by John Zada
I remember seeing the three, led by a young university undergrad from Victoria named Audrey, leave late after dinner just as dusk was setting in. They postponed their departure to coincide with high tide, without which, especially in the recent period of drought, they wouldn’t be able to travel far upstream. I knew it was a few hours’ journey paddling and hiking to the weir, and it occurred to me that they were leaving very late.
After deliberating with his wife, Larry brings the radio receiver up to his face: “Achiever, this is Koeye Lodge.”
Everyone at the campfire is watching, silent. After a moment, Captain Brian Falconer’s relaxed voice crackles out of the radio speaker.
“Achiever here. Go ahead.”
“Hi, Achiever. Three of our staff went up to the weir in a canoe after dinner. They aren’t responding to our calls. I’m worried something’s happened. Any chance you could go upriver and look for them?”
“Yup. Not a problem.”
“Thanks, Brian.” Larry then radios to his daughter, Jess Housty, one of the directors at Qqs, and asks her to accompany the captain. Within minutes the sound of a boat engine in the bay growls to life. Achiever‘s inflatable Zodiac—a small, motorized raft dubbed Achiever Mobile—drones away up the mist-draped Koeye.
Larry and Marge, now jolted alert by worry, keep attempting to make contact with the women. A VHF receiver in the cookhouse beside the fire broadcasts their static-frazzled radio calls—all met with a silence as deep and boundless as the night around us. The calls keep going out. After a few minutes, from out of nowhere, a woman’s anxious voice explodes out of the VHF.
“We’re on the trail near the weir! But there’s bears all around us! Come quick!” It’s Audrey. There’s a breathless desperation in her voice, bordering on panic.
“We’ll be there soon,” Captain Brian replies calmly. “Hang in.”
Many more minutes pass without radio exchanges. A sinking feeling comes over me as the scenario carries forward without an update. I find myself trying to fill in gaps in the script as my mind grapples with the idea of being stranded in the thick, fog-filled rain forest in the blackness of night.
The radio crackles alive again with more of Audrey’s desperate pleas. “Where are you guys?“
“Just hold on, we’re almost there,” Brian responds, this time with more strain in his voice.
“Come as soon as you can! Pleeeeease!“ Audrey cries, sounding on the verge of tears.
The radio goes dead again, this time for a while. Then Larry’s voice comes over the VHF.
“Achiever Mobile, this is Koeye Lodge. What’s the situation?”
A female’s calm, exacting voice crackles back in reply: “Koeye Lodge, this is Jess. We found them. We’re on our way back.”
As the tension dissipates, I look around the dimming campfire and realize I’m the only one left. I turn on my head lamp and wander to my tent. Thirty minutes later, I’m still awake when Jess and the three women arrive back at camp. They are silent, but I sense gravity and exhaustion in their footfalls. Almost in unison, the zippers of their tents go up and then back down. A brief shuffling sound follows as they tussle with their sleeping bags. Then dead silence.
The next morning, the same thick fog from the night before sits heavily over a placid, glassy Pacific. In all directions, two tones of gray are spliced by the empty horizon. Five young campers, a few members of the camp staff, and I are aboard Raincoast’s sailboat Achiever, which is plying the fog-besotted waters of Fitz Hugh Sound. The Raincoast crew is giving a demonstration of its marine mammal surveying operations in the waters around Koeye. We will be observing and documenting pods of whales shuttling up and down the coast.
Captain Brian Falconer is at the helm, moving between the ship’s wheel and a slew of technological gadgetry that guards the hatch and entrance to the galley and cabin below. At his side is his first mate, Nick, a scruffy, twentysomething sailor. A young researcher named Megan is above us on a whale-watching platform, scanning the horizon with binoculars. She will be taking photos of the whales’ flukes, which, we’re told, are as distinctive as fingerprints, allowing individuals to be identified and tracked.
