In May, reports that a monkey man with steel claws was killing people as they slept panicked residents of New Delhi. Last week residents of Santiago, Chile, were enthralled by tales that a 10-year-old boy had been found living in a cave with a pack of dogs. Now, Canada is fielding reports that Bigfoot is prowling around Northern Ontario.
Footprints 35 centimetres long and 12 centimetres wide have been found on the Weenusk First Nation reserve along the south shore of Hudsons Bay, 1,600 kilometres north of Toronto.
"It's definitely not a bear," said Abraham Hunter, chief of the 260-member band.
"I looked at them. They were six feet [two metres] apart, walking."
Brett Kelly, a non-believing spokesman in the office of John Snobelen, Ontario's Environment Minister, noted no official analysis has been done of the print.
"It's just big, shaped like a human footprint, and ... further analysis will be required to determine its origin," said Mr. Kelly.
He said the official position of the ministry is that officials are "bemused."
Such sightings are typically cultural-specific, said Dr. Laurence Kirmayer, director of McGill University's division of social and transcultural psychiatry.
No one would believe that a crazed monkey man was on the loose in Canada, but in India, where monkeys are common, people did believe -- until it was proven to be the product of mass hysteria. The dog-boy of Chile, meanwhile, turned out to be embellishing.
"These things happen all the time, but we're surprised because we underestimate the power of the imagination and the power of belief," said Dr. Kirmayer.
At the Weenusk First Nation, elders have spoken of the existence of a sasquatch for hundreds of years, Mr. Hunter said, and two elders claimed to have spotted the beast about 20 years ago.
On June 14, days after the reserve sighting, a provincial Ministry of Natural Resources officer examining old radar stations uncovered an unusual track 150 kilometres east, in a remote area of Polar Bear Provincial Park.
"I was walking through the bush and I looked down and saw this footprint," said Rick Tapley, an MNR officer with 31 years of experience. "I couldn't explain what it was. I naturally thought it might be Bigfoot because of the shape of it."
He has taken a lot of ribbing from colleagues, but Mr. Tapley has believed Sasquatch is real since coming across giant footprints leading out of the woods north of Sudbury in 1972.
Cliff Crook, a sasquatch tracker from Washington state who believes in sasquatch but not all sightings, says he can't be sure without visiting Canada whether the footprints are real.
"I call them 'maybe monsters,' because I believe people are sighting apparitions -- things that exist to them, but not to anybody else," he said.
Abraham Hunter, the chief of the Weemusk First Nation in Peawanuck,
Ontario, some 1,100 miles (1,800 km) north of Toronto, said Wednesday he
examined the footprints last week after a member of his community first
sighted them.
Each footprint, he said "was 14 inches or so (long) and five inches wide"
and there "were quite a few of them, more than twenty" heading toward a
river.
The footprints were first sighted as a community member of Peawanuck was
driving in a four-wheeler through the Polar Bear Provincial Park, one of
Ontario's largest wildlife reserves on the south shore of Hudson Bay. Since
then, Hunter said, several people from Peawanuck have examined the prints.
The prints were some two yards apart, indicating that the creature had a
very large stride, and they were definitely not those of a bear.
"A bear would have four different footprints," Hunter said.
They were heading toward the Winisk River, which flows through the park.
The creature left no hair on the shrubs as it passed, but the footprints
sank quite deep into the soil, indicating that Bigfoot was big and heavy.
"It's not just in one area" that the footprints were sighted, Hunter said.
"There's about three different areas, one about three kilometers (2 miles)
away, and another two kilometers (1.25 miles) away.
"These were not the first sightings either.
"About 20 years ago, there was a sighting about 25 or 20 kilometers (15 or
12.5 miles) downstream." In fact, the creature itself was sighted about 20
years ago, but it was not until next day that people in the area went to the
spot and "did find footprints, (each) 16 inches in length," Hunter said.
"It looked like a man," was very hairy, and was "heading toward the bush."
In Toronto, Brett Kelly of the Ontario Natural Resources Ministry, said an
area supervisor for the ministry and two other people visited the spot where
the latest footprints were found and took photographs. "They are sending the
photographs down for us to have a look."
"Apparently, there have been 16 other sightings in the province of
Ontario" in different areas, including "Algonquin Park, the far west of the
province, (but) mostly in the north," Kelly said.
"There was a sighting last year, in 1999, and a previous sighting to that
in the western part of the province," he said. The sightings reported were
of the creature itself and its footprints.
In the latest sighting, "I think it's quite heavy, because it left quite a
deep footprint, but there's no estimation of what the actual size of it is."
After the sighting near Peawanuck, "our ministry staff saw a second set
150 kilometers (93 miles) east."
Sasquatch Footprint Photo Rules Out Bear
[Original headline: Big footprints stir sasquatch speculation]
'These things happen all the time ... we underestimate the power of the imagination': 'Maybe monsters'
"It's definitely not a bear," said Weenusk First Nation Chief Abraham Hunter about the massive footprints. The dotted line was added to this photograph to better show the footprint's size in comparison with a human foot.
National Post, Ottawa / ON | Francine Dubé - June 26 2001Bigfoot Tracks Found In Ontario, Canada
PEAWANUCK, Ontario, (UPI) -- Large prints found in a forest on the
shores of Hudson Bay indicate that Bigfoot, a large hairy man-like creature
that has mystified people for decades, is alive and well in northern
Ontario..
[Original headline: Bigfoot tracks found in Canada]
Virtual New York - June 20 2001
