Rene was Rene. That really, in a nutshell, was the only way to describe the man. We were good friends – I loved the guy. So, when I was asked about him during a recent outing, the memory came back of two trips with Rene, in the same general area that we were now standing. I was much younger then and at times my inexperience would show. Something Rene would never, and I mean NEVER, fail to point out!
Rest in peace, my friend – I miss you.
On my youtube site someone asked me if I had ever heard of any reports of Sasquatch observed in or around public garbage dumps? That got me thinking, as I have noticed a change in such reports since the 1980s.
I have spoken to witnesses who claimed to have seen a Sasquatch rummaging through human garbage but every story that I am aware of is now at least 30 years old. There are a few more recent ones where the subject was observed rummaging through people’s garbage cans but these too have been few and far between.
So I wondered, ‘Why have reports of this creature in garbage dumps stopped?’ The answer became clear, at least here in Western Canada (Alberta and BC).
In the early 1980s, various levels of government decided that the long standing practice of open pit dumps would end. The main reason for this decision at the time was the increasing number of what was officially known as ‘spoiled bears’. Bears that became so used to easy picking of human food in the dumps that such scavenging had become the norm.
A spoiled bear can quickly become an aggressive problem bear when that food source is cut off. This became a huge issue in 1980 when a large, problem Grizzly, which was a known garbage feeder, killed one man and seriously mauled another in Banff National Park. The National, and later the Provincial Parks, led the way in shutting down the open pit dumps – a rule communities soon followed suit.
There was a period of time for the bears to go though a sort of, ‘No easy pickings, withdraw’, but today nobody even remembers the outcry. Remember when suddenly one could just drive to the local dump and drop off a bag or two for free? Or going to the dump in the early hours of the morning to do some bear watching? This was the norm. So, of course, there were a few reports of other creatures seen in and about the dumps, too.
Today, the dumps are like little forts! High fences all around; steel containers; everything separated for recycling; or everything trucked in or out; staff there almost ’round the clock to keep an eye on things. And the biggest change of all: trash is now weighed and you have to pay to leave it there! No bears anymore – just ravens, crows and seagulls. At least that is the way of it here, where I live, in Mission, British Columbia.
So, to conclude, I feel even though there were a few reports in the past of Sasquatch in and around community open pit garbage dumps, that has indirectly become a thing of the past – like the dumps themselves, for the most part.
Thomas Steenburg
I have done a great deal of both during my years of research and I have found advantages and disadvantages with both. The best advantage to going into the bush alone is the ability to remain quiet. Logic would suggest you are more likely to see wildlife this way though I must admit that coming across large animals, like deer and bear, have occurred as often in the company of other researchers as it has on my own, with the exception of the one good sighting I had of a cougar in the Alberta Rocky mountains in the early 1990s.
The biggest disadvantage of going alone is the safety factor. I have often thought, looking back at all those times I was by myself, nobody knowing where I was, if something unforeseen would happen well, needless to say, the jig was up. A reality which hit too close for comfort during the summer of 1986! That is a tale for another day…
However, sorry to say, I didn’t really learn my lesson and continued to just go into the back country on a whim when the urge to look for evidence hit me – and it still does, too often for my own good.
Researching with others of a common interest has mutual benefits as far as personal safety is concerned. This goes without saying. But the greatest advantage of searching with others is simple and straight forward – more eyes continuously scanning the immediate surroundings makes it less likely that something will be missed. It won’t guarantee it, but in my opinion it does tip the odds a little more in the researchers favor!
Thomas Steenburg
I have often been asked, “What was it that got me interested in the Sasquatch mystery in the first place?” Well, it was in early childhood (mid 1960s), I think I was about 6 years old. My folks bought a hard cover education book put out by Readers Digest; it was a large thick text book which had chapters on all aspects of our natural world in it. Wonderful color photographs and diagrams on everything from tornadoes and hurricanes to Volcano’s, wildlife from elephants down to soldier ants and about 300 pages thick.
As a impressionable young lad, I had spent many an hour just skimming through it and asking questions. Well, one of the chapters in the back of the book was on the age of the Dinosaurs; lovely drawings of T-rex standing straight up, dragging its tail of the ground as was thought back then. Most sauropods up to their belly’s in swamp water as it was claimed they were too heavy to spend much time on dry land, etc, etc. Well, right in the middle of this beautiful, full color chapter suddenly there were two pages with three black and white photos of something in some kind of body of water. The title of these two pages were ‘The Mystery Of Loch Ness’. The three photos being the Surgeon’s photo, the castle photo, and the 3 humps photo of something called the Loch Ness Monster. I must have read those two pages over again about twenty times. Cryptozoology was implanted in this boys young mind and I drove my parents nuts with questions. I still can remember my father telling my mother, “Don’t worry, he will grow out of it.”
