Call the big guy what you will, just don’t call him late for dinner.
READY FOR YETI
The Squatch is a gigantic, ape-like creature that seems to be part human. The mythic creature stands 1.8 to 2.7 meters (7 to 9 feet) tall and weighs between 270 and 400 kilograms (600 and 900 pounds). A Sasquatch has never been caught but there have been hundreds and hundreds of sightings. And there seems to be a similar creature stalking the mountains of the Himalayas of Asia—the famous Abominable Snowman or Yeti. Legends of the Sasquatch in Canada goes back centuries. First Nation tribes have stories of the beast and his name is Salish for “hairy giant.”
KEEPING UP APPEARANCES
While Sasquatch has been spotted in the northwestern U.S., Canada may have the first recorded “evidence.” David Thompson was working in 1811 as a trader in Jasper, Alberta, when he found huge footprints in the snow. They were 36 centimeters (14 inches) long and 20 centimeters (eight inches wide). Plus, the beast that left the prints only had four toes. The Daily Colonist, a newspaper in Victoria, British Columbia, published a story in 1884 about the capture of a Sasquatch, although it was smaller than in later descriptions. The paper wrote the following account:
Jack, as his captors have called the creature is something of a gorilla type, standing about four feet seven inches in height and weighing 127 pounds. He has long black hair and resembles a human being with one exception, his entire body, excepting his hands or paws and feet are covered in glossy hair about one inch long. His forearm is much longer than man’s forearm and he possesses extraordinary strength, as he will take hold of a stick and break it by wrenching it or twisting it, which no living man could break in the same way.
About a week later, though, another newspaper in the province claimed the report was a hoax.
LOSING YOUR HEAD
In 1924, Albert Ostman was a lumberjack who claimed that a Big Foot picked him up in his sleeping bag and brought him back to his Sasquatch family. Ostman said the family—a mother and father Sasquatch and their children—kept him captive but did not harm him. He remarked that the beasts were vegetarian, eating roots, grass, and spruce tips.
A total of 462 people shared the biggest hug ever in Winnipeg in 1998.
PAYING THE FERRYMAN
As recent as 2005, video was taken of a massive, hairy figure walking along the shore of the Nelson River, about 500 kilometers (311 miles) north of Winnipeg. It was about 6:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning when Bobby Clarke, a ferry operator, was working to transport vehicles across the Nelson River. Clarke looked about 250 meters (820 feet) across the river and spied a huge, hairy creature, walking upright through the bulrushes at the water’s edge, and he grabbed his camera. Many skeptics who have seen the video say that it has made them believers.
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THE TWISTED TREES OF ALTICANE
Normal quaking aspens stand tall and straight, majestically reaching heights of 20 to 25 meters (66 to 82 feet). They are also called trembling aspens or quaking poplars, and so named for the way their leaves flutter in the breeze. But in a grove in Alticane, Saskatchewan, grow peculiar poplars like none other in the world. These twisted and gnarled trees are a genuinely eerie sight.
But what is at the root of these deformed versions of the graceful aspen with its dancing leaves? Locals attribute the contorted trunks to aliens or ghosts. A farmer claims to have spied aliens urinating in the area before the trees began growing in the 1940s—Alticane is located in an area well known for UFO sightings. Visitors to the area report a strange energy in the grove, getting dizzy as they stroll along the wooden walkway. Even cattle avoid the patch of trees.
While there is no definitive explanation for the unusual occurrence, some believe the gnarled trees are genetic mutations caused by contaminated soil—possibly from meteorites that crashed to Earth in that area ages ago. Rick Sawatzky from the University of Saskatchewan has taken cuttings from the trees. . . which, even away from the forest, again grew in the same twisted formation.
A karate team demolished a 10-room house with their bare hands in Saskatchewan in 1996.