As the morning wears away, so does the fog, which burns off in layers, ushering in gradual sunlight. In the widening gaps of visibility we see a BC Ferries boat heading north in the distance. Closer to us, a tugboat pulls a barge laden with shipping containers in the opposite direction. So far no whales have been sighted, but it is only a matter of time, we are told. These waters are teeming with them.
Just then everyone’s attention turns to port. We look over and see a large, dark body, thirty feet away, break the surface of the water beneath a cloud of spray. It’s a humpback. As it curves out and back into the water, it drags up a huge barnacle-encrusted fluke, which glistens in a beam of sunlight. In a ballet-like denouement, the tail stands vertical and drops straight down into the water like the end of a sinking ship.
This is the opening act of an afternoon filled with humpback encounters. When the fog fully lifts we see them everywhere, often by way of their geyser-like spouts—misty exhalations drifting in clustered plumes over the ocean. We give chase, crisscrossing sections of Fitz Hugh Sound to reach them.
Roughly the size of a school bus, and weighing up to forty tons, the humpback is among the most regularly observed whales in the wild. The animals are curious, easily approachable, and given to sudden acrobatic performances, all of which makes them perfect for viewing and also made them a favorite of hunters in the past. The whales were butchered worldwide for their oil and meat between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries. They came to the brink of extinction but have made a strong comeback since a hunting moratorium was put in place in the 1960s to protect them.
A certain mystique surrounds these migratory creatures because of their vocalizations. Humpback songs, a complex litany of howls, moans, and cries made largely by males, are little understood by scientists. A typical song can last up to twenty minutes, is often repeated for hours on end, and can be heard underwater up to twenty miles away. All whales in a given region tend to sing the same songs, which constantly change and evolve.
For hours we watch these giants, and they observe us. Between their lumbering yet graceful displays of aquatic ballet, the whales vanish underwater, sometimes for many minutes at a time, often reappearing much farther away than expected. In some cases, they vanish outright. In one encounter, a whale surfaces so close to the boat we can almost reach out and touch it. In that instant, the animal lingers above the surface, watching us with its dark, glistening eyes, before playfully blasting us with spray from its blowhole and vanishing into the murky depths. The plume is acrid-smelling, like rotting fish.
I park myself beside Jess Housty. At twenty-seven, she is the youngest member of the Heiltsuk tribal council, the local governing body of twelve elected officials in Bella Bella. In addition to being a councillor, Jess is the communications director at Qqs, an environmental and First Nations activist, and a writer, poet, fundraiser, occasional teacher, public speaker, and collector of traditional tales. She can, as well, identify all manner of local flora and fauna, and find and prepare medicinal herbs. In speaking with her, one gets the sense of engaging with an uncannily natural diplomat; she is shrewd, clever, reserved, poised, and extremely articulate. Jess says she considers her work at the camp—teaching Heiltsuk stewardship and culture to kids and adults—to be among the most meaningful of her many roles.
“Creating opportunities for everybody to be out interacting with our landscape is, I think, the most important part of our work,” she says. “People want to feel connected. There’s an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the productivity of the place we live in, how much we rely on it, and how obligated we feel, for that reason, to take care of it.”
Because of her knowledge and time in the field, I am eager to find out from her what she knows about the Sasquatch.
“On one level they’re supernatural and sacred being
s that we interact with,” she explains to me. “In stories they gave us great gifts and brought knowledge to our people. Sometimes we had adversarial relationships with them; sometimes we had very close dealings. They also appear in children’s fables meant to teach basic human values in the same way that Grimms’ fairy tales or Aesop’s fables do. So they had a storytelling function as well.”
“Do you have any stories you could share?”
“I do. But I can’t tell them because they have owners.”
“Owners?” I ask, confused.
“In our culture, individuals and families own stories. They’re a kind of property. Like when someone writes a book and owns the copyright. To tell other people’s stories, you need to get permission from them first.”
I shift gears, telling her about my discussion with Rob Duncan and his idea that the creatures appear before people in crisis or with serious personal issues.
