totally tyee
Active Member
Revisiting the legend of Stin’qua
October 24, 2007
Stories and legends of mysterious creatures in the depths of lakes are common around the world, but it has been two generations since the last reported sighting of a strange beast living under the water of Cowichan Lake.
by Photo illustration by Eric Morten
There was an Indian encampment where a very old woman once cautioned the maidens to be wary of the Stin’qua, a large-headed 50-foot serpent with furious eyes and an enormous mouth and teeth that was said to swim the waters of Cowichan Lake.
The very next morning three young men and the same number of young women set out across the lake to reach Bald Mountain. The men were left on the mountain to hunt deer with the understanding the women would paddle back later to collect them. It was on the return to camp that one of the women stood in the canoe and waved a paddle in the air.
“I am not afraid of the Stin’qua,” she said.
Almost immediately the skies darkened and the winds roared. The Stin’qua raced toward the canoe and, when it was close enough, swallowed the canoe and all the women it contained.
The Stin’qua then disappeared through an underground passage to the West Coast.
— First Nations legend from a story as told by Nitinat Charlie.
***
Cameron Lake, a deep-water lake between Qualicum and Port Alberni, is being investigated to see if there is a creature, some sort of water monster, that resides within.
John Kirk, president and head field researcher for the B.C. Scientific Crypto zoology Club, says there is “something in the water and it is moving.”
Something, some unseen creature was reported this summer writhing, but hiding its identity just below the surface.
It leads some to wonder if it is the slippery whatever-it-is could be Cowichan Lake’s Stin’qua, a beast that has not been seen for years, but was once the talk of the Valley.
While researchers prepare to study Cameron Lake’s cryptid — the name given to unidentified species — Winnipegger Chuck Thompson, a reporter who cut his journalistic teeth at the Leader, the predecessor of the News Leader Pictorial, relates this tale:
“I did a story — it was in the late 1950s or early 1960s — about a fisherman who said he caught something huge in Lake Cowichan.”
The man did hook something big enough to cause the fishing line he held to carve his hands and slice its way through part of the gunwale of his small wooden boat.
Like others on the lake at the time, the fisherman lived on a shack atop a boom of logs, homes not far removed from the more extravagant floating houses now seen in local bays.
The elderly fisherman was known for his years of hard work and his penchant for truth-telling.
The old man told Thompson he’d had something big, something gargantuan, at the end of his line the likes of which he’d never hooked before.
“I took that fisherman in and had him checked out at the local hospital,” Thompson recently told the News Leader Pictorial.
The results didn’t prove a monster, but there was no question something big hauled the old fisherman around the lake before it somehow freed itself from the barbed hook.
“Most people believed the fisherman, the police, the medical doctors,” Thompson said. “The cuts on his hands and on his boat showed the guy wasn’t lying.”
Not waiting for his hands to heal, the Lake Cowichan fisherman went back to the lake to settle the score with the big something under the water.
“He decided to string out a long cable with hooks — big as meat hooks — with things like calf’s heads and sheep liver as bait,” Thompson recalled.
But that endeavour was quickly halted when the province stepped in.
“Natural resources came out and closed him down,” Thompson recalled.
Many in the area were upset with the province and the decision to make the man reel in his line, then something neat happened, said the veteran reporter.
“A government guy became interested in what was down there in the lake and the fisherman was actually issued a licence to hunt monster,” Thompson said.
Despite the unique licence to fish unknown beasties, the creature — whatever it was — remained free.
It was also the last time the creature had been seen.
Older stories put the monster — described as whitish in colour — near Youbou in 1930.
Two years earlier there was another reported sighting near Bear Lake. This time, there was a better description of the lake monster: a thick and spotted body with eight-feet of tapering neck that supported a serpent-like head that raised straight out of the water.
“The Indians had various tales about the monster in the lake,” recalled Thompson.
“The stories were never reliable about details such as the size of the huge thing in the water, or what it looked like.”
Thompson said he doesn’t know what became of the monster hunter with the cut hands, but the lake thing itself stirred conversation out at Lake Cowichan.
“At one point there was talk about erecting a statue to that monster,” he said.
As for Thompson, he has his own theory about the Cowichan Lake beast momentarily snagged by the old fisherman.
“I thought he hooked a large sturgeon.”
