Fin: Having a Whale of a Good Time
Orcas are fast. In the water they top out at more than 50 kilometres per hour. There is an Orca who moves rather quickly on land, too, as I discovered one night at General Motors Place. After trying to keep up with Fin, the Vancouver Canucks’ popular mascot, for two periods that night, I certainly didn’t need to go to the gym the next morning.
When I mention this to Fin a couple days later—speaking to him through a translator, of course, since I don’t speak Orca—he chuckles and agrees that his
Fin works his tail off at every Canucks game
(Jeff Vinnick/Vancouver Canucks) job can be quite a workout. At any given game, fans will see the six-foot-three, furry Killer Whale beating his drum and blowing mist out of his blow-hole all over the arena, frolicking on the ice for an intermission sled-bowling stunt, greeting the guests in Nazzy’s Suite (provided by Captain Markus Naslund to underprivileged children), and shooting t-shirts out of his prize cannon. This whale gets around—and his fans adore him.
Faces light up everywhere he goes in the tunnels of the Garage. Shouts of “Hey Fin, you rock!” earn a thumbs-up in return, and requests for photos are always answered with a hug and a toothy grin. There’s no describing the look of awe that comes over children’s faces when Fin stops for a low-five or a head-bite—his signature move.
Biting heads might be scary to some. “You have to read the fans and see how they’re going to react,” Fin admits. But most people love it. Several fans at the game I watched specifically asked him for it, and he was happy to deliver. In January, when he travelled to Nelson, B.C. for CBC’s Hockey Day in Canada special, he bit the head of host Ron McLean live on television.
In addition to working the Canucks’ home games, Fin also keeps busy during the day by making public appearances at community events involving charities like Canuck Place and the BC Children’s Hospital.
“I have a tuxedo and top hat that I wear to weddings and birthday parties,” Fin explains. And then there is Fin’s Friends, a program for Kindergarten and Grade 1 students in more than 300 B.C. schools that “emphasizes character and education by teaching social responsibilities such as kindness and compassion.”
Fin poses with eager fans (Joe Wiebe)Fin travelled to the All-Star Game in Dallas in January, where he met up with his counterparts in a mascot hockey game. How did he do?
“I held my own. There was a lot of chaos. The joke was that there was a mascot game and a hockey game tried to break out.”
Fin is a strong skater. “It’s very important,” he acknowledges, “especially with the First Strides program where kids come out and skate with me. If I couldn’t skate, it wouldn’t look good.”
One beer-fuelled fan at the game yelled, “Sorry, Fin, but you’re gonna be out of a job next year,”—a reference to rumours that the team will drop its Orca-inspired logo (used since 1996) in favour of the popular, retro stick-in-rink design. Gossip has only intensified since the Aquilini Investment Group, a local company, bought the team last November. Many believe the new owners will want to put their own stamp on the team.
Fin, however, says he would be “quite surprised if they chose to get rid of me. I am involved with the community and quite branded with the team. People associate Fin with the Canucks.”
Let’s hope he’s right, because when I ask how Fin would fare back in the wild, he isn’t too optimistic.
“With some of those big Orcas out in the wild, I’d have a tough time,” he admits, “I’m kind of acclimatized to GM Place now—I’d definitely have to have my popcorn and my hockey skates.”
