Orca

You hear it before you see it. A long, slow exhale somewhere out on the water, and then the dark backs roll up one after another, a whole family breaking the surface together. In Halq'eméylem the word is qwél:es, and it carries both names you already know. Whale and orca are the same being here. The killer whale is the kind you see most, so some pieces say whale and some say orca, and they mean the same animal of the sea.

The orcas of these waters stay with their family for life. Sons and daughters never leave their mother's side, and a single pod can hold four generations travelling together. They pass their calls down the way a family passes down a language, each pod with its own way of speaking that the young learn from the old. Humpbacks share the water too. They were gone from this coast for most of a century and have come back in the last few years, the males singing songs that run twenty minutes or more and carry for hours.

The whale stands for family, for the bond that keeps a pod together. It is a protector and a traveller of the sea, watching over the ones who go out on the water and seeing them home again. An animal that does not rush, and does not go anywhere alone.

So picture the pod surfacing as one, the family that stays together a whole lifetime, the long song carrying across the water. That is qwél:es.