Kieran's Bottlenose
©2007, George J. Irwin. All rights reserved.

When I was growing up, there were certain magical places in my world that are worthy of other stories at another time. For my kids, there are magical places too, and magical moments.

If you live within a hundred miles or so in any direction from Niagara Falls, Ontario, then in the period from May to September, you’ve probably seen commercials for Marineland, a theme park that combines rides with wildlife exhibits, most specifically dolphins and whales. Actually, the commercials are pretty much unavoidable, and the theme is meant to lodge in your head and stay there.

One such commercial came on in the early Summer of 2005, and our children noted excitedly to me that perhaps we could go, since I was unemployed at the time and didn’t really have anything else to do. Rosemary was away helping with her family and I was a "single dad", temporarily. But, yes, I was unemployed, and no, we really couldn’t afford it. I could hear Kieran and Thalia’s hearts breaking. It had already been a very tough year, and here was another disappointment. But still, it would have been irresponsible of me to take them if we really couldn’t swing it.

Well, maybe we could swing it. Marineland was in Canada, and I always made it a point to get some extra Canadian money when traveling "north of the border". Perhaps there was enough left in the stash, I mused. I checked the park’s website for admission information, and then the inventory of Canada dollars, and there was just barely enough to go. If we packed lunches. Whoa, you might be thinking, that’s a barrier; no theme park worth its six dollar sodas is going to let you bring in your own food. That’s where Marineland is different. They not only let you do so, they have picnic areas. Score one for old style family friendly.

Setting up a freebie hotel night in the area, courtesy of the mountain of loyalty points that I had piled up making business trips that were often themselves pointless (if you know what I mean), we made the drive, crossed the border, and found ourselves at the admission gate. There we found another surprise—for an extra five dollars each, we could turn our single day admission into a season pass. That seemed way too good to pass up and I knew I could scrape up the extra fifteen bucks even if I had to dive into my United States Currency (cheerfully accepted at the prevailing rates). Oh, and score two for old family friendly. I couldn’t imagine the usual theme park conglomerates offering this good of a deal. (To be fair, many do offer season passes, but not for five dollars over a single admission.)

Details out of the way, I steered the kids directly to the amphitheatre, where a show was about to begin. The stands were already quite crowded and Thalia, Kieran and I found a place most of the way up to the top. I can’t say for sure who was more excited about this, her, him or me. No, I guess I can say. Me.

I have always had an affection for dolphins, you see. I had been to shows in the past and there was just something about them that I related to on a deep level. The last time I had seen one, I was married but childless. I knew I wanted to share the experience of seeing the majesty of a leap out of the water, and the playfulness with which these creatures seem to constantly conduct themselves. So the sea lions and the walrus were nice enough, and their antics were appreciated by the near capacity crowd including my kids. I wondered if they knew that they were only the opening act, though.

Then the gates to the holding tanks on either side of the main pool were opened, and five bottlenose dolphins swam out and around. Handlers began to put them through their paces... one leaping, two leaping, three at a time, four at a time, and then all five, all hurling themselves out of the water and spinning in perfect synchronization. One of the trainers jumping into the water himself and floating peacefully alongside one of them. A lucky child from the audience selected to come up and work with one of the dolphins. It was all well rehearsed, to be sure. My kids were enchanted just the same, even if they weren’t admitting it as freely as I was. The amount of videotape I shot and digital pictures I took, balancing both media as best as I could, made my fascination obvious.

The rest of the visit was certainly pleasant; Kieran and Thalia took their turns on rides and got me to chaperone them on the child-size roller coaster (which is about as large as I can handle of these rides). Thalia wanted on the child size Ferris Wheel and I took her; she liked rocking back and forth stuck at the top and I didn’t. (Since then they’ve both already surpassed my tolerance for amusement-induced vertigo.)