Searching for other books in stores and the school and the public library, I realized very early on that I was never going to move to Scotland, so my attention for the most part started to concentrate on this other monster in Canada, called ‘The Sasquatch’. Finding books on lake monsters often included chapters on other mysteries as well. But what really did it was, not too much time after getting that Readers Digest book, I for some unknown reason woke up in the middle of night and I could hear my folks down stairs watching the late movie on our old black and white television set.
Walking into the living room my folks were watching a movie with the lights out, only the glow of the TV screen providing any light at all. I remember hearing my father saying something like, “Lets let the lad watch, he is interested in this stuff.” My mother protested, “No he will have nightmares, blah, blah…” Well, fortunately for me, and I am sure much to my folks’ later regrets, I was allowed to stay up and watch this movie with them. It must have been a weekend for this would never have been allowed on a school night.
What they were watching was the old Hammer Film staring Peter Cushing ‘The Abominable Snowman Of The Himalayas’. From this day on, Sasquatch dominated my thoughts. Books by John Green, Ivan T Sanderson, were read over, and over again. And I still would read Tim Dinsdales book on the Loch Ness monster. I do not remember any of the public attention concerning the P/G film in 1967, as in Canada, Expo 67 dominated the media and ,of course, that was the last time the Leafs won the Stanly cup. Readers Digest did do an article on the film and I still possess that issue.
A couple of years later, in 1972 the movie, ‘The Legend of Boggy Creek’ played in our local town theater. I snuck in to watch it about 5 times; myself and another boy knew a way in through the vent system and fortunately, we never got caught. I did pay the first time. but I wasn’t about to let the lack of money keep me from seeing it again and again.
Growing up, I did several school presentations on the Sasquatch, and other crypto subjects. One high school presentation on the Loch Ness Monster so impressed my teacher that she gave me a mark of 110 out of 100 and had me redo it for the other classes. Something that annoyed me at the time, as I recall. Later, as a young man doing my military service, when our time was our own and my buddies all went out to chase women and alcohol, I would head into the foothills of the Rocky Mountains of Alberta to look for evidence of the Sasquatch, and I have never looked back. My serious research commencing in September of 1978, this in a nut shell was how I got started – I never grew out of it!
Thomas Steenburg
P.S. I find it interesting that one of Thomas’ earliest triggers for his interest in sasquatch was a Reader’s Digest when many years later, he himself is featured in a Reader’s Digest article! The article can be found here:
http://www.readersdigest.ca/magazine/searching-sasquatch-curious-lives-cryptozoologists?page=0,0
The original article can be found here:
http://maisonneuve.org/article/2014/02/20/trail-ignored-beasts/
Happy reading,
Webgirl
I have been asked many times in the past what I felt on the issue of Hibernation and whether I felt that this may be an explanation for the sharp decrease of reports during the winter months. This short interview was recorded by Jason Cain on a recent winter outing, Sunday January 18, 2015 and expresses my own views on the subject.
Thomas Steenburg
We are flooded with claims of encounters today which sound too incredible to be true. With the internet making it so easy for the tellers of wild yarns to make false claims so readily available to a ever increasing numbers of the gullible, so-called researchers are more interested in attention than whether or not such a creature exists.
“IVAN MARKS SYNDROME”. To the public in general it must seem that the community of Sasquatch research more resembles an Asylum being run by the inmates! And this tragic situation seems to be getting worse rather than better. In this mess, what advice can an old timer like me give to a young guy or girl who really wants to become involved with doing their own research? How does one advise how to avoid the BS?
Well, you can’t. All honest researchers have to learn how to spot this stuff on their own. The best way to do this is when you are investigating a claim from a witness or on going claims from other researchers, take in all the information you can, stand back and turn your common sense switch. View everything with a healthy dose of skepticism. Skepticism is the best quality a researcher can have. After all, we are researchers trying to find an answer to a mystery; we are not some kind of religious leaders trying to push a faith.
Thomas Steenburg
This is a short video interview by Jason Cain. He along with myself and Brad Trent, spent Sunday December 14, 2014 up Statlu Creek FSR. Jason wondered how I personally felt on the issue of the Sasquatch being a big game predator. Here is what I had to say on the subject.
The rest of the day was spent searching along the roadsides and the creek and river banks looking for tracks. Unfortunately, other than a lovely rare sunny day in December in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, nothing of any real interest was found.
It seems to me that over the last 15 years or so a plague of sorts has been gaining continuous ground in the field of Sasquatch research. A problem, only magnified by the wide spread use of the internet (great tool though it is). One large, unfortunate side effect is it has become an easy to use soap box for every snake oil salesman out there.