—with files from Neil Horner
October 24, 2007
Stories and legends of mysterious creatures in the depths of lakes are common around the world, but it has been two generations since the last reported sighting of a strange beast living under the water of Cowichan Lake.
by Photo illustration by Eric Morten
There was an Indian encampment where a very old woman once cautioned the maidens to be wary of the Stin’qua, a large-headed 50-foot serpent with furious eyes and an enormous mouth and teeth that was said to swim the waters of Cowichan Lake.
The very next morning three young men and the same number of young women set out across the lake to reach Bald Mountain. The men were left on the mountain to hunt deer with the understanding the women would paddle back later to collect them. It was on the return to camp that one of the women stood in the canoe and waved a paddle in the air.
“I am not afraid of the Stin’qua,” she said.
Almost immediately the skies darkened and the winds roared. The Stin’qua raced toward the canoe and, when it was close enough, swallowed the canoe and all the women it contained.
The Stin’qua then disappeared through an underground passage to the West Coast.
— First Nations legend from a story as told by Nitinat Charlie.
***
Cameron Lake, a deep-water lake between Qualicum and Port Alberni, is being investigated to see if there is a creature, some sort of water monster, that resides within.
John Kirk, president and head field researcher for the B.C. Scientific Crypto zoology Club, says there is “something in the water and it is moving.”
Something, some unseen creature was reported this summer writhing, but hiding its identity just below the surface.
It leads some to wonder if it is the slippery whatever-it-is could be Cowichan Lake’s Stin’qua, a beast that has not been seen for years, but was once the talk of the Valley.
While researchers prepare to study Cameron Lake’s cryptid — the name given to unidentified species — Winnipegger Chuck Thompson, a reporter who cut his journalistic teeth at the Leader, the predecessor of the News Leader Pictorial, relates this tale:
“I did a story — it was in the late 1950s or early 1960s — about a fisherman who said he caught something huge in Lake Cowichan.”
The man did hook something big enough to cause the fishing line he held to carve his hands and slice its way through part of the gunwale of his small wooden boat.
Like others on the lake at the time, the fisherman lived on a shack atop a boom of logs, homes not far removed from the more extravagant floating houses now seen in local bays.
The elderly fisherman was known for his years of hard work and his penchant for truth-telling.
The old man told Thompson he’d had something big, something gargantuan, at the end of his line the likes of which he’d never hooked before.
“I took that fisherman in and had him checked out at the local hospital,” Thompson recently told the News Leader Pictorial.
The results didn’t prove a monster, but there was no question something big hauled the old fisherman around the lake before it somehow freed itself from the barbed hook.
“Most people believed the fisherman, the police, the medical doctors,” Thompson said. “The cuts on his hands and on his boat showed the guy wasn’t lying.”
Not waiting for his hands to heal, the Lake Cowichan fisherman went back to the lake to settle the score with the big something under the water.
“He decided to string out a long cable with hooks — big as meat hooks — with things like calf’s heads and sheep liver as bait,” Thompson recalled.
But that endeavour was quickly halted when the province stepped in.
“Natural resources came out and closed him down,” Thompson recalled.
Many in the area were upset with the province and the decision to make the man reel in his line, then something neat happened, said the veteran reporter.
“A government guy became interested in what was down there in the lake and the fisherman was actually issued a licence to hunt monster,” Thompson said.
Despite the unique licence to fish unknown beasties, the creature — whatever it was — remained free.
It was also the last time the creature had been seen.
Older stories put the monster — described as whitish in colour — near Youbou in 1930.
Two years earlier there was another reported sighting near Bear Lake. This time, there was a better description of the lake monster: a thick and spotted body with eight-feet of tapering neck that supported a serpent-like head that raised straight out of the water.
“The Indians had various tales about the monster in the lake,” recalled Thompson.
“The stories were never reliable about details such as the size of the huge thing in the water, or what it looked like.”
Thompson said he doesn’t know what became of the monster hunter with the cut hands, but the lake thing itself stirred conversation out at Lake Cowichan.
“At one point there was talk about erecting a statue to that monster,” he said.
As for Thompson, he has his own theory about the Cowichan Lake beast momentarily snagged by the old fisherman.
“I thought he hooked a large sturgeon.”
—with files from Neil Horner
