"I accept the possibility that the Sasquatch may turn out to be nothing more than mythology and folklore, and that alone makes it worth looking into," said Steenburg, who lives in the nearby city of Mission. The town also draws researchers such as Thomas Steenburg, who has written four books on the subject, including In Search of Giants: Bigfoot Sasquatch Encounters, and has appeared as a guest speaker on the subject at events such as Alberta Culture Days. "They're like ordinary people and some of their stories are pretty compelling." "Your first thought is, these are going to be crazy, but they're not," said Reyerse. At the event, West Coast First Nations gather for canoe races, salmon barbeque and Sts'ailes Sasquatch dances. Every June, visitors can attend Sasquatch Days, which have been held since 1938. In addition to visiting the Sasquatch Museum, visitors can take a Sasquatch tour with Gauthier's company, Harrison Lake Nature Adventures, or walk the Sasquatch Trail and take selfies next to Sasquatch statues. "People literally come here on a pilgrimage, and more than you might think," said Robert Reyerse, executive director of Tourism Harrison. The town has become a magnet for those seeking answers, like the 26 percent of Canadians that believe cryptids such as Sasquatch are "definitely" or "probably" real, according to an Angus Reid Institute public opinion poll from 2016. This intersection of Sasquatch as symbolic totem, and Sasquatch as living primate, has taken the story beyond mere speculation in Harrison Hot Springs. The article presented Sasquatch to the rest of Canada, and the tale took off from there. Burns, a Canadian government agent, published an article in Maclean's magazine titled Introducing B.C.'s Hairy Giants, which he wrote based on stories shared by Sts'ailes community members he'd befriended. Since the museum opened, tourist numbers to the visitor centre have doubled to 20,000 annually, and the resort community received a CAD $1 million government grant to build an expanded museum-and-visitor-centre facility that will aim to balance the telling of Western sighting accounts with Sts'ailes stories and mythology. These exhibits are juxtaposed with casts of Sasquatch footprints, news clippings about sightings that date to 1884 and a logbook of reported local encounters. Other displays explain the Sts'ailes belief in Sasquatch as a caretaker of the land and totem for their nation (a stylized image of Sasquatch is on the Sts'ailes flag). To sate a growing curiosity, Harrison Hot Springs opened a Sasquatch Museum inside its visitor centre in 2017, and worked with Sts'ailes member Boyd Peters, who provided input on the original Sts’ailes acquisitions, including a drum and replica wood mask of Sasquatch.
The creature is considered sacred to West Coast First Nations, particularly the Sts'ailes (sta-hay-lis), who have lived in the Harrison River Valley for at least 10,000 years. The change is driven by public interest in the idea of a Sasquatch rooted in spirituality and symbolism, rather than sensationalism. Regular sightings have kept the popular legend alive, but now it's being told from an Indigenous perspective. Called Bigfoot in the United States, and yeti or metoh kangmi ("wild man of the snows") in the Himalaya, Sasquatch is a tall, hairy, bi-pedal, primate-like creature of disputed existence. There have been 37 notable Sasquatch sightings near the town of Harrison Hot Springs since 1900. And there's a lot of stories, especially here we have a very rich mythology." "I have a feeling that there has to be some truth behind it. "I can't say for sure that they are real," he said. I'd arrived at the viewpoint in an all-terrain vehicle with Bhima Gauthier, who leads tours to spots in the region where sightings have been reported. This remote valley 130km east of Vancouver conjures an ancient land filled with mystery and possibility, and some believe it's home to the world's most famous cryptid – Sasquatch, Canada's Bigfoot. Thick with towering western red cedars, hemlock and Sitka spruce trees, the wilderness continues almost uninterrupted all the way north to Alaska.īeyond the roads and hiking trails, the terrain soon becomes impassable, punctuated by steep mountains that plunge into glacier-carved lakes. From a lookout above the Harrison River Valley in south-western British Columbia, dense forest stretches all the way to the snow-capped Coast Mountains on the Pacific shore.
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