It would turn out to be the first of nearly a dozen trips to Marineland that summer. Some would be day trips with plenty of store bought food to keep prices down and a couple more were with freebie hotel rooms. The summer went by and my unemployed state was made a bit brighter by the prospect of seeing the bottlenose dolphins play once in a while. All too soon, the summer came to an end and the kids went back to school. But the season wasn’t quite over. Normally, it runs until Canadian Thanksgiving, which is in the early part of October. With the family all together again we made plans to visit the park one last time before our passes expired. Rosemary came with us for the rest of the weekend of September 30 and October 1, but didn’t go into the park since it would have cost more Canadian money than we had left. We told her we’d already be coming back next year so it was okay.

Marineland was so empty on that chilly Friday afternoon that I felt bad for the park’s owners. Kieran and Thalia had the run of the place and rode the kids roller coaster something like fifteen consecutive times, at least half of those iterations being the only passengers. Kieran had gotten braver and tried the teacup ride in the back of the park—about a dozen times. We pet the tame deer and actually got over to the bison and bear area for the first time. Then we went back to the children’s ride section and I let them loose. They certainly didn’t need me looking after them, except perhaps from a distance. I attempted more candid photography which wasn’t easy since every time Kieran noticed my pointing the digital camera in his direction he stuck his tongue out. "So you can capture my true personality," he noted. Well, he was eight.

I knew that I wanted to take in one last show for the season with the bottlenoses—whether the kids wanted to or not. Although I was carefully monitoring the time, I drifted deeply off into the waters of my own thoughts. Dolphins kept swimming back into my mind. We had first become more familiar about dolphins by watching the film of the same name, but visiting them at Marineland made us all want to know more. We watched documentaries about them as a family and greatly increased our knowledge. And Thalia very quickly ascertained the need to reduce, reuse and recycle to help save the environment. I and the kids had also learned over the summer that while dolphins look very playful and carefree during their shows, they are all business when they make those graceful jumps in the open ocean. That spinning motion they make in the air is so they can detect prey in as wide an arc as they can while they are above the water. And those clicking sounds we find so fascinating are used for echolocation—more tactics for finding dinner. Let’s not forget that Orca, which are dolphins as well, are not called "killer whales" as a joke. They were known to take out errant seagulls even while doing their own shows at the park. I know that personally; I and about 300 other onlookers saw that move demonstrated quite graphically one afternoon. And dolphins were certainly social... most of the time. When they’re agitated, we’re not talking "Flipper" here. Marineland certainly preferred to show their gentler side. A steady diet of fish made sure that the dolphins could stay playful and not worry so much about their next meal.

So the place was at least partially about bringing in the crowds of paying customers to see the main attractions. I had read and heard about those who felt that parks such as Marineland simply should not be allowed to exist, how we had no right to exploit others in the animal kingdom, and how we just prove ourselves to be the savages we are by imprisoning those who cannot defend themselves. But was it really "exploitation" to bring a few examples of the species close to where we could look, learn and appreciate that we’re not the only ones on the planet? No, certainly not. Besides the big show at the amphitheater, there was also a smaller Aquarium Dome where trainers talked more intimately about how they take care of the animals in the park. So it wasn’t all about the bucks. I was already pretty sure of that when I learned that Marineland let you bring in your own food.

So, I mused, even environmentalists needed to have their limits; polarizing doesn’t really help anyone, and certainly not the dolphins. Were they not allowed to visit with us, our only glimpse would have been on television, or perhaps given a far more substantial income, a chance to swim with them in countries where the practice hadn’t been outlawed. Pretty heavy stuff to be considering while Kieran and Thalia were busy with ride number I Lost Count on the roller coaster, but it definitely beat the stuffing out of worrying where and when I’d work again.

