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1829 J. MacTaggart Three Years in Canada I. 10 A species of porpoise, very large, called bottle-noses by the sailors, is also very plentiful. This fish is of a white colour in the river St. Lawrence... How they become white is not known... Probably this is a fish of a different kind from either the porpoise or the bottle-nose.]

1841 R. H. Bonnycastle Canadas in 1841 II. vi. 126 The white porpoise is dazzlingly white, and I think it must be the delphinus apterus beluga, or white whale of the icy seas, as described by Pennant and Shaw.

1897 C. R. Tuttle Golden North 213 Mr. Spencer is developing a large porpoise, or white whale fishery, on the very shores of Churchill harbor, where, with his nets and traps, he took last season, one hundred and ninety of these mammals, of immense size.

1923 Beaver June 340/2 Indian reports were received that porpoises, or white whales, were..making excursions..up a certain creek.

1931 ‘R. Connor’ Rock & River 4 The ‘porpoises’ were thrashing the water in their furious chase on the shoals of herring and smaller fish that fled before them.

1949 Science 11 Feb. 143/1 The white whale or porpoise, Delphinapterus leucas,..was known to occur in large numbers in the St. Lawrence estuary.

1991 Gazette (Montreal) (Nexis) 8 Sept. d7 Thoreau was enchanted by the ‘noble river’, the St. Lawrence, with its whales and white porpoises and remarkable waterfalls.