
was a difficult line to cross but we felt we had no other choice,” says
Chisholm. “DFO’s policies were aimed at killer whales in a pod by
themselves that don’t usually come up to people.”
Though Saving Luna leans favourably toward the actions of the
native community, the government doesn’t come across poorly,
considering. It’s clear that hands are tied up in the red tape of
bureaucracy, and that the officials involved do want to help. It’s the
ultimate lack of decisiveness that costs Luna his life. (It happens
offscreen, but keep tissues or a spare sleeve handy.)
“We’re very mainstream, we’re not anti-government at all. Our whole
experience taught us that we’re not set up for these individual
circumstances,” says Chisholm. “There’s a line in the film: ‘We don’t
ask for our government to be courageous and we don’t get courage.’ I’m
convinced there are people inside DFO that wanted to help Luna but the
structure didn’t allow it.”
Saving Luna opens March 6 in Bayers
Lake. Suzanne Chisholm will attend the premiere screening. See Movie
Times, page 32, for screening info.
This article appears in Mar 5-11, 2009.