Phil Demers’ lawyer once gave him a stern warning: he should not use his bullhorn megaphone at a protest outside Marineland, the Canadian entertainment park near Niagara Falls. If he did, the park, which was already in the process of suing Demers, could take further legal action against him.
Demers did not listen. On 18 May 2019, he took to the streets and climbed a ladder among a throng of protesters, bullhorn hot in his hands. BAAAAAR-BAAAAAR. He screamed that the park would never silence him or anyone else.
Recalling the day, Demers grins. “I didn’t make it easy on him,” he said about his lawyer.
Five years earlier, in March 2013, Marineland had filed a lawsuit demanding C$1.5m (£906,586) from Demers, who had worked as an animal trainer at the park for 12 years. Demers had quit the previous year after getting fed up with the animal suffering he said he had witnessed.
Yet Marineland didn’t sue Demers for libel. Instead, they sued him for trespassing and plotting to steal one of their heaviest residents: a 1,200lb walrus named Smooshi, with whom Demers had formed a bizarrely close bond.
Demers said the park’s allegations against him were a complete work of fiction. “I could do nothing but laugh,” he said.
Within a month, he had filed a counterclaim for defamation and abuse of process, thinking everything might get resolved within a year or two. But the legal battle stretched over a decade and accrued costs of around C$250,000, pushing him to his financial and mental limits.
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Before Demers was a defendant and a plaintiff, he was Marineland’s star employee. In 2000, he had just earned an audio engineering certificate from a vocational school, then took stock of his employment options: he figured he would be lucky to snag a part-time job in that field, if that.
Demers, then 21, decided to apply for a job at Marineland, a popular zoo and amusement park near his home in Ontario, founded by Slovenian immigrant and former circus worker John Holer in 1961. He hoped to save money while working close to home, but didn’t really know what to expect. To his surprise, he got the job.
He started working at the back of the park, feeding fish to the belugas and holding their heads so customers could touch them. He was paid about C$7 an hour for his labor.
About six months into the job, Demers was told to put on a wetsuit and to get into the orca tank – he was going to start performing with them.
“It blew my mind that I was actually touching a 12,000-pound bull orca,” he said. “I had zero training.”
Then in 2004, Smooshi arrived. The walrus would change Demers’ entire life trajectory.
Smooshi came to Marineland as an anxious, unhealthy 18-month-old, joining a cohort of six other walruses owned by the park to perform in shows. Demers knew little about her background except that the park had imported her from Russia.
In 1975, Canada got walruses placed on Appendix III of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites), a multilateral treaty that guards species against extinction by regulating their trade. While the listing would have required Russia to obtain export permits, traders could still legally capture and import wild walruses into Canada, said Camille Labchuk, executive director of the legal organization Animal Justice Canada.
Shortly after Smooshi’s arrival, Demers was helping his colleagues draw blood from her and another walrus in a routine procedure. This involved trapping the animals in nets to keep them still. Stressed and frantic, Smooshi thrashed around in what Demers thought was an attempt to protect the other walrus. Demers placed his hands on Smooshi’s face near her nostrils to calm her. The walrus took a deep breath. And then, something shifted. Her eyes locked on to Demers, and she never looked away.
“She just started following me,” Demers said. “And I’m trying to tell people, like ‘Guys, look at this.’ I’m walking in zigzags and she’s following me. It didn’t seem to matter where I went.”
Demers refers to what happened as “imprinting”, an explanation he picked up from Michael Noonan, animal behaviorist and former professor from Canisius College in New York, who the media often interviewed about Demers’ budding relationship with Smooshi. Imprinting usually happens during the critical period right after birth when an animal singles out its mother, but Noonan said Smooshi’s imprinting on Demers was a “single case”.
Naomi Rose, a marine mammal expert at the Animal Welfare Institute, said it was unlikely that Smooshi actually imprinted on Demers since she was well past the period following birth. However, she said she had no doubt that the animal formed a powerful bond with Demers.
“In the case of a caretaker, that bond can be incredibly strong because it’s not only emotional, it’s literally physical,” Rose said. “Phil would have fed Smooshi and cared for her, and she would look to Phil for all of her physical needs and also, eventually, her emotional needs.”
