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It's not easy to stump a parliamentary dining room waiter, but the query was a first and he drew a blank. When eating seal meat, red or white?
Red wine, he advised with some hesitation. It's an animal. White, we figured. It comes from the sea.
Armed with a swallow of Chardonnay and the bottle on standby in case it unleashed a nasty aftertaste, Newfoundland MP Gerry Byrne joined me for seal meat appetizers in a dining room above the House of Commons filled with MPs and senators lunching on fare without flippers.
Seal isn't yet on the formal menu. We had to sneak it in from an adjacent private sampling room overflowing with guests anxious to be seen in a culinary photo-op that attracted attention from Europe and the United States.
The seal pate swirl could've been beef, bison or caribou, lacking any distinctive taste after getting a drowning of seasoning. The slab of flipper didn't have a gamey taste either, but was plenty peppery and, frankly, had me reaching for wine to wash it down. Alas, the supply of bacon-wrapped seal steak was reserved for the invited guest list.
Mr. Byrne, the six-term Newfoundland MP, knows a thing or two about cooking seals, even though it's not a staple in his diet.
"It's all in the preparation," Mr. Byrne says. "As soon as the air hits the fat, the Omega 3 starts to turn rancid so it has to be stripped quickly. That's the red you see on the ice. It's the hunters bleeding the seal and extracting the fat before it goes through the body."
Gosh, yummy.
But there's no denying this sacrificed seal served up a successful public relations stunt as MPs, ministers and party leaders jostled for media attention in a sea of cameras and microphones.
Federalist or separatist, coastal or Prairie, MP or Senator, Canadian parliamentarians of all parties stood united against world pressure to outlaw the hunt yesterday.
There is one minor exception. Liberal Senator Mac Harb, who has a reputation for enjoying lavish European hospitality during anti-sealing tours, never raised seal hunt concerns once during his 15 years as an MP.
But he's tried twice to legislate a ban on sealing with dismal results. His first bill failed to find a seconder in the Senate, the second will soon be soundly defeated.
The Prime MInister's office reacted poorly by attacking Mr. Harb as proof of divisions in the Liberal party, which served only to give this rogue an undeserved profile boost. Michael Ignatieff, to his credit, didn't return the cheap shot by pointing out Prime Minister Stephen Harper missed the seal sampling even though the Liberal leader showed up to defend the hunt as an historic tradition and economic necessity.
Unfortunately for Atlantic Canada, Mother Nature could beat politicians to a ban on the hunt this year and, if the climate keeps warming, in the future.
Sealers are usually on the prowl by now, but the hunt has been scaled back or cancelled in many grounds by the lack of ice - open water on a scale Mr. Byrne says locals haven't seen in 70 years.
Prices are freefalling, too, as foreign markets demand dry up. The $105 price of a whole seal four years ago, when roughly 350,000 were harvested, has crashed to just $15 - if a buyer can be found.
Sealers can take history to heart. Back in the late 1980s when actress Brigitte Bardot was in full anti-hunt attack mode, seals were selling for about $5 a pop, before rebounding to meet surging demand in Europe, Mr. Byrne says.
It's worth re-emphasizing this is not about those poster-friendly, white-coated babies, which have been protected since 1987. It's the humane harvesting of a cod-gobbling mammal, albeit a cute one, for human clothing or consumption during a gap in the Atlantic fishing season when the industry is underemployed
Canada's politicians have officially given the hunt their, um, seal of approval. To that we should raise a glass and, for future dining reference should you ever order a real seal meal, it goes down better with white.
National Post
dmartin@nationalpost.com
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