amyasleigh
Abominable Snowman
- Joined
- Nov 3, 2009
- Messages
- 813
An interesting recent bit of "chance-happening-upon" when reading one of the autobiographical books -- Sequel to Boldness -- by the author Richard Pape (1916 -- 1995, best known for his published accounts of his World War II exploits -- in the RAF, shot down over occupied Europe in 1941, P.O.W. in Germany until accomplishing an ingenious escape in 1944). Pape was a turbulent, larger-than-life character, reminiscent of one of John Buchan's more raffish adventurer-types: travelled widely and did a variety of colourful stuff in war and peace around the mid-20th-century, and published about a dozen books -- some autobiography, some fiction.
In the book concerned, he tells of a "rural retreat" spell spent by him in about 1957, seeking peace for some intensive writing, in a secluded cabin in British Columbia, close to Okanagan Lake. He mentions in passing re same: "The lake is rich in Indian legend. It is said to hold a great water monster called 'Ogopogo'; 'Something' inhabiting this lake, and seen by too many responsible people over the years to leave possibility of doubt. The monster may be elusive; in the minds of Indians and Canadians hereabouts it is a fact."
A few pages later, Pape (always quite an industrious name-dropper) makes mention of "a great friend": "Sir Michael William Selby Bruce, Eleventh Baronet of Stenhouse and Airth… renowned over the globe as a soldier and adventurer. He still loved adventure when he died at the age of sixty-three. Just previously he had been up country in British Columbia, looking for the fabled 'Sasquatch', a great hairy monster-man, akin to the abominable snowman. The Indians still discuss the 'Sasquatch' with terror, swearing to its existence. Whilst on this expedition, Sir Michael collapsed with a heart attack.
Before I left Vancouver for my mountain eyrie he said: 'I want you to go where I have been one day, Richard, and search for the "Sasquatch".'
He even wrote to a London newspaper advising them that he had acquainted me of certain facts. One day I shall honour his request."
Sequel to Boldness was published in 1959. This was an era of considerable public interest in at least the most prominent members of the cryptozoological "cast", and of hope or at any rate open-mindedness, as to the possibility of these mysterious creatures truly being out there -- a time of much-publicised Himalayan Yeti expeditions: till the very late '50s and on this side of the Atlantic, Asia's Yeti tended to draw far more notice than North America's Sasquatch / Bigfoot; before reading Pape's book, to the best of my knowledge I had never heard of Sir Michael's reported Sasquatch venture.
Okanagan Lake's Ogopogo seems to have featured little on this board's Cryptozoology sections; my personal "take" is that in many cases, flesh-and-blood large aquatic cryptids could be credible -- the very nature of the element in which they putatively live, makes getting at them for verification, difficult. I just can't personally get very enthused by aquatic mystery creatures -- no doubt, my loss.
The case for flesh-and-blood "yetis and sasquatches" would have understandably looked a good deal better sixty years ago, than it does today; thanks to the globe's having been that much more intensively combed, over that period of time, and basically nothing having been turned up. The Yeti of the Himalayas seems essentially, just to have faded out: Sasquatch / Bigfoot in the US / Canada, one feels, has especially in the most recent years, pretty well sunk under the weight of ever-increasing awareness of the massive amount of fraud and fakery and preposterous claims connected with it, and the ongoing scarcity-verging-on-nothingness, of hard evidence. My own view is that if anything at all is truly going on on those scenes, it does not involve creatures which are 100% purely flesh-and-blood and earthbound.
It's a pity, at all events, that Richard Pape seemingly did not manage to honour his deceased friend's request that he himself should go Sasquatch-questing: had he done so, it should at least have yielded a highly entertaining book. (I take it that none of this did happen -- if it had, one presumes that said book would be a treasured item of cryptozoological lore, universally known to the "fancy".)
In the book concerned, he tells of a "rural retreat" spell spent by him in about 1957, seeking peace for some intensive writing, in a secluded cabin in British Columbia, close to Okanagan Lake. He mentions in passing re same: "The lake is rich in Indian legend. It is said to hold a great water monster called 'Ogopogo'; 'Something' inhabiting this lake, and seen by too many responsible people over the years to leave possibility of doubt. The monster may be elusive; in the minds of Indians and Canadians hereabouts it is a fact."
A few pages later, Pape (always quite an industrious name-dropper) makes mention of "a great friend": "Sir Michael William Selby Bruce, Eleventh Baronet of Stenhouse and Airth… renowned over the globe as a soldier and adventurer. He still loved adventure when he died at the age of sixty-three. Just previously he had been up country in British Columbia, looking for the fabled 'Sasquatch', a great hairy monster-man, akin to the abominable snowman. The Indians still discuss the 'Sasquatch' with terror, swearing to its existence. Whilst on this expedition, Sir Michael collapsed with a heart attack.
Before I left Vancouver for my mountain eyrie he said: 'I want you to go where I have been one day, Richard, and search for the "Sasquatch".'
He even wrote to a London newspaper advising them that he had acquainted me of certain facts. One day I shall honour his request."
Sequel to Boldness was published in 1959. This was an era of considerable public interest in at least the most prominent members of the cryptozoological "cast", and of hope or at any rate open-mindedness, as to the possibility of these mysterious creatures truly being out there -- a time of much-publicised Himalayan Yeti expeditions: till the very late '50s and on this side of the Atlantic, Asia's Yeti tended to draw far more notice than North America's Sasquatch / Bigfoot; before reading Pape's book, to the best of my knowledge I had never heard of Sir Michael's reported Sasquatch venture.
Okanagan Lake's Ogopogo seems to have featured little on this board's Cryptozoology sections; my personal "take" is that in many cases, flesh-and-blood large aquatic cryptids could be credible -- the very nature of the element in which they putatively live, makes getting at them for verification, difficult. I just can't personally get very enthused by aquatic mystery creatures -- no doubt, my loss.
The case for flesh-and-blood "yetis and sasquatches" would have understandably looked a good deal better sixty years ago, than it does today; thanks to the globe's having been that much more intensively combed, over that period of time, and basically nothing having been turned up. The Yeti of the Himalayas seems essentially, just to have faded out: Sasquatch / Bigfoot in the US / Canada, one feels, has especially in the most recent years, pretty well sunk under the weight of ever-increasing awareness of the massive amount of fraud and fakery and preposterous claims connected with it, and the ongoing scarcity-verging-on-nothingness, of hard evidence. My own view is that if anything at all is truly going on on those scenes, it does not involve creatures which are 100% purely flesh-and-blood and earthbound.
It's a pity, at all events, that Richard Pape seemingly did not manage to honour his deceased friend's request that he himself should go Sasquatch-questing: had he done so, it should at least have yielded a highly entertaining book. (I take it that none of this did happen -- if it had, one presumes that said book would be a treasured item of cryptozoological lore, universally known to the "fancy".)