Hoaxing, as far as this researcher is concerned, has reached epidemic proportions. It seems to me that people, for whatever motive they may have in private, have no reluctance at all to state publicly that they have had, or continue to have, one or numerous Sasquatch encounters. Too incredible to believe? Most often the case comes down to, “Take my word for it”, as no supporting evidence is forthcoming. Or said evidence is there but, for one reason or another, it can not be revealed at this time?
Media programs like ‘Finding Bigfoot’, are often targets to those looking for their 15 minutes of fame. Young guys submitting all kinds of bogus evidence with outrageous stories hoping just to see themselves on the tube, while having a laugh with their friends. The general public has lost the usual shyness, and reluctance, of making bogus claims as there really is no consequences for what is, to their minds, nothing more than a good joke; spinning a yarn; or no worse than faking a haunted house for Halloween.
This is a growing problem and getting worse but it pales in comparison to something much worse: The Hoaxing Researcher. There has always really been one golden rule in the world of Sasquatch research, right from the beginning: “THOU SHALT NOT HOAX’. Unfortunately, from the beginning there always have been researchers in this field faking evidence. However, back then, we all basically knew who they were and their motives for their actions. The late Ivan Marks was the first example of this behavior that I personally ever knew. His motive pure and simple: Attention-seeking fame. In fact, I have seen this motive in others so often now, I have given it a name in honor of the original model: ‘IVAN MARKS SYNDROME’.
Quite often the scenario is the same, the person has become involved in a event which at first might be legit. The person finds him or herself the center of attention for a period of time but as interest dies down, their own interest does not. They then undertake their own research and become engrossed in the whole question, as so many of us have. Sometimes, it is the rush of being the center of attention which some find irresistible; so they start making things happen to keep the media, as well as others, interested in their activities. The attention becomes the main focus of their activities rather than the question of the existence of the Sasquatch.
This is excluding, of course, the people who are just absorbed in some spaced-out faith which they are convinced must be reality: for lack of a better term, the paranormalists. All of these individuals, of course, only serve to make the subject as a whole appear foolish in the eyes of science and academia. Is it any wonder the majority won’t touch this mystery with a ten foot pole? I don’t blame them. We, as researchers, may have to endure the college hoaxer/ huckster when they come out of the woodwork, but there is no way we have to tolerate them. If I come across a case of ongoing hoaxing (which I have on a number of occasions), I will expose it for what it is. Let the chips fall where they may.
And I will close this post with a piece of advice: Anytime someone comes out of the woodwork with incredible claims of evidence for the existence of the Sasquatch, but for some reason the evidence can not be revealed at the present time, it’s BULL SHIT!
Thomas Steenburg
A researcher can never be ready to record images and video footage 24/7 unless you are able to employ one of those continuous recording devices now available on the market. But even then, it seems more often or not the researcher was looking the wrong way at the key moment. Or the camera failed to record, or it was over too fast to get a good clear image.
All these scenarios are conceivable for the one time so far in my 37 years of searching I might have seen a Sasquatch at extreme distance. There wasn’t time to bring my Land Rover to a stop, let alone take aim with a camera and start shooting. We also should remember that the researcher is a human being, with the same human traits. He or she encounters something incredible, and he hesitates. By the time he recovers to think about aiming and shooting, it’s most often too late.
So it seems that getting good clear footage of a Sasquatch is a long shot at best but we all still hope that someone out there, whether searching or just a witness out to enjoy nature, will come across a Sasquatch and get that nice clear photo or that incredible bit of video footage that has not happened since 1967. (Hoaxers need not apply). But I, like all of you, still try. And we still hope.
Thomas Steenburg
As a quick first post on this new blog, I will just simply start things off with posting my opinion as to what this species is; assuming of course the creature actually exists. I started looking into this matter in September of 1978 and since that time the world of Sasquatch research has grown and transformed into a little bit of everything for everybody. Researchers from all walks of life have entered this mystery with every type of preconceived notion the human imagination can possibly contrive. All this to the detriment of the subjects credibility to those in society whom would or could influence the direction of on-going research, thus stacking the odds against a discovery in the near future. Assuming of course there is anything out there to discover?
With this in mind, I very early in my own personal research adopted a personal motto. ‘Stick to the facts, and never deviate from the facts‘. By doing this I discard, for the most part, claims of a paranormal nature. The Sasquatch, in my opinion, is a species of higher primate. A creature of flesh and blood. They have been here for thousands of years and will continue to do so. As long as large areas of wilderness continue to exist in western North America I can see no problem with this creatures ability to survive.
Some have claimed that the Sasquatch is an endangered species. I think those who make such claims are acting on emotion rather than any common sense study of the facts. They are thinking with the heart not the head. This creature has displayed an amassing ability to live and breed and exist on the very edge of our modern society. Their elusive nature is what makes the species a success story of survivability and a great ongoing mystery for society in general.
Thomas Steenburg