Ogopogo: The Spirit of Okanagan Lake and the Monster Sightings

Okanagan Lake, a long, deep lake in the interior of British Columbia, lies in the homeland of the Syilx (Okanagan) people. In nsyilxcən, the Syilx language, the being associated with the lake is n̓x̌ax̌aitkʷ, which Syilx sources translate as the sacred spirit of the lake. Settlers who heard about it wrote the name down in many ways, among them N'ha-a-itk and Naitaka, and often recast it as a demon that demanded an offering before anyone crossed the water.

Syilx knowledge keepers have pushed back on that reading. Pat Raphael of Westbank First Nation has described the demonic version as the product of miscommunication, and the being itself as a sacred spirit that protects the valley. It is a living tradition, and the name and story carry religious meaning for the Syilx Nation. The lake monster of tourist brochures is a different, much younger thing.

The name Ogopogo has a surprising source. The historian Mark Orkin traced it to an English music-hall number, The Ogo-Pogo: The Funny Fox-Trot, heard in the city of Vernon in 1924, though he also noted signs that the name had been used earlier. Either way, a nonsense word from a comic song became the name of the lake creature, and Ogopogo grew into a regional mascot on postcards, signs and souvenirs.

The City of Vernon acquired a copyright on Ogopogo in 1956. In October 2021 its council voted unanimously to transfer the rights, for one dollar, to the Okanagan Nation Alliance. The mayor said the story belonged to the Syilx people, and Okanagan Indian Band Chief Byron Louis said the name and story carry religious meaning for the nation.

Settlers told stories of something in the lake from the nineteenth century; one of the earliest detailed accounts was left by the settler Susan Allison in 1872. The modern sightings began in earnest in the twentieth century, and two of them are cited more than any others. In 1968 Art Folden filmed a dark shape moving through the water from Highway 97. In 1989 Ken Chaplin videotaped a creature in the water near Bear Creek.

Both films have been examined closely. A 2005 analysis of Folden's footage found that the object was much closer to shore than had been assumed, and therefore much smaller, consistent with a swimming bird, an otter or a beaver. Local biologists who saw Chaplin's video said it most likely showed a beaver and that its size had been overstated. Other videos and photos since have shown humps that investigators matched to otters, floating logs and, in one case near Peachland, an overturned windsurfer.

Okanagan Lake has the ingredients of a lake-monster story: a long stretch of open water, wind that raises waves and wakes, and plenty of real animals. River otters often swim in a line, one behind another, rising and diving, and from a distance a family of them looks exactly like the humped back of one long creature. Beavers push a wake ahead of them that suggests a much bigger animal. And the lake carries floating logs, a legacy of the timber industry, that roll and bob on the surface.

Skeptical investigators such as Benjamin Radford, who has examined several of the best-known videos, have found ordinary explanations for each of them. No body, bone or tissue has ever been recovered, and a breeding population of large animals in a lake that size would be hard to miss. The sightings say more about how people see open water than about what lives under it, which is one reason the spirit of the Syilx tradition and the monster of the postcards are best kept apart.