Canadian Cryptid Cops Part IV
Posted by: John Kirk on August 15th, 2006
Many people know the story of Mrs. Jeannie Chapman’s encounter with a sasquatch at Ruby Creek in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia in 1941. She and her children fled the family home when a huge sasquatch showed up on her property. When her husband, George Chapman, returned to the property with fellow workers from the railway company he worked for, they found huge footprints all over the place. A cast of one of these prints was made by a sheriff of the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Department, whom also had the foresight to make a tracing of the print. The cast of the track was unfortunately broken so all that remains of the event is the tracing he made.
This tracing is well known throughout the sasquatching community and has been reproduced by John Green in his books. The unusual thing about the tracing is that it appears to have just four toes. What does all this have to do with the RCMP you might ask? In 1988, RCMP members from The Pas, Manitoba came across huge tracks near this northern community and when one compares these tracks with the tracing of the sasquatch print from the Chapman property, one can’t fail to notice that they are a perfect match.
There is little doubt that the track in The Pas is genuine as the RCMP members found no evidence of hoaxing whatsoever. Think for one second, though, of the implications of this find. If both the sets of tracks are from the same creature, then it must have walked undetected for 1,500 kilometres across Canada and completely avoided human contact on the way. Some would say how could it possibly have done that in a country with a population of 30 million people? Well, the answer is it could have done so taking a variety of different routes through the interior of this vast country. Canada is reasonably well populated, but most of our 30 million people are concentrated in major cities, our rural, forested and mountainous regions are still relatively sparsely populated.
So it is perfectly plausible that a sasquatch documented by an American police officer in British Columbia could be rediscovered some 47 years later in Manitoba, three provinces away. We will probably never know for sure if whatever left the tracks on the Chapman property are from the same creature that left the tracks in Manitoba, but they appear to be a very close match.
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.
I’m confused. John, you say the tracing “appears to have just four toes.”
I found a web page which has a picture of what it says is “…the Ruby Creek Print, based on John Green’s tracing of Dunn’s trace. There is some debate whether it was actually 4 or 5 toed…” However, I can see five toes in the picture.
The picture is near the bottom of this page.
I’d be interested to see a picture of the tracing you referenced in preparing your article. Is there one online?
Thanks.
Good Morning John…
The Canadian sasquatch saga continues to unfold…thank you for sharing.
seeing is believing…
ole bub and the dawgs
That must be one old Sasquatch…
I would say it is more likely to be a second creature from the same species, with a footprint in a nearly identical range of size. And, the reports don’t mean that it went undetected by humans across that distance. It just means that if anyone saw it they neither disclosed the information nor led anyone to possible tracks. Very likely, considering many witnesses never report a sighting for fear of ridicule.
Well if not the same sasquatch, possibly an offspring that inherited the feature?
Given how easily people never see what is basically in front of them on a walk in the woods, is it really that surprising a large animal can go such distances unseen? Especially if an observer could convince him/herself he/she didn’t see what he/she thought he/she saw?
The sasquatch known as ‘Old Yellow Top’ was spotted over a 50 year period (or longer) around the Kirkland Lake mining district of mid-northern Ontario. While we really don’t know how long these creatures live, how far or for what reasons they may migrate, it does appear that ‘OYT’ stuck around a specific territory for a very long time.
In the above case concerning The Pas, Manitoba through to the Ruby Creek area, we are talking utter wilderness all the way. That anyone was out there to find the prints in the first place is all the more remarkable.
It would be really interesting to see a copy of the tracing of the footprint if it is available. Any information on where we might see it?
If it was the same BF then that would pretty cool. The fact thet no one ever sighted it could just be no one wanted to report it.