Manitoba Bigfoot: Another Look
Posted by: Loren Coleman on June 15th, 2009
Art: Courtesy Dave Lowe.
The 2005 footage of a “Bigfoot” filmed with an old camcorder has reappeared on YouTube. The story about the video first broke on April 22, 2005.
At dawn on Saturday, April 16, 2005, a Manitoba ferryboat driver named Bobby Clarke was doing his job when he noticed something "big, black figure," "a massive creature" on the opposite bank of the Nelson River, about 300 meters away. Clarke had an old camcorder on board to record any wildlife he saw, so he picked it up and took two minutes and 49 seconds of videotape of what many say is a Bigfoot. He showed it to hundreds of locals at his friend, Georgina Henry’s house in Norway House, Manitoba, before he sold the first rights to screen it to the program, A Current Affair.
Bigfoot researchers were dismayed to hear the Native Canadian had sold the footage to television, but then Clarke merely said that he wanted to make a little money off all the interest in his footage, just as much as the next guy. He made no outrageous claims for it, and was curious about what the creature might be.
Clarke told the Globe and Mail that he "has been nervous ever since seeing the creature, especially when he takes the ferry to the side of the river the creature was on."
Despite a well-publicized A Current Affair expedition to Manitoba to search for the Sasquatch, and keep the story alive, no results were forthcoming. As fate would have it, the entire news magazine was cancelled by Fox Television a few weeks after the Clarke Bigfoot affair was no longer current.
What’s it look like this time around?
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(Raising my coffee cup) ….Here’s to all the “Blob-Squatches” that have been caught on video,film and the such !
At least WE ( researchers & eye witnesses) know that they really do exist…. Even though alot of nay-sayers wont believe it until they are literally “SMACKED” up side their heads by one, And they most likely would say it was a tree branch or something totally ridiculous.
I would like to think he saw what he said he saw. BUT old or new camera one must learn to focus and hold the camera still as you can.I know this is tough when the excitement of the situation is upon you but “CAMERA USE 101″ Learn your equiptment then take it every were you go. Every video I have seen looks fake because of poor camera control or poor woodsman ship. “A picture is worth a thousand words”
Saw something like that in a freezer in Georgia once. . . .
As ballyhooed as this footage has been, its not much more than another blobsquatch for the reasons that greywolf gave. The only value it has is in combination with some of the eyewitness testimony given by ferry riders who got a good look at the subject that day. By itself, the film is simply too blurry and shaky to be of significant value.
I live in southern Manitoba, northwest of Stonewall, about a mile away from the uninhabited swamp lands. I have heard of a story of a couple of hunters going up there. As I heard the story: a large black creature (not a bear) walked in front of them on two legs, and into the swamp on the other side of the road. These guys dont like to talk about the story, so im thinkin its probably true. I think a Sasquatch could easily support itself up there. There is plenty to eat, and that habitat can support other large animals, like black bear, moose and deer. So I beleive Sasquatches are living in Manitoba and that Bobby Clarke might have actually filmed one. I know this footage is to shaky to tell for sure but like Bob K said there was also eyewitness testimony.
As Peanut said about lazy eyed people (from Jeff Dunham’s Arguing With Myself DVD) “Focus You Moron!!” What is it about people taking these type of footage that they continue to record if the image is not in focus? There have only been a few that I can remember that the person recording was trying to focus…to those people I applaud. At least you were trying, but stuff like this, “Oh my God! A dark blob is coming our way!” I’m getting a little irritated (if you can’t tell). We are living in the most technologically advanced stages in human history and we still can’t get people to focus when filming. The Champ video from the cell phone was better than this.
Why bother with a piece of [squatch dung] like this?
When you say ‘Manitoba,’ say ‘PEGUIS.’
