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Kelowna, BC → Peachland, BC → Kelowna, BC 80.8 km (50.2 mi) |
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Here there be monsters, everyone!
After practically smooching the Canadian border all summer between Grand Portage and Roosevelt Campobello, I decided to spend some more quality time north of it! Digging out my maple leaf toque, custom made by the grandma of my friend, Danielle, I bounced from LAX to Calgary, where I planned to meet some friends in a few days, then ran across the airport and bounced once more to the British Columbia city of Kelowna. Here, I checked into the funky Hotel Zed and prepared for one monster of an adventure!
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What made the hotel so funky, you might ask? Well, apart from the fun décor, bright colors, and an entire room dedicated to ping pong, the rooms all came with a free comic book and a yo-yo! So after a night’s rest, just a stone’s throw from Kelowna’s entertainment hub along Bernard Avenue, I was ready to get out and explore!
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Kelowna sits on the shore of Lake Okanagan, a huge fjord lake, carved by many different glaciers over the millennia. It’s 84 miles long and gets to be 761 feet deep, the kind of depth where legends lurk and folklore flourishes!
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My plan today was to rent a kayak and head out onto Okanagan in search of its most legendary aquatic resident, but the rental place wasn’t slated to open until 10:00 AM! That gave me some time to stroll along the shore, which is not something I am used to having!
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After picking up some Tim Bits from Tim Horton’s I conducted my most leisurely promenade and immediately discovered really cool thing about Kelowna. The Pianos in Parks organization has installed a bunch of public pianos along this walkway! Some folks jog, others roller blade, while still others sit down and play the piano for folks to enjoy! When one teenager sat down to do just that, some music, along with my sugary breakfast, added some real pep to my step!
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And those path-side pianos were just some of the features that made downtown Kelowna such a treat to explore! On the edge of Kerry Park, where a sign advertised a free Parks Alive! concert tonight, there were some wonderful sculptures too, like Robert Dow Reid’s Spirit of Sail from 1978 and Bear by Brower Hatcher, installed in 2010. This one was particularly relevant because “Kelowna” is as close as English gets to kiʔláwnaʔ, the Syilx word for a female grizzly bear!
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Kelowna’s most famous sculpture, though, depicts the target of my journey to Okanagan. It’s Peter Soelin’s Ogopogo, installed here in 1960! Ogopogo, you see, is the name that’s been given to Nx̌aʔx̌ʔitkʷ (“N’ha-a-itk”), a water serpent rumored to live here in the lake since time immemorial. Though it wasn’t really considered a mean creature, the Syilx would leave offerings to N’ha-a-itk when crossing the lake near its home of Rattlesnake Island to keep this salmon-loving spirit from developing a taste for people!
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The journey to “Ogopogo” started in 1855 when settler John McDougall’s horses were pulled underwater behind his canoe, and the first recorded sighting by a non-Native person (Okanagan’s first female European settler, Susan Allison) sprung up in 1872. She claimed she’d seen “a dinosaur in the lake!” But the name “Ogopogo” didn’t even show up until 1924, when some party-goers up north in Vernon started singing a song by Cumberland Clark, the Bard of Bournemouth, called The Ogo-Pogo: The Funny Foxtrot. And even though Mr. Clark was considered by some to be England’s worst poet, the name stuck to this lake monster like algae on a rock!
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For my own investigation into this legend, I headed across the lake and south to the town of Peachland, the closest jumping-off point to Rattlesnake Island. Even though I’d have to be re-crossing Okanagan to get to the island, there was no better way to reach it with the one day I’d given myself to make the journey. After all, Rattlesnake Island is part of Okanagan Mountain Provincial Park, and there are neither roads nor trails leading down to this part of the shore! As luck would have it, the folks at Beach Ride Rental Co. were very accommodating and set me up with a kayak as soon as I arrived!
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And it was a perfect day for kayaking! A big storm had finished up yesterday before I arrived, so the lake was misty with residual clouds. The water was super glassy, and I was excited to slide a paddle into it. The rental attendant told me it usually took an hour and a half to go each way, so with that in mind, I strapped in and shoved off for the roughly 2-mile (3.2-kilometer) paddle to Ogopogo’s legendary den!
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Crossing the lake was super easygoing. Even past 10:00, there weren’t a lot of boats on the water today, which made each dip of the paddle as smooth as Jell-O! I passed a couple of loons and thought I heard a fish splash, but there was nothing to be seen of a giant water monster on this lovely morning!
