- VANCOUVER - René Dahinden,
the world's leading authority on Sasquatch, has died after spending nearly
50 years searching for the legendary beast.
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- He never saw one, but right to the end he believed an
ape-like hominoid was haunting the forests of British Columbia -- even
though a few doubts had started to creep into his mind.
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- Mr. Dahinden, who was 71, collected hundreds of footprint
casts and traipsed all over the Pacific Northwest investigating sightings
and interviewing everyone who had a breathless story to tell about a hairy
encounter with Bigfoot. He spent "years and years" in the bush
by himself, trying to find one piece of solid evidence that would convince
the scientific community to take the legend of Sasquatch seriously
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- "His quest, his mission, was to have the government
put some money into research and to convince the scientific community to
do something about finding it and protecting it," Christopher Murphy,
a friend of Mr. Dahinden's, said yesterday.
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- "It never came about, because nobody ever found
any proof, other than footprints. He thought most of the footprints were
fake, the vast majority, but he believed in some of them. He put faith
in the footprints because he said, 'They couldn't be left by the imagination.'
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- His pursuit of Sasquatch made him so famous that a few
years ago the brewers of Kokanee beer asked him to play himself in a television
commercial.
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- Even then he didn't get to see the Sasquatch. Facing
the camera, with the modest trailer he lived in as a backdrop, an off-camera
voice asks if he ever used B.C.-made Kokanee beer to lure a Sasquatch.
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- "Do you think I'm crazy or something?" asks
Mr. Dahinden, unaware that behind him a Sasquatch is sneaking into his
trailer to make off with a case of beer.
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- If it had happened as depicted, you can be sure Mr. Dahinden
would have poured a puddle of plaster goop on the ground to make a cast
of the footprint.
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- Wherever he travelled, Mr. Dahinden had a collection
of footprints with him. They were his touchstone to reality in a world
where people armed with little more than absolute faith try to prove the
existence of a mythical creature.
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- Dmitri Bayanov, in his book, America's Bigfoot: Fact,
Not Fiction, writes that in a 1971 visit to Moscow, Mr. Dahinden was challenged
at a public meeting to produce evidence. "Dahinden held up a weighty
plaster cast of a huge footprint and quipped: 'If anyone finds this kind
of evidence immaterial, let me strike his head with it'."
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- The Russian author and Sas-quatch hunter wrote that Mr.
Dahinden had a considerable impact in Moscow, where he presented a film
that purportedly shows a Sasquatch running into the woods near Bluff Creek,
Wash.
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- The film, shot by Sasquatch hunters Roger Patterson and
Bob Gimlin in 1967, was called a fake by many. But Mr. Dahinden, who bought
the rights to some of the footage shortly after it was shot, believed
in it.
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- In Moscow, he showed the film in the boardroom of Izvestia,
the national newspaper, to the Union of Writers of the USSR and to the
Central Scientific Research Institute of Prosthetics and Artificial Limb
Construction
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- "As the meeting at the Institute began, over one
hundred scientists and technicians, wearing white coats, assembled to watch
the film. In Dahinden's words, 'the whole joint came to a standstill,'
" wrote Mr. Bayanov
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- Mr. Murphy, who is writing a book about the film titled
Circumstantial Evidence, said Mr. Dahinden was skeptical of many Sasquatch
sightings, but he defended the film, even after it was widely dismissed
as a hoax.
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- "For a long time I was never really able to nail
him down on his view of the film. But towards the end he said: 'It's definitely
real,' " said Mr. Murphy.
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- Mr. Dahinden sold rights to the film several times to
television producers, and used stills to produce Sasquatch posters, but
he never made much money.
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- To support his Sasquatch expeditions, Mr. Dahinden worked
on the grounds of the Vancouver Gun Club, where he collected lead shot
from spent shotgun shells.
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- "He worked really hard," said Mr. Murphy. "He'd
go out and salvage the lead. He'd clean it off. He'd end up with hundreds
of pounds of lead. He worked with his bare hands ... I don't think it
could have been too healthy. He'd put it in bags and sell it back to the
people who manufacture shotgun shells."
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- Mr. Dahinden was born in Switzerland, but immigrated
to Canada in 1953. Just a month after he arrived, he heard a radio report
about a Daily Mail expedition to the Himalayas to search for the legendary
Yeti, a hairy beast that supposedly wanders the mountain wilderness, high
above the tree line.
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- Don Hunter, who in 1973 co-wrote the book Sasquatch,
said that on hearing the report, Mr. Dahinden turned to the Alberta farmer
he was working for, and said: " 'Now wouldn't that be something;
to be on the hunt for that thing?' And he said, 'Hell, you don't have
to go that far; they got them things in British Columbia.' "
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- And so the mission began. He promptly moved to B.C. and
began his life's quest.
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- Mr. Hunter said Mr. Dahinden "investigated with
an exhaustive thoroughness countless stories of Sasquatch sightings, thousands
of footprints -- and not a few Sasquatch hunters themselves. He has badgered
every branch of science in North America that could possibly relate to
the existence of a hairy bipedal giant hominoid, with little success.
For the most part he has met with responses that ranged from vague expressions
of 'cautious interest' to the attitude of: 'It can't exist, therefore
it doesn't exist.' ... He has never seen a Sasquatch; he is not easily
persuaded by those who say they have seen one ... He says: 'Something
is making those goddamn footprints and I'm going to find out what it is.'
"
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- He never did find out -- but his unwavering belief inspired
others to take up the cause.
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- "He got calls from absolutely everywhere,"
said Mr. Murphy. "And he went everywhere. He spent years and years
in the bush," he said. "He never, ever found anything when he
was out on his own. But when he responded to others, to reports, he'd
scout the area, and he'd find footprints. He'd take statements from people,
he'd interview everyone.
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- "His passion overwhelmed him. But one day he said
to me: 'You know, I've spent over 40 years -- and I didn't find it. I guess
that's got to say something.' "
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- That's as close as he ever came to admitting defeat.
- Mr. Dahinden died last week of natural causes. His memorial
will be held at the Vancouver Gun Club, in Richmond, tomorrow.
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