Mysteries of Canada: Volume II

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Necromancy

The Mystery of the Shaking Tent

The Ouija Board of Cobden, Ontario

Cryptozoology

Harrison Hot Springs: The Sasquatch Capital of Canada

The Giant River Snake of Southeast Alberta

Giant White Wolf Spotted in Northern Saskatchewan

Traverspine Gorilla: A Wildman from Labrador

Crawler Sighting in the Northwest Territories

Kelly Chamandy: Canada’s Last Bear Oil Salesman

Mad Scientists

Granger Taylor: The Spaceman of Vancouver Island

Tom Sukanen: The Crazy Finn of Saskatchewan

The Tragedies of Gilbert Hedden and Welsford Parker

Ghosts of the Grand Railway Hotels

Ghostly Tales of the Banff Springs Hotel

Ghostly Tales of the Prince of Wales Hotel

The Unknown

Canada’s Lost Worlds

Top 5 Canadian Conspiracy Theories

The Legend of Old Wives Lake

The Phenomenon of Lost Time in Canada

Miracles and Mirages

The Miracle at Loon Lake

The Phantom Train of Medicine Hat

Nautical Mysteries of Canada’s Great Lakes

Note from the Author

Bibliography

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

READERS OF MY BOOKS ‘Legends of the Nahanni Valley’, ‘The Oak Island Encyclopedia’, and ‘Mysteries of Canada: Volume I’ may have noticed a particular name which consistently appears in my books’ ‘Acknowledgements’ sections- that of Mr. Gary S. Mangiacopra. Gary is among the most diligent and eminent Fortean archivists in North America, ‘Fortean’ being the study of unexplained phenomena. Over the past four years, he has generously provided me with countless forgotten newspaper and magazine articles from his personal files, without which none of my books could have been written. Mysteries of Canada: Volume II is no exception to this pattern; many stories in this book are either based on or inspired by material from Mr. Mangiacopra’s archive, and as always, I am deeply grateful for his continued assistance and friendship.

I am equally indebted to my editor, Mr. Winston Kinnaird, for his tremendous generosity, his impeccable command of the English language, and his incredible ability to pick out grammatical, punctuation, and even spelling mistakes in material which has been reviewed time and time again by yours truly. No matter how many times I pore over my work in an attempt to iron out the wrinkles, checking and re-checking for errors, Winston, after going through my final drafts, somehow manages to produce an embarrassingly-long list of corrections, the rectification of which has a wonderful effect on the readability of my prose. As always, I cannot thank him enough for his essential services.

I would be remiss if I neglected to thank the following ladies and gentlemen for supplying this author with, and permitting him to publish, their personal anecdotes, which elevate this book from an accumulation of purely historical tales to more comprehensive collection of Forteana relevant to the modern reader: Justin Watkins, Don Herbert, Missy Sterling, Monty Chamandy, Ray Pulkanen, Carlene Graham, Patrick, L.B., Julie of Cardiff, Bella, Dell Marie Lamb, Ray Bosch, and Brian Gale.

Special thanks is due to DemonGirl99 and Cryptidical for allowing me to publish samples of their excellent artwork in this book.

Last, but certainly not least, from the bottom of my heart, I would like to thank my readers for their patronage, loyalty, and encouragement. This book is for you.

INTRODUCTION

THIS BOOK IS the second volume of the ‘Mysteries of Canada’ series, the first issue of which I published in 2019. Most of the stories contained herein were initially published in article format on the website MysteriesOfCanada.com throughout the year 2019, while a few constitute older articles which I published on my own website, HammersonPeters.com, from 2014 to 2016. Some of the stories are of a historical nature, others are completely modern, and all contain some element of the mysterious, the supernatural, or the unexplained.

I have divided this book into six thematic categories:

In Necromancy, we’ll look at tales of divination, in which two very different types of conjurors attempted to acquire hidden knowledge through the use of occult apparatuses believed by some to facilitate communication with the spirits of the dead.

