The whales don't care how fat you are
I went to Quebec hoping to see whales. I came home with a new perspective on body image, self-preoccupation, and the power of awe.
The whales don’t care how fat you are.
That thought arrived somewhere in the middle of the St. Lawrence Estuary as seaspray hit my face. Every inhabitant of our tiny Zodiac was laser-focused on the horizon.
In this Canadian marine park along the St. Lawrence, freshwater from the glacier-carved depths of the nearby Saguenay Fjord mixes with the ice-cold, briny sea. The landscape is extraordinary, but what’s happening under the surface is even more so. A shallow underwater shelf where the two waters meet creates a massive collision during its twice-daily tides, churning the waters and stirring up krill and other nutrient-dense organisms below. It’s what makes this place such a rich feeding ground for over 13 species of whales.
This is what brought my husband and me to Tadoussac, a tiny town (population: 814) where the fjord meets the estuary. July is peak whale watching season here. Still, I didn’t want to take any chances, so I booked two different cruises on consecutive days. It couldn’t have worked out better. The second cruise was more comfortable, aboard a glass-enclosed boat with windows we could open and close ourselves, but it didn’t come close to what we experienced that first morning.
We were told to dress in layers because the water temperature would be 15 degrees colder than on land. I had been dutifully packing and repacking a hat, gloves, a long-sleeved shirt, and pants over the past two weeks of our travels through upstate New York and Quebec just for this experience, but even that wasn’t enough. We were provided waterproof jackets and these enormous yellow pants held up by suspenders that, until that moment, I had only seen on fishermen in movies.
It was an exceptionally clear day. The sky was a crisp blue with clouds so low, they looked like you could reach out and touch them. The cobalt waves bobbed like dancing glass. Seaspray shot up from the front of the boat, covering us in an icy mist.
Not five minutes after we left the shore, the captain had already spotted a pair of fin whales, the second-largest animal on earth. We saw their spouts first, then just a sliver of their streamlined bodies before they slunk back into the water as if they didn’t want to be seen. Then there were the white, blubbery belugas, the only year-round residents of these waters, and the much harder to spot minke.
The humpbacks were the real show-stoppers, though, fully capturing our attention by sending up a series of dramatic spouts before showing off their barreled bodies. They arched and dove, waving their massive tails in the air behind them. Every arch sent the boat into oohs and aahs, and then silence as we waited to see whether we’d be treated to another sighting.
It was the most peaceful I’ve ever felt, watching the line of the horizon rise and fall with the waves as we waited for those humpbacks to resurface. There was no roar of engines; water lapped the sides of our vessel. That was it. All that was in front of us was water and sky, the shoreline hazy in the distance.
Real life, and the pressures that come with it, disappeared. My usual preoccupations just didn’t seem to matter. It was as though the whales had put us under a spell. Slow down. Savor this.
After our first croisière, we headed back toward town. But first we had to stop at the famed Dunes de Tadoussac, another one of the area’s marvels. After climbing down the towering drifts to explore the receding estuary (and then back up!), we made our way to town, parked the car, and let curiosity be our guide.
We found ourselves at the Marine Mammal Interpretation Center, where we walked among the skeletons of these magnificent creatures, contemplating their enormity and the fragility of life. Standing beside and even beneath them gave us a much greater appreciation for their size; they look so much smaller in the water. It’s almost impossible to believe the sliver of fin whale we saw was probably three times the size of our Zodiac! I stretched my left arm alongside the skeleton of a North Atlantic right whale assembled on the floor, taking in the similarities between her hand bones and my own. Above us hung the skeleton of another female whale with the curved remains of her unborn calf still positioned beneath her rib cage.
Standing among those skeletons, I better understood what I had felt on the water. Awe. One of the few things powerful enough to break self-preoccupation.
It wasn’t that I grew some kind of newfound body confidence in watching the whales. It was that I found a new way of thinking about myself. Not in comparison to people, but in comparison to these giants. I thought of myself as one tiny speck in a vast universe. One tiny speck compared to these giant creatures, with hand and pelvis bones just like mine.
This is not where I tell you, “If the whales are fat, you can be too.” But place has more bearing on how we feel in our bodies than we often realize. As we ambled through Tadoussac, poking into its shops, circling the boardwalk of its picturesque Pointe-de-l’Islet, and settling into the Adirondack chairs nestled on the great lawn of Hotel Tadoussac, I couldn’t help but think about how different I felt there.
The regular preoccupations with things like how I look or whether I feel fat seemed so insignificant.
For most people, there’s only one reason to visit Tadoussac. It isn’t fancy; it’s littered with charming but no-frill B&Bs and inns. We were crammed in a room with barely enough room for us and our two carry-on bags; we were just grateful for the private bathroom. There was only a smattering of restaurants to choose from, but we had the freshest lobster and seafood every night.
As I wandered through this town, walking everywhere because Tadoussac really is that tiny, it hit me: I had spent days not worrying about how I looked. I saw bodies of all shapes, sizes, and ages. No one was dressed for posting later. No one was there to impress anyone else. Everyone was there for the same thing, and it wasn’t to be seen. It was to see the whales.
The whales don’t care how fat you are.
Neither, it seemed, did anyone else.
When was the last time you experienced awe? I’d love to hear about a moment that made your own worries feel a little smaller.
We went three years ago and it was AMAZING. We talk about it all the time. We saw minke, blue whale (with baby!), belugas, porpoises, and seals.