In fact, though, Thalia and especially Kieran were difficult to pry away from the rides when it came time to visit King Waldorf’s Stadium one last time. I promised them it would be worth it, although I wasn’t quite sure how myself.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to worry too much. I had calculated that there probably weren’t more than one or maybe two hundred people in the entire park, and with the chill in the late September air getting deeper, it seemed that many had already left. When we attended our first show, on our first magical day at Marineland, we were lucky to find somewhere to sit. This time, there were perhaps thirty people in the entire place, and we could sit right up front and center, just a couple of rows up from a platform shallowly covered with water, where the walrus or one of the dolphins was sometimes brought up for a close up look from the crowd. I had my camera at the ready just in case.

But I got a bit of a surprise there. We were past the Autumn Equinox and the sun was mighty low in the sky, causing a significant difference in lighting between the stage where the sea lions performed and the deep water pool just in front of it. This drove my digital camera nuts and so, as I found out later, my images were nothing to write home about. It didn’t stop me. And of course it didn’t keep us from enjoying the show. Thalia stayed right with me and oohed and aahed, but Kieran decided he wanted a higher up view and went all the way up to the top row of seats. Occasionally I looked back to make sure he was still there, and although he was getting more reluctant to admit it I could see that he was having a great time.

The dolphins came out to enthusiastic applause from the small but energetic audience. The show was a little bit different each time, but the general flow was the same; graceful leaps, single, doubles, all in tandem. One of the trainers came out and made me envious by floating motionlessly right alongside one of the creatures. Then the dolphin did leaps right over the trainer and I wondered why I hadn’t taken up veterinary science, or at least learned to swim.

I realized that I made a severe tactical error by electing to sit in the center of the stands when a volunteer was called for to meet a dolphin. With only thirty people in the audience the odds would never be better for one of my kids to be selected, but by the time I got Thalia to cheer "Pick Me!" two girls who were standing and waving right near the platform where this activity took place had already been chosen. Rats! (And when we came back the next year, we noted children holding posters with sayings like "I ♥ Dolphins". Hmm... Something to remember for next season.) Well, I guess it just wasn’t our day to Dance with a Dolphin.

And then, with a few more spectacular leaps into the air by four dolphins simultaneously, and the traditional "wave goodbye" with tails in the air—a goodbye that was more poignant than usual—the show was over, and the park was getting ready to close for the evening. The small group of spectators headed for the exits and for their cars, and perhaps some hot cocoa over at Tim Hortons.

But there was one more thing. At the end of the show, the dolphins remained in the large tank for a while before being led back into their smaller holding areas. The front of the tank was glass lined and faced out into the stands. For a short while the audience could come down and look into the tank to see the dolphins at close range. They usually obliged by happily swimming by and looking as if they were smiling as they did. With the far larger crowds that were more typical it wasn’t easy for Kieran and Thalia to get close to the glass and when they did they were sharing a very small space with a lot of other equally fascinated children. I had attempted to take pictures before but they would have ended up on the virtual cutting room floor were I not such a digital pack rat. (It’s only megabytes anyway.)

This time, it was different, and I think Kieran sensed this well before anyone else. He set a personal record coming down the many stairs from the top of the stands to the bottom, and was at the tank before I even had to mention that there was a golden opportunity to see the dolphins swimming by. I had readied my camera just in case there was a decent shot of dolphins sans humans. And out of the thirty or so people who were at the show just concluded, not even ten stuck around.

What happened next was something that I could only dream about. Dolphins are naturally curious, and I think they think we make very interesting creatures to study. What are these things and why are they out of the water anyway? One of them was particularly inquisitive about Kieran. With no one else within twenty feet, and me standing back a bit out of the way so as to not confuse the digital camera, that dolphin swam right up to Kieran and looked right at him. And stayed there. My son was absolutely entranced. He put his thumb and fingers gingerly against the glass and the dolphin put his snout against the glass almost exactly where Kieran’s hand was, in—what? A show of friendship? A gesture of "glad to see you"? A curiosity about "How can you do that out there?" How will we ever know? Kieran was facing away from me but I could see enough of his face to know that he had an enormous smile, which matched the expression of the dolphin. With my heart in my throat and tears welling up in my eyes, I snapped the photo of a lifetime.

And here it is...