Given that the footage was taken with an “old video camera” and that the subject was approximately 300 meters (328+ yards) distant, the reason the footage is blurry likely has nothing to do with the camera operator. The camera — its lens and its recording medium — was probably incapable of the necessary resolution to capture a clear image of an object “a little bigger than a man” at that distance. It also looks as though the figure was isolated from the original footage and enlarged for broadcast. The result is a small image of a blobsquatch instead of a tiny image of a blobsquatch.
It’s not the inability of the photographer to focus that gives us footage like this, but the fact that video is a lousy medium with which to shoot anything more than a few yards away.
You mean that “well-publicized A Current Affair expedition to Manitoba to search for the Sasquatch” that amounted to little more than a fever-dream of Georgia Bigfoot Hoaxer proportions? Don’t get me wrong, I do love me some Dr. Franklin Ruehl, Ph.D but man did Bobby Clarke bungle it. Woulda coulda shoulda…
DWA - This video is not representative of Manitoba. According to John Green in “The Apes Among Us”, Manitoba is second only to BC for the number of sightings. There’s a lot more going on here than just a blobsquatch.
greywolf and shumway, you attack the photographers, but I am guessing you haven’t ‘been there’, or you wouldn’t. It is like ammunition discipline; you know it, you know you should do it, but in the suddenness of the event you don’t get it done. As I experienced the first time I played paintball.
I”m a half-way decent photographer, but a short time ago when I saw an unidentified animal running at me, and my sub-conscious screamed ‘wolverine’ (which I don’t think it could have been) even though I had my dslr with me, I simply stared in startlement and didn’t get a single picture. (it ran like a skunk or badger, but reddish brown, too short to be a wolverine, and NOT a groundhog/marmot). SE Minnesota about 20 miles south of the wolverine sighting a couple years back.
So, I’m not condemning these folks.
Sschaper: not so much sure it’s impugning the photographer as in wondering why stuff like this goes public, and gets debated, when there is almost nothing in it to debate.
Wildlife photography from the hip is next to impossible. Which means, to me: if you didn’t get a good shot to supplement your experience, you may not be better off to release what you got to the public than to keep it to yourself.
The only time I ever encountered a grizzly bear on foot - in Alaska, about 3 or 4 air miles from the nearest tree, at distances as close as approximately 30 yards - my camera stayed against my chest throughout an encounter that actually did take as looong as it felt like. Hey. It didn’t tell me it was there! How could I know?
And manetheren: what I know about Manitoba (where a hunter killed one, with one shot, and carefully inspected the body in 1941) is exactly why I take stuff like this to task.
Sschaper: not so much sure it’s impugning the photographer as in wondering why stuff like this goes public, and gets debated, when there is almost nothing in it to debate.
Wildlife photography from the hip is next to impossible. Which means, to me: if you didn’t get a good shot to supplement your experience, you may not be better off to release what you got to the public than to keep it to yourself.
The only time I ever encountered a grizzly bear on foot - in Alaska, about 3 or 4 air miles from the nearest tree, at distances as close as approximately 30 yards - my camera stayed against my chest throughout an encounter that actually did take as looong as it felt like. Hey. It didn’t tell me it was there! How could I know?
And manetheren: what I know about Manitoba (where a hunter killed one, with one shot, and carefully inspected the body in 1941) is exactly why I take stuff like this to task. ‘PEGUIS’ refers to a video that is truly enigmatic; clearly depicts a big mammalian biped; has convincing backstory; and makes this look like …well, look up there.
These videos, blurry and shakey as they are, go public because people with no real interest in sasquatch or cryptids in general find them interesting. They watch them, they debate them and then they forget about them. Everyone commenting here has a greater interest in these topics than the average joe and has seen hundreds of pictures and videos like this. So when another one comes out, we’re disappointed because we can’t gain anymore information, ie: facial structure, height, weight, what was it doing there. These videos are exciting and new for most people and they may entice someone not really familiar with the topic to become more interested so years from now he or she can log onto websites like this and debate why these videos go public.