Cache-Cache: Dans les souffles du Grand Fleuve…

Abstract

Between ventriloquism and divination, devotion and consecration, an old and sublime marine game unfolds each day, with living breaths shared in the waters of the great river. In Tadoussac, on the north shore of the St. Lawrence Estuary, at the mouth of the Saguenay, the rumor of whales has long resonated. Here, multiple ecologies intersect: the millennia-old ones of cetaceans, wind, and shoals; the centuries-old ones of Indigenous fishers (Innu, Wolastoqiyik), Basque whalers, French navigators, and European settler colonies; the more recent ones of cargo ships and bulk carriers that ply the maritime spine of North American commerce; and the international tourist ecologies of those who come to “see” whales. To these, add the bureaucratic and administrative relations (municipal, provincial, federal) that legislate without respite—this year the marine park is expanding—regulating, framing, supporting, or discouraging another ecology, just as complex, of uses, interests, and political agendas entangled with the estuary and with everybody that moves within it.