Sightings the talk of 'sasquatch-ewan'

Last Updated: Thursday, December 14, 2006 | 10:03 AM CT
CBC News

Sightings of a large hairy creature walking upright in Saskatchewan and Manitoba have sparked renewed interest in the legendary sasquatch.

CBC Saskatchewan radio host Tom Roberts said he's talked with people from the northern community of Deschambault Lake who say a resident saw a sasquatch-like creature on Saturday.

They say a woman from the village was driving to Prince Albert on Saturday afternoon when she saw a creature near the side of the highway at Torch River.

"She slowed down, thinking maybe a bear," Roberts said. "She stopped and watched … and saw it going alongside the hill and knew it was not a bear."

The woman continued driving until she was in cell phone range, then stopped to call home. She described seeing a large, "very hairy" creature that walked upright.

Later, several men from the village drove down to the area and found footprints, which they tracked through the snow. They found a tuft of brown hair and took photographs of the tracks, Roberts said.

Similar sighting

On Wednesday, following reports of the Saskatchewan incident, a man in Flin Flon, Man., reported that he had seen something similar in the summer.

Greg East said he was on a fishing trip with a friend, when they encountered a creature on the Manitoba side of the border.

"I looked over to the fellow driving the truck, a friend of mine, and said: 'What did you just see?' " East recalled. "His response, as he looked at me with a quizzical look on his face, was 'sasquatch?'"

East said he was afraid his friend was going to say that.

"I was sort of hoping he was going to say bear because I knew it didn't look like a bear, but I wanted some verification that I hadn't actually seen what I thought I saw," he said.

East described the creature as dark in colour, with dirty yellow patches over its face, chest and abdomen. It loped out of sight as they got closer.

John Bindernagel, a B.C.-based wildlife biologist who believes the creatures exist and has written extensively on the subject, said the Torch River sighting is intriguing. He said he would like to have a look at photographs of the tracks.

"The trail [of a Sasquatch] is different from a human and very different from a bear," he said.

Skeptics say it's preposterous that a large mammal could have evaded detection in North America throughout history, and note that despite all the alleged sightings, a sasquatch carcass has never been found.