In Cryptozoology, we’ll explore Canadian ‘cryptid’ stories- tales of strange animals said to haunt Canada’s rivers, forests, mountains, and skies- from obscure First Nations legends to historic Sasquatch encounters to modern day monster sightings.

In Mad Scientists, we’ll learn the stories of three eccentric engineers from across the country, from Welsford Parker, who tried his hand at solving the 200-year-old mystery of Oak Island, Nova Scotia, using a strange invention based on mysterious new technology, to Vancouver Island’s Granger Taylor, who told his friends that he’d be abducted by aliens… before vanishing without a trace.

In Ghosts of the Grand Railway Hotels, we’ll take a look at some of the spectral guests said to walk the halls of the Banff Springs Hotel in Banff National Park, and the Prince of Wales Hotel in Waterton Provincial Park- enchanting, storied chateaus nestled in the heart of the Albertan Rockies.

In The Unknown, we’ll dive into Canadian conspiracy theories, travellers’ tales of lost worlds, UFO sightings, and an old Indian ghost story.

Finally, in Miracles and Mirages, we’ll look at stories of mysterious apparitions, from a forgotten tale of the Canadian prairies to sailors’ yarns about the ghostly fleet said to sail the Great Lakes.

Enjoy!

NECROMANCY

THE MYSTERY OF THE

SHAKING TENT

IN 1920, AN ENGLISH adventurer named Michael H. Mason explored much of Northern Canada by dogsled. Four years later, he published an account of his experience in a book entitled The Arctic Forests.

Mason’s book is formatted like an encyclopedia, outlining the natural history of Northern Canada and the ethnology of its human inhabitants. On the subject of the spiritual beliefs of the Gwich’in Indians he encountered during his travels, Mason wrote:

It is no easy task to write on the habits and philosophy of these most interesting and attractive people, for their most outstanding characteristic is general inconsistency.

Mason’s observation could be applied more broadly to the spiritual beliefs held by all Canadian First Nations prior to their introduction to Christianity. There are about as many native Canadian religions as there are First Nations, each with its own collection of deities, legends, rituals, and superstitions. The Blackfoot of the western prairies, for example, had their Sun Dances- brutal ceremonies revolving around pain, sacrifice, and physical endurance. The Ojibwa of the Great Lakes had nuanced beliefs regarding the consumption of human flesh, considering the practice justifiable in times of war and horribly dangerous in times of famine. And the Haida of the Queen Charlotte Islands had their carved cedar masks representing the various spiritual entities that populate their mythology, wearing them in their dances and shamanic ceremonies.

In spite of their fundamental differences, many of Canada’s pre-Columbian religions share a number of curious similarities. Be it a raven, a coyote, a hare, or some legendary ancestor, the mythology of nearly every Canadian indigenous group includes the escapades of a Trickster figure, perhaps due to a shared belief that laughter, like smoking and fasting, facilitates communion with the divine. Certain legendary monsters- including hairy giants, massive thunder-making eagles, and huge horned water serpents- feature in native folklore across the country, from the misty jungles of the Pacific to the sunny forests of the Atlantic to the barren tundra of the Arctic. And nearly every Canadian Indian tribe had its shamans, or medicine men, to whom band members turned for healing and advice.

One of the strangest and most widely-held rituals shared by Canadian First Nations involves a structure called a Shaking Tent. This ceremonial dwelling consists of a pole frame and a skin covering, similar to the teepee of the prairies and the northern forests, and can be either conical or cylindrical in shape. From the woods of British Columbia to the rocky highlands of Labrador, native medicine men conducted séances in these Shaking Tents, hoping to commune with spirits for the purpose of clairvoyance. During this ritual, the shaman elected to preside over the ceremony fell into a trance, the tent began to shake as if buffeted by unearthly winds, and weird lights flickered in the structure’s upper aperture, where the medicine man’s spirit-body was said to be in counsel with spirits he summoned.