Whatever happened between the pair, their link was solid. She would follow him anywhere. Demers called Smooshi his “Russian bulldog” because of her puppy-like devotion to him. He called himself a “walrus mom” because that’s what he felt he was to her.
“I would actually take her into the other stadium where there were shows going on and sit her down, and we would watch the show together,” he said, “while the entirety of the crowd was staring at this … ‘What kind of animal is this thing?”
When Demers left for 10 days to tour Switzerland with his rock band, Sonic Elvis, in 2010, he got a slew of messages from co-workers saying that Smooshi wasn’t doing well. He returned to find her underweight and her skin covered in pinkish-red welts the size of coffee cup rings, presumably from stress.
Demers said he was also becoming increasingly bothered by management decisions at the park that resulted in animal suffering. In an exposé published after his resignation, Demers and other former Marineland workers revealed that a harbor seal went blind and five dolphins lost chunks of skin after living in highly chlorinated water. Sea lions were confined to dry cages. Two male belugas mauled a baby beluga to death.
Smooshi and the other walruses were in trouble too. According to Demers, managers moved them to a “disgusting” aquarium pool that “no animals ever survived”. The walruses started losing their fur because of the water’s high chlorine level.
Immediately after these allegations were published, Marineland denied them.
Demers said he had been aware of the animal welfare issues at Marineland “from day one” but that it had all seemed “normal” while working there. But his view on things began to slip.
“It takes you a long time to figure out that ultimately the decisions being made are not in the interest of the animals at all,” he said. “In fact, they’re done to appease the bottom dollar.”
The last straw for Demers was when the park’s water-clarifying ozone filter broke. Instead of fixing it, the managers cranked up the chlorine, he said.
Demers quit, but feared for Smooshi’s safety. When he returned to visit her about a month later, he said she looked “half dead”.
“I knew that my only option was to bang and kick and just to go crazy,” said Demers.
Months later, Marineland launched its lawsuit against him but offered settlement in exchange for his silence. Demers refused.
“Marineland made me a perfect enemy,” he said, “because they gave me a microphone and a captive crowd of 3,500 five times a day for 12 years of my life.”
Ren Bucholz, a litigator at Paliare Roland Rosenberg Rothstein LLP who took over Demers’ case in 2017, said that Marineland did not design its lawsuit to extract money from Demers, but to “stop him from participating in the public discourse”.
“He basically was engaged in a decade-long game of chicken with them,” Bucholz said.
Yet the lawsuit just made Demers more vociferous. Over the past decade, he has remained an outspoken critic of Marineland in the mainstream media and on his social media accounts, mounting a ferocious campaign to “save” the walrus. To his 36.5K followers, Demers regularly tweeted his concerns for Smooshi (inscribed with the hashtag #SaveSmooshi) and the other animals at the park, including its last remaining orca, Kiska, once called the “loneliest whale in the world” by the Whale Sanctuary Project since she has lived alone in a tank for the past decade.
Demers stirred the pot, writing what he thought was bound to rouse his rivals. For instance, on 23 July 2019, he comically tweeted, “Life is short. Steal a walrus,” which led to Marineland sending a police officer to his house.
Hundreds of activists have also protested against Marineland for mistreating its animals, similar to those campaigning against SeaWorld in the United States. Catherine Ens-Hurwood, director of the NGO Niagara Action for Animals, said that Marineland protests began in the 1990s, but picked up speed when Demers emerged as a whistleblower. (In 2003, Marineland also sued Niagara Action for Animals, but dismissed the action in 2006.)
The protesters’ concerns had not been unfounded. In 2016 and 2017, the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals charged Marineland with 11 counts of animal cruelty for neglecting its land animals, including peacocks, deer and bison, although these charges were eventually dropped.
The park was also charged for continuing to use its dolphins and belugas as entertainment even after a bill passed in 2021 to make cetacean captivity illegal. But on December 21, Canada used its authority to stay the charge. Maher Abdurahman, spokesperson for the attorney general, did not say why this decision was made, but that it had not been “arrived at lightly or without careful consideration.”
In a tweet, Demers expressed his disappointment: “The unimpeded abuse of whales and dolphins continues, despite clear laws against it.”