“I was raised with the understanding that if you saw them, and you were afraid, it was a sign of some sort of mental imbalance. That there was something inside you that needed to be corrected if you saw them and responded with fear.”
“So the creatures are a kind of mirror to your state?” I ask.
“Absolutely. A psychological mirror, I guess. But they’re also just physical creatures. I’ve had multiple experiences of being out on the land and encountering things that weren’t bears, wolves, or cougars. It’s not something that you’re afraid of when it happens. They’re there and part of the same landscape that we’re a part of.”
“So, you’ve seen them.”
Jess nods. She and an ex-boyfriend, she says, saw one a few years ago at the reservoir behind Bella Bella. The creature was crouched down in the water, scooping or dredging something from the bottom of the pond. She stayed to watch as her incredulous boyfriend ran off to get a camera and binoculars from the car, but by the time he came back the animal had walked into the bush.
Coincidentally, her story is one I’d heard, secondhand, during my previous trip to the area. I mention that and tell her about seeing the small but strange footprints found by Carl and Beth at Old Town.
“Well,” she says, giving a smile, “that’s something a lot of people outside of here don’t know: These creatures are not all big. There are small ones too.”
“Young Sasquatches,” I say.
“Not necessarily. I mean a different variety of being altogether.”
A smaller species of Bigfoot living side by side with the larger species? At first the idea smacks me as too strange, but then I see the irony: if I am allowing for the possibility of one, then why not others? I also remember the theory among some Sasqualogists that there may be a variety of related Bigfoot creatures in North America—and not just one species.
“Do you find all of this incredible?” Jess asks, seeing my expression.
“Where I come from it’s a bit outside the norm.”
Jess grins sympathetically. “The reaction of outsiders interests me. I didn’t grow up thinking that these animals were much different from the others living here,” she says. “It wasn’t until I was eight or nine years old that I realized the subject was exotic to people. I honestly found that funny. What fascinated others seemed, to me, totally normal and part of everyday life here.”
For a moment I put myself in Jess’s shoes and see the whole gaggle of obsessed Bigfoot hunters and researchers—including myself—in something of an absurd light. Our psychology mirrored back at us.
“You mentioned the sightings serving a psychological function,” I say. “What did you take away from your encounter at the reservoir?”
She thinks for a moment and then smiles. “I guess I realized I couldn’t trust a man who runs off leaving a woman at the first sight of a monster.”
By afternoon, the last tinges of gray have given way to a perfectly blue sky and a sea that looks more Mediterranean than Pacific. The vanishing mists expose an armada of about a dozen commercial fishing boats—gillnetters. The vessels are out fishing for salmon in a two-day window. They cluster at the mouths of rivers, the way a cat sits at a mouse hole, ready for ambush. The fish too are out. All morning we’ve seen pinks jumping out of the water, at times taking to the air in rapid-fire leaps.
We enter the Hakai Pass, leading to the open ocean. Brian Falconer tells us he’s heard reports of sea otters off Calvert Island and wants to investigate. We push through the pass, toward the farthest edges of the outside coast. The shores on either side of us are low-lying, rocky, and windswept, the trees stunted and bent over. Large, frenzied gulls fly hither and thither like bats through air heavy with spray thrown up by waves crashing into the rocks. I shudder at the exposed Pacific, its looming, terrifying expanse. Achiever begins to seesaw on huge swells coming in from the open water. Boiling, frothing tumults, they roll in succession as if heralding the approach of some unseen titan. Strong winds and storms make the waters beyond the pass some of the most dangerous in the world; the routes for the proposed supertankers would take them through those very same areas.
Brian became a conservationist after years of working as a bush pilot for logging companies and running his own sportfishing lodge. Those industries, which make money by extracting resources—trees and fish—brought him up close to the negative impact they had on the environment. He opted instead to run ecotours for fifteen years on a converted halibut ship turned schooner called Maple Leaf. Brian then joined Raincoast in 2005 to head up its marine operations division. Since then, he has traveled up and down the coast, doing ecological research critical to the quest to move public opinion against pipelines and tankers.