Samuel de Champlain’s Account

The earliest written reference to the ritual of the Shaking Tent appears in French explorer Samuel de Champlain’s 1613 book Les Voyages du Sieur de Champlain, or The Voyages of Sir Champlain. A former soldier and spy for King Henry IV of France, Samuel de Champlain, prior to penning his memoirs, had made three voyages to what is now Eastern Canada in the early 1600s for the purpose of establishing a French colony in the Americas and opening up trade with the natives. During the first of these voyages, he explored the lower Laurentian Valley and some of its tributaries. During his second New World expedition, Champlain established a short-lived colony on the shores of what is now Maine, and explored and mapped the Atlantic Coast from what is now Nova Scotia to New England. During his third expedition, launched in 1608, he founded a fur trading fort at the site of what is now Quebec City and established a trading relationship with the local Algonquin Indians. As a condition of their alliance, the natives demanded that Champlain, with his sword, armour, and firearm, help them fight against their hereditary enemy, the powerful Iroquois Confederacy, whose warriors haunted the forests south of the St. Lawrence River. Accordingly, the French explorer joined an Algonquin war party and ventured into enemy territory in the summer of 1609.

While on the war path with his Algonquin allies, Champlain witnessed a Shaking Tent ceremony in which an Algonquin "Pilotois", or medicine man, attempted to ascertain the size of the Iroquois war party his tribesmen would soon engage in battle.

"One of these [Pilotois] builds a cabin, Champlain wrote, surrounds it with small pieces of wood, and covers it with his robe: after it is built, he places himself inside, so as not to be seen at all, when he seizes and shakes one of the posts of his cabin, muttering some words between his teeth, by which he says he invokes the devil… This Pilotois lies prostrate on the ground, motionless, only speaking with the devil: on a sudden, he rises to his feet, talking, and tormenting himself in such a manner that, although naked, he is all of a perspiration."

Although Champlain’s Algonquin friends told him that the tent’s movement was the work of spirits, the explorer claimed that he had witnessed the shaman grab one of the tent poles and shake the structure himself.

They told me also that I should see fire come out from the top, Champlain continued, which I did not see at all. These rogues counterfeit also their voice, so that it is heavy and clear, and speak in a language unknown to the other savages… the savages think that the devil is speaking…

Following the ceremony, Champlain and his companions continued up the Richelieu River to what is now Lake Champlain and proceeded south to the site of what would become either Fort Ticonderoga or Crown Point, New York, where they encountered a much larger Iroquois war party. During the battle that ensued, Champlain and one of his French companions shot two Iroquois war chiefs to death with their arquebuses- long matchlock firearms with which these Iroquois were probably unacquainted. Disheartened by the sudden and spectacular deaths of their leaders, the Iroquois broke off the attack and retreated into the woods.

Father Paul Le Jeune’s Account

Although Samuel de Champlain made no attempt to hide his skepticism of the ritual of the Shaking Tent, claiming that Indian medicine men routinely pulled such stunts in order to retain the respect of their fellow tribesmen, many Jesuit missionaries who witnessed the phenomenon in the wake of Champlain’s explorations were less quick to dismiss it as a shamanic hoax.

One of the first Jesuits to pry into the secret of the Shaking Tent was Father Paul Le Jeune, a former Huguenot, or French Protestant, who converted to Catholicism, joined the Society of Jesus, and rose through its ranks to become the Superior of the Jesuit Mission in New France. During the winter of 1633/34, Le Jeune travelled with a band of Montagnais (Innu) Indians through the northern Appalachian Mountains south of the St. Lawrence River, breaking trails with them on snowshoe and sharing their smoky wigwams at night. He documented his experience in the 1634 issue, or Volume VI, of the Jesuit Relations, the Relations being reports written by 17th Century Jesuit missionaries for their superiors describing their attempts to convert the natives of New France to Catholicism.

Towards nightfall, Le Jeune wrote, two or three young men erected a tent in the middle of our Cabin; they stuck six poles deep into the ground in the form of a circle, and to hold them in place they fastened to the tops of these poles a large ring, which completely encircled them; this done, they enclosed this Edifice with [Blankets], leaving the top of the tent open; it is all that a tall man can to do reach the top of this round tower, capable of holding 5 or 6 men standing upright.

