When Shedd Aquarium’s first beluga whales came to Chicago

The two beluga whales lay in the belly of the cargo plane, everyone on board eager for the final leg of a journey that had begun a year and a half earlier in a pristine river splashing into Canada’s Hudson Bay. No. 1 and No. 3, as the two female belugas were then known, were to be the star attractions at Shedd Aquarium’s new $43 million Abbott Oceanarium. As crews got the world’s then-largest indoor marine mammal pavilion ready, the whales sojourned at Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium in Tacoma,…