June 2021 Powell River Living

By Pieta Woolley

At a bear’s lumbering pace, we’re driving along a logging road near Inland Lake in mid-May. Rick Crozier is at the wheel; his head hangs out the driver’s side, scanning for disturbances in the sand at the side of the road. Soon, he halts the car. Sure enough, there’s a print. What is it? “Black bear,” he says, pointing to the claw imprints above the wide pads. “But what’s this?”

These prints couldn’t be explained. The huge daddy prints. The big momma prints. The scuffling child prints. Not bear, not human. No claws. On predictable trails from the forest across the road, up the ditches, into the clear cuts and to the forest beyond.

Rick, a retired real estate agent from Alberta, first found prints he couldn’t explain when he was out shooting with friends this spring. Raised in rural Ontario, the life-long bow hunter can tell a deer print from an elk print, a grizzly from a black bear print, and a cougar print from a lynx with a glance.

Rick’s question, “What’s this?” is a set of prints. They look like Sasquatch feet – wide in the ball, distinct toes, and heading from the road into the clear cut and forest beyond. Some are clearer than others, just like the bear and deer prints nearby.

“Wow, look at the size of these,” said Rick, pointing to the tracks. “That’s gotta be a 500-pound momma.”

Sasquatch sightings are not uncommon in the qathet region. Two years ago, artist Jacques Le Breton hoped to make a documentary about local encounters. He was drawn here by a famous Pacific Northwest story, which happened in Toba Inlet in 1924; a logger was kidnapped by a family of Sasquatches, and they kept him for a week until he escaped. Of course, without proof, believers were few.

In 2018 and 2019, dozens of people contacted Jacques with their own stories of sightings, smellings and encounters, but none were willing to speak about them on camera, for fear that their peers would think

they’re crazy (See the story starting on Page 6 of the January 2019 issue of PRL at prliving.ca). Similarly, Rick and his hunting friends Raymond Lust and Richard Langois have all had Sasquatch encounters throughout their lives. The retirees are shy about telling their stories, though, for exactly that reason: because too often people think they’re nuts, or just confused. At some point, hopefully, there will be enough evidence for everyone with a story to come out of the crypto-closet. That would be good for the humans with these secrets. But maybe not so good for Sasquatches.

“If you look for them you’ll never find them,” said Rick. Footprints, however are another story. After every rain in May, he went looking for them. “My tail has been wagging for a week!” | pieta@prliving.ca