After about half an hour, I could really make out Rattlesnake Island, getting steadily bigger up ahead. There, I started to see more motorboats, circling the island and navigating the narrow gap between it and the mainland. Still no Ogopogo signs, though! I imagine any lake monster would be spooked by a bunch of motorboats overhead!
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As if by magic, the clouds parted as I hauled up on the rocks of Rattlesnake Island, and the day turned toasty! It was a good day to be down by the water, for sure, but with my rental being billed by the hour, I couldn’t dally here too long. Gosh, that water looked inviting, though!
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But wow, what a surprising view as I climbed up the hill from the shore! The first surprise was how lovely green-blue the water was! The second surprise was how amazingly dry everything up here was! I always think of Canada as being too north for drought, but that’s a silly idea. Greater Okanagan is in a Level 3 drought right now, down from last year’s Level 4, but still not great! In fact, on August 15th of last year, the McDougall Creek Wildfire ignited on the lake’s western shore and grew into an unprecedented fire storm that jumped the lake and destroyed nearly 200 homes in its 33,000-acre swathe! Today, I was glad just to be hot.
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As I climbed to the top of Rattlesnake Island, I was surprised to see ruins! These were not indigenous ruins by any means. They were made of concrete! As it turns out, a fellow named Eddie Haymour bought Rattlesnake Island back in the early 1970s with a goal of turning it into a Middle Eastern themed resort with a huge cinder block pyramid, a giant camel, restaurants, the works! He’d barely opened it in 1972 when the provincial government decided to kick him out, illegally forcing the Royal Bank to cancel the loan they’d given him!
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Bankrupted, Mr. Haymour returned to his native Lebanon and took thirty-four hostages at the Canadian embassy in Beirut, demanding a better deal from the British Columbian government! After a nine-hour standoff, the government agreed not to prosecute Mr. Haymour. His case went to the Supreme Court of British Columbia, where it was found he’d been shafted! Though Rattlesnake Island went on to become part of Okanagan Mountain Provincial Park, he was awarded $250,000 as compensation for his broken dream!
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Today, not everything is lost from Mr. Haymour’s resort. While most of the other buildings collapsed into ruined foundations, it’s really hard to completely destroy a mini golf course!
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I should have brought a putter and a ball, because this course was still pretty playable! Sure, there was no lining on the course, and sure, most of the holes had filled with water after the last rain storm, but the routes were still there and still looked kind of fun and challenging. With no one else on the island to count my strokes, who could have asked for more?!
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Rattlesnake Island’s pretty small, so it didn’t take me long to traverse the whole thing. I was very glad not to have encountered any poisonous snakes here, but this island most likely gets its name from Glyceria canadensis, the rattlesnake grass, which has florets shaped like a snake’s rattle! The Kelowna Chamber of Commerce finalized that decision in the 1950s, but before that, locals just called it Ogopogo Island!
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And here’s a better view of Ogopogo Gap! Sources vary on exactly where N’ha-a-itk made its den, ranging from this channel to Squally Point farther south, but to me, this had all the ominousness of a pass between Scylla and Charybdis! It was the perfect spot for a water monster’s favorite fish to get funneled into a tight space where they’d be easier to nosh. It would also be ideal for catching land critters who wanted to make a short swim to the island! I sat very still and waited to see if a head would rise up, or even some bubbles, but all I got were two more speedboats!
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Oh well, as with any cryptid, you can’t expect them to just appear on command! I’d made the journey to Rattlesnake Island, felt the vibes, saw the history, and realized I’d need to start back if I wanted to keep my rental time under four hours. By this point, the wind was starting to whip up white caps, and the motorboats were getting more plentiful, making the return voyage more perilous than the first leg! I even came close to getting my head chopped off by a trolling line!
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But I escaped the lake, the boaters, and all monsters unharmed! Munching on a pastry from Bliss Bakery, I looked back out over Okanagan and wondered about the true story behind the Ogopogo legend. Had a monster ever lurked here, or could it, like Vermont’s Champ, be explained away by science. I’ll mull it over tonight as I attend the free Parks Alive! concert in the park before my early flight back to Calgary tomorrow. I’m meeting up with my good friends, Ross and Terri to rent a motorhome and explore the Canadian Rockies!
See you soon, eh?
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Total Ground Covered: 80.8 km (50.2 mi) |
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