Once the Shaking Tent was erected, the natives extinguished all the fires in their wigwam and threw the embers outside so as to not frighten the spirits that were to enter the tent. After sealing the entrance, the band’s shaman began to moan and rock the tent. Then, wrote Le Jeune, "becoming animated little by little, he commenced to whistle in a hollow tone, and as if it came from afar; then to talk as if in a bottle; to cry like the owls of these countries, which it seems to me have stronger voices than those of France; then to howl and sing, constantly varying the tones; ending by these syllables, ho ho, hi hi, guigui, nioue, and other similar sounds, disguising his voice so that it seemed to me I heard those puppets which the showmen exhibit in France."

As the ceremony progressed, the tent began to shake with increasing violence until Le Jeune was sure that the structure would disintegrate. I was astonished at a man having so much strength, wrote the Jesuit of the medicine man, whom he credited with the shaking, for, after he had once begun to shake [the tent], he did not stop until the consultation was over, which lasted about three hours.

Of course, since all light had been extinguished from the tent at the beginning of the ritual, Le Jeune could not be certain of the shaman’s actions. The natives who also took part in the ceremony assured him that their medicine man was lying on the ground throughout the whole ordeal, his soul having left his body to commune with the newly-arrived spirit visitors at the top of the tent. Look up! they urged him. The Frenchman did, and sure enough he saw fiery sparks issuing from tent opening.

When the voice of the shaman announced that the spirits had indeed arrived, the natives in the tent began asking the entities questions about the weather and the location of big game. Each of their inquiries was answered by a strange voice, which Le Jeune accredited to the shaman.

Father Paul Le Jeune wrote on the subject of the Shaking Tent again three years later, in his 1637 Relations. In this discourse, he admitted that he now doubted that the phenomenon was simply the product of shamanic trickery, and had come to suspect that it might constitute the work of demons.

The Jesuit’s change of heart was attributable in part to the obstinacy with which natives defended the legitimacy of their ritual, and in part to his own experiences in the camp of the Montagnais. Members of his congregation protested… that it was not the Sorcerer who moved this edifice, Le Jeune wrote, "but a strong wind which suddenly and violently rushed in. And, as proof of this, they told me that the Tent is sometimes so firm that a man can hardly move it, ‘Yet thou wilt see it, if thou pleasest to be present there, shake and bend from one side to the other, with such violence and for so long a time, that thou wilt be compelled to confess that there is no human strength that could cause this movement’.

While passing the winter with the Savages, the missionary continued, "I saw them perform this devilry; I saw strong young men sweat in erecting this Tent; I saw it shake, not with the violence they say it does, but forcibly enough, and for so long a time that I was surprised that a man had strength enough to endure such exertion…

Furthermore, those whom I have just named, and others, have stoutly asserted to me that the top of this Tent, seven feet high or thereabout, is sometimes bent even to the ground, so powerfully is it agitated. Also, that the arms and legs of the Sorcerer, who was stretched upon the ground, were sometimes seen to emerge at the bottom of the Tent, while the top was shaking violently. They say that the Demon or the wind which enters this little house rushes in with such force, and so disturbs the sorcerer, making him think he is going to fall into an abyss, the earth appearing to open under him, that he emerges in terror from his Tent, which goes on shaking for some time after he has left it.

Le Jeune went on to describe a tale, told to him by a young Indian, which contended that a medicine man who performed the ritual the previous autumn levitated to the top of the tent during the ceremony. This extraordinary event was purportedly witnessed by curious onlookers who lifted the tent’s covering and peered inside while the procedure was underway. The medicine man was heard to fall down, Le Jeune wrote, "uttering a plaintive cry like a man who feels the shock of a fall. Having emerged from these enchantments, he said that he did not know where he had been or what had taken place.

The Experience of

Alexander Henry the Elder

In the year 1760, Great Britain emerged victorious from the Seven Years’ War,