Earlier, we published an article about the mysterious monsters of the Canadian province of British Columbia. This article continues the topic of Canadian cryptids and today we will talk about the province of Manitoba.
For the cryptids, Manitoba is a special place. Even the word "cryptid" was first used by local researcher John Wall in 1983 to refer to the mysterious animals that cryptozoologists are trying to find.
The province of Manitoba stretches from the border with the US state of North Dakota in the south to Nunavut in the north. It is the eighth largest Canadian province, with an area of 647,797 km². There are many lands occupied by agriculture and at the same time there are enough mountains, lakes, forests and tundra.
Manitoba has more than 110,000 lakes (mostly small), which cover 15.6 percent of the province's area. Maybe that's why there are many lake monsters in Manitoba.
Monster Manipogo
This monster lives in Lake Manitoba. The length of the lake is 201 km by 45 km, but the lake itself is very shallow, a maximum of 7 meters. It's amazing how any large animal can hide in it.
However, this strange and elusive animal exists. It even appeared in a photo taken by eyewitness Richard Vincent on August 12, 1962. The picture shows a slender worm-like / serpentine creature in the waters of the lake.
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The first European settlers saw this creature starting in the 1800s. In 1906, fur trader Valentine McKay claimed to have seen a huge creature in the lake water. In 1935, logging inspector Ross and a friend said they saw a dinosaur-like creature in the water.
The observations continued in later years. In 1948, someone reported a long-necked monster, claiming that its neck was two meters long. He also compared the creature to a dinosaur. In 1989, a family from Minneanapolis observed strange humps in the water. In 2004, fisherman Keith Hayden told reporters that something large had gnawed big holes in his nets.
As mentioned above, on August 12, 1962, the only photograph of Manipogo was taken in the waters of the lake. On that day, two fishermen, Richard Vincent and John Konifal, were on their way from fishing to their camp, when they saw something strange in the water about 55 meters from the boat and managed to photograph it.
The picture was tracked down in 2013 and published in the Winnipeg Sun newspaper, acknowledging it as genuine.
Winnipogo's monster
Winnipogo lives in Lake Winnipegosis, the second largest in Manitoba. It is 195 km long and 51 km wide. It is also quite shallow, on average there is a depth of 12 meters, but there are holes of 18 meters.
According to the descriptions of eyewitnesses of Winnipy, this is a brownish snake about 7 meters long and with one horn on its head. Legends about him circulated among the first settlers, but the first case of a collision was recorded only in 1901 and was described in the Dauphin Press.
Further observations were made in 1909 and 1935, and in the 1930s, a certain Oscar Fredrickson discovered the remains of a skeleton on the shore of the lake, whose identity he could not identify. Later, James McLeod of the University of Manitoba said the bones could have been part of the spine of an extinct whale.
More sightings of the monster were not recorded and in 2013 Winnipogo was recognized as a "monster close to extinction."
It is curious that lakes Manitoba and Winnipegosis are connected and the monster seen in either of these two lakes could be both Winnipogo and Manipogo.
Sasquatch
Sasquatch is commonly referred to as the Canadian "subspecies" of the American Bigfoot. In the language of the Indians, it means "wild man". In Canada and Manitoba, especially, there are a lot of sightings of sasquatch. He is not only seen, photographed, but also captured on video. Although all recordings are usually very muddy and of poor quality.
In 2005, ferry operator Bobby Clark saw a creature on the shores of Lake Winnipeg that was definitely neither a man nor a bear. It was black, stood on two legs and moved. It was about 3 meters high.
In 2012, a certain Brent Brandon revealed that a snarling monster attacked their camping tent in the woods. He described the creature as very tall, ape-like and with black long hair. It is noteworthy that he indicated that the creature was "fat".
Hybrid bears
Bears are huge, scary and hungry all the time, they are not cute cartoon bears, so it’s not funny when they roam near your houses. In Canada and the United States, there were 92 bear attacks on humans from 2010 to 2013.
But the most intimidating bears come from mating aggressive grizzlies and huge polar bears from the arctic. Officially, hybrids of white and grizzly are called the word Grolar and they are found mainly in zoos, since in nature their zones almost do not touch.
There are only three confirmed cases of hybridization in nature, but with the onset of global warming, these cases may become more and more. The heads of these hybrids are usually similar to those of a polar bear, and the huge shoulders are taken from a grizzly bear. The fur can be any variation of mixing black and white.
Grizzlies have increased in Manitoba's Wapusk National Park near Churchill, while Churchill is famous for its polar bears.
Crowds of researchers and tourists come here to observe them. What happens when the breeding grizzlies go into polar bear territory? Either they will displace them, or they will interbreed with them, and then Churchill can be safely called not the "world capital of polar bears", but the "world capital of the Grolars."