Here’s A Reality Check – Not Everyone Loves Marineland!

By Doug Draper

Anyone of us in Ontario, Quebec or the northeastern United States who has spent any time  in front of a television over the past 30 or so years, has no doubt watched and heard the commercial jingle for the Marineland amusement park in Niagara Falls, Ontario.

Protesting in front of Marineland this June 26. Photo by Doug Draper

“Everyone loves Marineland,” the last line in the jingle goes.

Everyone?

Like most marketing lines, they are cover over, like icing on a cake, with more than a little exaggeration. Jules Henry, the late American sociologist and a student of advertising strategies, called these exaggerations “pecuniary pseudo-truths” in the sense that they are “a new kind of truth … which may be defined as a false statement made as if it were true, but not intented to be believed. No proof is offered for a pecuniary pseudo-truth, and no one looks for it. Its proof is that it sells merchandise; if it does not, it is false.”

Getting back to that marketing line; “Everyone loves Marineland,” no sane person could literally believe that if they were out in front of the 50-year-old amusement park this June 26 while more than 30 activists for animals, including members of Niagara Action for Animals, picketed in front of the park while countless cars drove by offering them honks of support.

Yes, there was the odd driver that passed, giving the bad finger to the protesters, and one even yelled out the window, ‘to hell with whales.’ There was even someone who threw a half-full bottle of water at some of the young people on the picket line. But over and over again, there were those honks from passerbys of support.

That was the case, even while the Marineland parking lot was filling up with parents taking their kids into the park to watch whales, dolphins and other marineland creatures, displayed there for amusement in tubs of water that amounts to a spit compared to the hundreds of miles most of them naturally enjoy, in a day, in their natural environments.

Let’s finally, at long last, ask ourselves what is going on through the heads of the people you continue to pay a good amount of money to support amusement parks like this. Are they that desperate for entertainment when it comes to marine mammals? If they enjoy or care about marine mammals and their preservation that much, can they not turn themselves and their children on to some of the wonderful features available on video through National Geographic, public television and other venues?

If they are interested in marine mammals that much, why not take their children to a real ocean environment – Cape Cod, Massachusetts, for example – where you can journey out to the Stellwagen Bank Marine Sanctuary off the shores of the Cape and watch whales and other marine line in their natural habitat. You can find out more about a wonderful trip like this by clicking on www.whalewatch.com and it sure in hell beats going to a circus environment like Marineland.

I defer to one of the great ones from the last century – Mahatma Gandhi – who once said that the “moral progress” of a nation can be judged by the way it treats its animals.

If you want to see a video from those demonstrating in front of Marineland, here is the link – www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_s5JRCpcF8&feature=email .

(You can also lick on Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to our greater binational Niagara region.)