I ask him why he and others like him are so driven to stop every bit of industrial development on this coast.
“Because there’s nothing like this left anywhere in the world,” he says. “This is a fabulously intact, working ecosystem that’s evolved over centuries in complete harmony. I’ve sailed in oceans all over the world—everywhere I go, the hands of humans have erased these kinds of places. They’re gone. And people don’t realize it. People get used to where they live as being a place of great nature. Some people think that Stanley Park in Vancouver is the most magnificent wilderness on the planet. And in reality it’s a ridiculously, highly modified urban park. They’ve never seen or experienced anything like this.”
I agree with Brian. But I also wonder at what point any position, regardless of its necessity or merit, strays into dogma, including matters to do with the environment, conservation, science—anything. I ask Brian if there aren’t shades of gray in these issues, or plausible scenarios for compromise.
Brian shakes his head. “Not with something as precious and rare as this. Look at this place. Once you’ve been here—seen it, felt it, touched it—your life’s changed forever. It’s that special.”
I tell him about my connection with the Sasquatch, and ask what he thinks of the issue.
“I like to believe in things for which there’s hard evidence,” he says, with an enigmatic smile. “I’m not quite sure how you deal with the fact that nothing’s been found. On the other hand, you have some really compelling stories from people around here whose expertise and knowledge are almost second to none.”
“So, I take it you’ve seen nothing of these animals in your time on the coast.”
He shakes his head. “Sorry to disappoint.”
“No theories on what might be going on?”
“Well, this is a place of mysteries. And there are still a few. Do you know who Vitus Bering was?”
“An explorer of the North Pacific, I think.”
“Yes. A Danish sailor in the employ of the Russians. He traveled to the coast of Alaska, among other places. Georg Steller, a German naturalist, accompanied Bering on that expedition. Steller became famous by classifying lots of animals that took his name: Steller’s jay, Steller’s sea lion. He also wrote about another aquatic mammal, which he saw and called a ‘sea ape,’ whose description never quite matched any other cre
ature that was later corroborated. Steller was not talking about any of the seals or otters he classified and knew well. These sea apes were some other species. Now, I’m not saying it was necessarily a Sasquatch. But it just goes to show some things fall through the cracks. Take these humpbacks we saw earlier. Believe it or not, we just don’t know how they find food. They don’t echolocate. And then there are their songs: the mystery of how humpbacks arrive singing the same song from all over the coast—from places too distant to hear one another’s vocalizations. How do they communicate over such long distances?”
We’re back in Fitz Hugh Sound. The ocean is again calm, and the sun, now lower on the horizon, casts a soft, warm light over the mainland shore, which has begun to accumulate patches of fog. As we approach Koeye, we near the cluster of gillnetters, which are starting to pull in their catches for the day. Their nets teem with salmon, whose writhing silver bodies glisten.
“You watch these guys and all their hard work,” Brian says, “and you can’t help feeling respect for them—and for the longevity of a tradition. But at the same time, there’s an impact from all of this. It’s huge, and it involves more than they’ll ever know.”
Nick, the first mate, approaches Brian and tells him there’s another humpback close by that’s behaving erratically. It’s coming to the surface, he says, thrashing, and then sinking back into the water. Brian’s face drops. He turns the boat in the direction of Nick’s last sighting of the animal.
“I think we’ve got a whale caught in a fishing net,” he says gravely. “On the way to Koeye a few days ago, we saw two other humpbacks that had been caught in nets. This whale may be one of them.”
Sure enough, the huge, knobby head of a humpback tightly draped in netting bursts out of the water to port. It lets out a powerful exhalation from its blowhole. Everyone looks on in horror as it lurches and struggles, falling sideways on the surface before sinking resignedly into the water again.
