My name is Baleine. I am a Humpback Whale.

In the spring of 2020, I swam the impossible.

I left the saltwater of my Atlantic Ocean home and began a journey no Humpback Whale had ever made before. I swam a thousand kilometres up the mighty freshwater of the Saint Lawrence River.

I was young.

A girl.

Alone.

I made my first appearance in front of the most extraordinary city in the world, Montreal, with a single spectacular and defiant breach.

Yes, I really did this. It is not fiction.

Marine scientists still do not know exactly why I came. But one person thinks he does. He sat on the same rock, his black bike beside him, day after day and watched me. He did not wave or cheer like everyone else. He just watched me, quiet and still.

He named me Baleine.

He believes I wrote my story, and that he was simply a witness.

I disagree.

Baleine

"The ones who leave the biggest splash are not the ones who stay, but the ones who dared to come."