The Burgeo Whale: A Whale for the Killing, 1973

Private Collection, Ontario

In his etchings and paintings, David Blackwood mythologizes the unforgiving and timeless landscape of Newfoundland, where he spent his formative years. There is both power and emotional impact to Blackwood’s artworks, very often illustrating man at the mercy of the elements. “The Burgeo Whale” contrasts a giant whale below the surface of the water with a tiny boat of figures just above. This etching acted as the cover illustration for Farley Mowat’s 1972 book, “A Whale for the Killing”. Mowat’s book takes place in the small fishing village of Burgeo on the southwest coast of Newfoundland in the 1960s, describing the true story of when an 80-ton fin whale became trapped in a lagoon nearby. Mowat describes the events that soon unfurled, involving local villagers blasting the whale with rifle fire and scarring its back with motorboat propellers. This spurred forth both Mowat’s plea for the end of commercial whale hunting and his struggle to appeal to the local authorities to use this opportunity as a chance to study the whale at close range and respect the creature and its environs. Blackwood has encapsulated the sadness and weight of Mowat’s recollections in “The Burgeo Whale”, through the sombre depiction of this immense mammal almost bursting in the confines of the composition, while pinpointing the smallness of man with the figures circling in the boat just above.