The Legend of the Ogopogo: Is Kelowna’s Lake Monster Real?
When you think about the Okanagan Valley in southern British Columbia, hot summers, drinking wine and boating on the sprawling Okanagan Lake may come to mind. But there’s a more infamous sight that has captured people’s attention for thousands of years. The elusive Ogopogo, a creature similar to Scotland’s Loch Ness monster, who is said to be lurking in the 232 metre deep lake, continues to perplex locals and visitors whenever there is an apparent sighting that makes headlines.
“I quickly learned that this was something a lot more than a monster story,” says Jason Hewlett, a researcher and co-founder of the Canadian Paranormal Society who was on the team for the 2024 documentary Cursed Waters: Creature of Lake Okanagan that premiered on Amazon Prime. Hewlett, alongside the film’s director Eli Watson, filmed the documentary on Lake Okanagan where they explored the water, highlighted the Indigenous history of nx̌ax̌aitkʷ as it’s called in the Syilx language and spoke to eyewitnesses who took a photo of their encounter in 2022.
“It’s a story about the history of Kelowna. People have been seeing something in that lake before the European settlers showed up and, to these people, it’s an important part of their cultural heritage,” says Hewlett.
To the Syilx Okanagan people, the history of nx̌ax̌aitkʷ (pronounced “N-ha-ha-eet-kw”), meaning “Sacred Spirit of the Lake,” dates back thousands of years. They respect nx̌ax̌aitkʷ, making offerings to it, which caused confusion for the European settlers when they saw meat being thrown into the water.
“When you hunt something for the very first time, that meat doesn’t belong to you. Your first kill, it’s customary to take a small piece of it and pop it into the water. It was never to appease nx̌ax̌aitkʷ, it was to acknowledge the water. Everything we have is because of water,” says Coralee Miller, the Museum Docent of Sncəwips Heritage Museum.
“It’s a spirit, it doesn’t eat chickens or pigs…we definitely did not feed it puppies or horses. It likes sage, it likes tobacco, it loves to be sung to. The only flesh we ever knew of it to partake was kokanee salmon,” adds Miler.
Miller says their belief is that nx̌ax̌aitkʷ is a creature and a spirit and has been described as a large serpentine creature that is dark in colour, with a head of a horse, antlers like a deer that moves like a snake back and forth in the water, with its true form being water itself.
“One is this mascot of consumerism, the other is the actual life and spirit of the water, so getting that out there is really important,” says Miller.
The first reported sighting by European settlers came in 1872 by Susan Allison, who said she saw a dinosaur in the lake. One of the most infamous reported encounters was from 1855 by Metis John MacDougall. MacDougall was crossing the lake with his horses tied behind his canoe, something he had done several times before, when his horses were pulled underwater, forcing him to cut the ropes to stop his canoe from sinking.
The image of a green, cartoonish lake monster has been the mascot for the region, featured on merchandise, including the uniforms of the junior hockey team, the Kelowna Rockets, and a statue in downtown Kelowna where tourists stop to take photos. There’s even a seven-metre statue in Lake Okanagan that was created as a diving site in the 1990’s.
The name Ogopogo has no connection to the area or Indigenous history and was based on an English music hall song that was performed in music halls in Vernon in the 1920’s. In 2021, the City of Vernon, who owned the copyright to the name since 1956, transferred over the rights to the Syilx Nation, following criticism of cultural appropriation from Indigenous communities.
Over the years, there have been several sightings, many of which have been documented on the website Ogopogo Quest, created by Bill Steciuk who has been tracking it since his own personal sighting in October 1978. Sighters have said it looks like a floating log, and also similar to a sturgeon. The website claims that scientists believe that it’s a form of a primitive whale, Basilosaurus cetoides, due to its similar appearance.
Miller hopes that anyone coming to the Okanagan to try their luck at spotting the Ogopogo, they take a pause and remember that they’re not just visiting a tourist destination, but an ecosystem of animals, fish and water that needs to be protected.
“We don’t stop and think that everything around us is alive and a living relative. When we are ripping up and down the lake, disturbing the fish eggs and keeping our lights on all night in the summertime…you’ve got to be good to your neighbours whether they’ve got two legs or four,” says Miller.
And if you do happen to spot it? Miller says to be present and take in the moment before trying to take a shaky photo that people will be skeptical of anyways. “It’s a spirit. When it shows itself to you, that is incredibly special.”