Demers has been a stalwart in just about every campaign against Marineland, but he’s held a precarious position in the world of animal activism. To some, Demers is a hero. To others, he’s a hypocrite since his compassion for animals doesn’t extend to his plate. In other words, he’s not a vegan.
“I swear, I smoke weed, drink beer, like loud fucking music,” Demers said. “I eat steak, I used to go to fucking cookouts and pig roasts. It should be every animal activist’s fucking dream to have a guy like me fighting for animals.”
He has also used social media to slam animal welfare organizations like the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the Whale Sanctuary Project, accusing the organizations of not always using raised funds to help the animals they campaign for. Both organizations have since blocked him on Twitter.
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But among the commotion of protests and legal actions, Demers has held on to a singular goal: get Smooshi out of Marineland.
In May 2019, Smooshi was the only walrus left after the other six got sick and died. Demers said he thinks Smooshi outlasted the others because of her relationship with him.
“She had the comfort of having a powerful bond there, and it normalized her captivity a bit,” Demers said. “The other animals don’t have that. They still have this separation anxiety that never gets better. And that just breaks an animal.”
In June 2020, Marineland announced that Smooshi had given birth to a 100-pound calf, Koyuk. So Demers revised his goal: get both Smooshi and Koyuk out of there.
Demers said he’s lost friends in his decade-long fight against Marineland – “A lot of people have Phil fatigue” – and that he has often found himself down to his last dime as he’s struggled to pay legal bills. But he’s survived with the help of some steadfast supporters, many of whom donated to Demers’ crowdfunding campaigns, and by working an assortment of jobs: drumming in bands, being an on-call pallbearer and leasing part of his riverside home to tourists.
Besides the financial stress, Demers said Bucholz almost left him at one point over a disagreement about one of Demers’ more controversial tweets – but they smoothed things over.
In September 2022, what once seemed impossible finally became possible: Marineland dropped its case against Demers, and Demers agreed to stop seeking C$250,000 in costs if Marineland moved Smooshi and Koyuk to a facility accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), which requires venues to have high animal welfare standards.
He would give them six months – up until his 45th birthday on 21 March 2023. Marineland agreed. (#SavedSmooshi, Demers could now tweet.)
Demers has pinned his hopes on Point Defiance zoo in Washington state or a similar place – but he’s the not the one who can make this call. Marineland has the final say.
“I could only enforce an AZA-accredited facility,” he said. “Otherwise, they might have sent her to China or Russia.”
He also asked for a 30-minute visit with Smooshi as part of the settlement. But when Marineland let him in days later, it didn’t go as he’d expected.
“I couldn’t get close enough to Smooshi,” he said. “As soon as she recognized me and wanted to make her way over to me, Marineland and their staff actually pulled her away.”
For this, he’s taking the park back to court to make sure it follows through with this part of the settlement. But he adds that the transfer of Smooshi and Koyuk is “legally bound”.
“I’ve waited for that moment for a long time,” he said. “It’s nice to see that she’s healthy, and of course, it was nice to walk right back into that place. There was a lot of satisfaction in that.”
Marineland didn’t respond to a request for comment about the settlement, but said in a statement dated 21 September that it had amicably resolved its issues with Demers, and that Demers “acknowledges Marineland’s evolution towards education, conservation and research, and its commitment to enhanced animal care”.
Demers said in response: “Yeah, I acknowledge that them moving their walruses out of that shithole facility is an evolution … I hope they do with all their animals.’”
Since the settlement, Demers has kept himself busy with planning a non-profit that will support animal activists and whistleblowers. But the absence of a proper reunion with Smooshi has made this part of his 10-year legal battle the hardest for Demers. “My war doesn’t stop, right?” he said. “I’m ready to start healing from this, maybe moving on with some closure.”
When the stress becomes too much, he sits on his dock by the river, where he can make out the top of Marineland’s sky screamer ride towering above the trees, emblazoned with the park’s name in blue neon letters. Somewhere below that ride are Smooshi and Koyuk.
“I’m sitting on the dock actually watching the sunset over Marineland,” Demers said, “and there’s something that gives you a renewed faith every day that you’re doing the right thing.”
