Rememberances of Rene Dahinden

It was a truly sad day 15 years ago when I learned that my great friend Rene Dahinden had succumbed to cancer.

Rene read an article about me in the Vancouver Sun and called me up saying he wanted to meet. I guess he saw we thought the same way and had much in common.

For a decade we would talk almost every day on the phone and also enjoyed meeting for dinner or to talk at sasquatch conferences.

I loved the fact that Rene did not suffer fools and always spoke straight from the shoulder. If he was alive today he would have eaten for breakfast all the people who make unsubstantiated claims about Sasquatch.

He respected those who approached this subject with a scientific and intelligent attitude. Common sense was his most important tool in the search for sasquatch and he had buckets of it.

It is a tribute to the respect in which he was held that even people he so honestly set straight came to his memorial service in deference to a great man.

His legacy to the sasquatch wolrd is enormous, but he was also a man who loved opera, classical music and a glass of wine. Not to mention the odd cigar. I have one of his to this day.

He did not want a following and it saddens me that there are people out there who use his name to create their own. He would have given anyone who tried to ride on his coat tails a real tongue lashing.

I remember Rene today for being a fantastic sasquatch advocate but even more so for being a friend who was so honest and kind.

John Kirk About John Kirk
One of the founders of the BCSCC, John Kirk has enjoyed a varied and exciting career path. Both a print and broadcast journalist, John Kirk has in recent years been at the forefront of much of the BCSCC’s expeditions, investigations and publishing. John has been particularly interested in the phenomenon of unknown aquatic cryptids around the world and is the author of In the Domain of the Lake Monsters (Key Porter Books, 1998). In addition to his interest in freshwater cryptids, John has been keenly interested in investigating the possible existence of sasquatch and other bipedal hominids of the world, and in particular, the Yeren of China. John is also chairman of the Crypto Safari organization, which specializes in sending teams of investigators to remote parts of the world to search for animals as yet unidentified by science. John travelled with a Crypto Safari team to Cameroon and northern Republic of Congo to interview witnesses among the Baka pygmies and Bantu bushmen who have sighted a large unknown animal that bears more than a superficial resemblance to a dinosaur. Since 1996, John Kirk has been editor and publisher of the BCSCC Quarterly which is the flagship publication of the BCSCC. In demand at conferences, seminars, lectures and on television and radio programs, John has spoken all over North America and has appeared in programs on NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, TLC, Discovery, CBC, CTV and the BBC. In his personal life John spends much time studying the histories of Scottish Clans and is himself the president of the Clan Kirk Society. John is also an avid soccer enthusiast and player.

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