Caddy

While Ogopogo is the most controversial creature present -or not present, depending on your view- in the fresh water of B.C., it is matched in mystery by a salt-water counterpart. This is Caddy, a 100-foot-long creature with a horse-like head that seems to roam between Vancouver Island and the Mainland. It was first seen October 5, 1933 in Cadboro Bay near Victoria by Frederick Kemp of the Provincial Archives and Major W.H. Hangley, clerk of the B.C. Legislature.

In 1969 Caddy aroused the interest of two UBC scientists, Dr. Paul LeBlond and Dr. John Siebert, who went on a fact-finding tour to collect evidence of its existence or non-existence. The scientists received about 50 calls from people who had seen an unidentified creature in the ocean. They checked 25 of the most reliable reports but believe that many people kept silent to avoid controversy or ridicule.

Siebert summed it up this way: "Generally I'm inclined to be skeptical, but not always. I have moods about it. Too many people have seen something for it to have been nothing. But what?"

As an illustration, Honorable James T. Brown, Chief Justice of Saskatchewan's Kings Bench Court, told a vivid story in 1950 of a monster 35 to 45 feet long at Victoria. "It was like a monstrous snake. It certainly wasn't any of those sea animals we know, like a porpoise, sea lion, and so on. I've seen them and know what they look like."

His wife and a daughter corroborated the sighting which happened during stroll at the foot of Government Street. Mrs. Brown saw the creature first and pointed it out but by the time the others had a chance to glance around it had disappeared. However it reappeared roughly 150 yards away where it was seen by all three members of the Brown family. The Chief Justice, though reluctant to get involved with publicity over the sighting, gave a graphic description: "His head, like a snake's, came out of the water four or five times and straight up. Six or seven feet from the head one of his big coils showed clearly. The coil itself was six or seven feet long, fully a foot thick, perfectly round and dark in color. There must have been a great length of him under water."

"He was swimming very fast, for he came up 200 to 300 yards away from the spot where he went under each time. I got three good looks at him. On one occasion he came up almost right in front of us. He must have gone deep each time, for we couldn't follow his trail. We watched when he went under, but couldn't spot any ripples."

Another clear sighting was by Jack Montgomery and his wife, both of Vancouver, who were sport fishing at the entrance to Cowichan Bay on Vancouver Island. A creature surfaced which had a square-shaped head, three coils, and brown leathery skin. Later, Montgomery spoke to several fishermen at Mayne Island Wharf who told him that a creature appeared frequently. They said that it surfaced over a widespread area, often several times within an hour, indicating either fantastic speed and endurance or more than one specimen.

Another intriguing story was told in 1957 by Cecelia Smith, a writer on the Vancouver Sun's "Livable Home Page." She and her husband, Job, sighted a strange creature as they cruised down the north arm of Burrard Inlet. "We saw this tremendous jet black hoop rising from the water," she said. "It looked like a big truck tire. There was a smaller black hump a few feet ahead of it. We were only about 40 feet from it when we first saw it. We were about 70 feet from shore and it was dead ahead.

"The water was smooth as a mill pond and the sun was shining. We were within 30 feet of it when it slid noiselessly below the surface. It didn't create a ripple. Then suddenly a terrific tail with large spikes at the end of it, just like a demon's, whipped out of the water."

"I didn't notice its head but my husband did. He said it was flat on top and diamond-shaped. He said it looked as sinister as any serpent's. After the tail broke water, the creature submerged completely. We looked around and spotted the humps again behind our boat. It was heading towards the west shore and traveling far too fast to be overtaken by us. It was ghastly!" shuddered Cecelia. "Only trouble was that there wasn't another boat in sight. No one can confirm our story."

But there were 10 witnesses at Qualicum Bay in 1953 when Frank Waterfall, an employee of the Veteran's Land Act Department, observed some type of serpent through binoculars for more than an hour as it played on the water a quarter mile from shore. He said it appeared to be 50 feet long, with a head resembling that of a seal and two or three humps along the back.

Other eyewitnesses were J. C. McLean, Construction supervisor for the Veteran's Land Department, his wife and mother, and Peter Barr, all residents of the area. R.D. Cockburn of Victoria, C.P. Crawford of Nanaimo, and Ron Loach of Qualicum are among others who gave their names.

"I could see a head and three humps," said Cockburn, "but I thought it must be three or four seals. Then the thing reared up a few feet out of the water and I could see it was just one animal." Two other men who saw the serpent put out in a row boat and got within 15 or 20 feet of it before it submerged and reappeared 100 yards away.

An unidentified creature also appeared in 1952 directly off Prospect Point at Vancouver. It was seen by Harold Whelan, former deputy chief constable of Vancouver, a man trained to keen observation and to accuracy of recollection. "The tide was right at slack," he said, "so there is no suggestion that what I saw was surging water. I happened to be looking right at the spot where it broke water. It was no more than 20 feet away. The water boiled up in an area about eight feet across."

"I couldn't tell whether it was the head or the back of the creature. There was no dorsal fin. I had no idea of its complete size. The monster then disappeared. It surfaced again seconds later, some distance away. It was travelling at a terrific speed - I would say about 30 knots."

Whelan, an adroit fisherman and expert on marine life, said the creature definitely was not a porpoise. He pointed out that "there were no coils or anything like that" which would identify it as a sea lion. The sighting was witnessed also by his father-in-law, and a son, Dick.

Strait of Georgia, B.C.

Of all reports of marine creatures in the west, the most bizarre attach themselves to the one seen in and around the waters off Victoria, B.C. A report of a dragon-like, spiky-backed, 25 meters long monster of Vancouver Island was published in 1932. It soon became known as Cadborosaurus, or Caddy for short. It's no coincidence that this and many subsequent B.C. reports appeared around the time the world first learned of a monster in Scotland's Loch Ness. By the time other accounts of Caddy had come into the Victoria Times in the months that followed, they totaled over 100. One of the more thrilling descriptions came from two duck hunters who said they saw something in the Strait of Georgia. It was over 30 meters long with a camel's head, a fanged mouth, whiskered jaw, and eyes that turned from green to red. They shot at it, but missed. Fifty years later, the retired Times journalist, Archie Wills, who once covered Caddy, confessed that many of the published accounts were, to say the least, embellished. He and other reporters did this, Wills admitted, to give people a break from the all-too-sober realities of the 1930's. "People needed some relief then," said Wills. "Anything we got on sea serpents was duck soup."

THE CADBOROSAURS -(Caddy to her friends) In 1933 a Victoria lawyer spotted this sea serpent in Cadboro Bay and described her as follows: The head was shaggy in appearance, with long underslung jaw like a camel. Back of the head, in monstrous undulations, appeared the body of the creature, judged to be between 75 and 80 feet long and as thick as 20 feet at its widest part. Caddy was last seen in the waters of a small town on the southern coast called Sooke, BC.

Press Review about Caddy and Ogopogo