A film crew was partway through a re-creation of an Ogopogo sighting 24 years ago when what appeared to be the real thing made a surprise appearance.

About 10 a.m. Thursday [April 18], Tripod Film and Video Productions of Kelowna started taping a scene showing Bill Steciuk’s 1978 sighting at the west of Okanagan Lake Bridge. His son, Rob, played the role of Ogopogo observer.

“I guess we were half-way through when we saw two or three humps undulating in and out of the water,” said the older Steciuk who was an adviser for the shoot.

“Everyone was just screaming. I was dumbfounded. It was almost exactly at the same spot, a little further away, a little more west.”

The lake was completely calm on both sides of a wake about 200 metres from their vantage point, said Steciuk who took a series of photographs with his 35-mm camera.

“It’s one thing to have this group of 14 of us hyped as we looked at something. I wanted to see what was on the film,” he said.

That night, he and others returned to Tripod’s production facilities to examine the tape.

“It’s a pretty clear shot, about a minute-and-a-half on a broadcast quality Panasonic camera. My (Can Pro Productions) partner, Len Melnyk, was absolutely positive that it was not a wave or a boat wake but something under the water,” said Steciuk.

There were also several sequences on the film showing a projection, “something sideways, something strange” on the hump.

Tripod teamed up with Can Pro to film the latter’s search for Ogopogo during the summer of 2000.

A 30-minute video called The Legend Hunters: The Search for Ogopogo is scheduled to go on sale at the end of the month for $14.95 through the www.seesya.com Web site.

“It couldn’t have worked out better. When people hear about this, they’ll think we staged it, but it’s impossible,” admitted Steciuk.

“(Thursday), we considered not saying anything. We’re trying to keep as much credibility as we can. This was a realistic scientific search.”

Renee Boucher, a real estate salesperson acting as an extra, noticed a ripple in the lake.

“I then saw something moving in a very slow and calm manner. It was moving up and down so gracefully. At one point, I saw a space between the elevated hump and the water,” she said.

“It was huge, black and shiny, very slick looking. It was very, very long.”

One film student thought she saw a head coming out of the water and ejecting water upward from its mouth, said Boucher.

“I always believed my dad (saw something in 1978) but you had to see this,” an excited Rob Steciuk said Friday.

“It was incredible. You would not believe what we saw. It was a classic out-of-nowhere wave, three literally humps about three football fields away. I was so stoked; I dreamed about it last night.”

He also saw something lift out of the water at the rear, possibly a flipper or the back end.

His wife, Nicole, was also there and her skepticism about Ogopogo immediately turned into belief.

Steciuk’s 1978 sighting changed his life and he has invested thousands of dollars into two Ogopogo searches. He and Melnyk will conduct a third expedition during the last two weeks of August.

• Story originally published by:
The Okanagan, Kelowna / BC | J.P.Squire - April 20.02

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