Ogopogo has even received international fame in the past few years. Several film crews from the United States and abroad have travelled to Kelowna to try and document Ogopogo's existence.

Here's other research made in the valley :

One million dollar prize reward
Prove Ogopogo's existence and receive $2 million
Arlene Gaal, Ogopogo's guru
Bill Steciuk and Can Pro Productions
Pronks Brothers
Nippon TV
Facts about Ogopogo
How to photograph Ogopogo

OGOPOGO MORE THAN LEGEND AND LORE

To hear Arlene Gaal tell it, there's no doubt there is an Ogopogo. Maybe more than one, and maybe it's related to Nessie, the denizen of Scotland's Loch Ness. She's bought films, taken pictures, given interviews and written books on the subject of Ogopogo. She's convinced. "I've investigated sightings for the last 16 years. I'm not too comfortable out on the lake in a boat. But maybe that's because I don't swim very well", says Gaal. The story of Ogopogo -at least the record of sightings- goes back to 1872 when Susan Allison spotted the beast in Okanagan Lake. Since then he (or she) has popped up frequently. Last year, it surfaced May 19 and then later -apparently- for an ABC film crew (although Gaal sounds sceptical about that footage). But what is Ogopogo? Everyone has a theory. There are those who see it as a tourist gimmick. Not an attraction in itself, but kind of the finishing touch for a tourist area -a mascot, if you will. Then there are others, like Gaal, who think it is a remnant of an earlier time- an anomaly in 20th Century waters. "It could be a possible reptilian or dinosaur-like creature", says the intrepid Gaal. "It has adapted itself to our lake conditions. Not just ours, but to freshwater lakes throughout the world". She doesn't like it when someone bills Ogopogo as a monster. "I throw it back at them because I don't think it is a monster. It's an animal species that has not yet been identified". She has her favourite sightings. One involved three males of the Reiger family in 1978, fishing near Okanagan Centre. They had noticed lots of fish in the area when suddenly the school disappeared. They turned around to look out the back of the boat and saw a large whale-like creature. One of the witnesses estimated the animal at close to 20 tons. And Gaal has had three experiences of her own with the legendary creature. "And I'm one of the world's worst skeptics", she says. Once, she and husband John were headed up lake in their boat when he spotted something moving. It wasn't a boat, says Gaal, because there was a small wake in front of the object, a large wake behind and waves between the front and rear sections. Sounds like a creature with just a head and tail out of the water swimming, doesn't it? Sometimes it is easy to be fooled, though. Take the ABC crew here last year. Someone, knowing the television network had people in town, had set up three tires in the water off Gyro Beach. One of the crew got very excited about spotting Ogopogo and began throwing rocks at it to make it move. Arlene went to her car to get binoculars. "There were whitewall marks on the Ogopogo". From the sightings of Ogopogo and from and 8 mm film taken in 1968, it appears the creature is large. Some suggest it could be longer than 30 feet. It has a definite head, massive body, a tail and front appendages that could be like fins, says Gaal.

Is it malevolent? "I think that if it is antagonised, it will protect itself", says Gaal. "But it is used to the boats and visitors out there (on Okanagan Lake). We don't want to scare our tourists away".

Is there more than one? Gaal knows of at least two sightings when more than one of the creatures have been sent together.

Where can you spot it? She has some suggestions. "From about 10:30 AM to 1 P.M. I would watch for it from the (Okanagan Lake) bridge area. From 2 to 4, around Peachland and from Okanagan Centre in the late afternoon". Gaal has nearly made a career of the creature. She's been interviewed on Front Page Challenge, by Tokyo Broadcasting, by the Chicago Tribune, English magazines, and worked with California film companies. Are people starting to take the idea of Ogopogo more seriously? "I believe they are. When I came out with my first book in 1976, (Beneath the Depths), I had people looking at me with a lot of mockery". Her second book (The Million Dollar Monster) met with less scepticism. And the Kelowna Chamber of Commerce has climbed on the bandwagon. It's offering a $2000 reward for the best picture of the beast taken in 1988. It could be your camera that helps solve the mystery surrounding our own version of the Loch Ness Monster. Or then again, it could be Gaal's. "I'm 51. I think I could go out tomorrow and if I'm lucky enough the creature would surface. It is almost like a member of my family because I've spent so many hours researching, chasing after it, and analysing photos", she says. Tom and Gladys Rowden think they saw a pair of creatures near Summerland several years ago. "We just happened to stop for lunch and looked up. There it was, there they were." It -they- were two long creatures, "dark, with humps" recalls Gladys. "They were swimming in circles. They might have been mating," she says. There were other people at the beach who saw the phenomenon but who didn't say anything. "I wouldn't have said anything either," says Gladys. Making a claim to have seen Ogopogo opened the couple to ridicule. "They think we're bugs. But it sure as heck was something", she says. "We figure it was the Ogopogo -two of them." Gladys says she believed in the creature before seeing it. "I figured there was something. A lot of people talk about it. I don't think they are crazy because we've seen it". It's probably a matter of time before there is incontrovertible evidence of the creature, says Gaal. Cameras and video cameras are more common now than they ever have been, and with the chamber's reward, more people will be keeping a eye out when they are in or near the water.