Igopogo: The Georgina Island Group Sighting, Lake Simcoe (1952)

Lake Simcoe lies in southern Ontario, with Barrie at its western end and Beaverton on its east shore. Its monster has gone by many names: Igopogo, Kempenfelt Kelly after Kempenfelt Bay at Barrie, and Beaverton Bessie. The name Igopogo is said to blend Ogopogo, the famous creature of Okanagan Lake in British Columbia, with I Go Pogo, a book from 1952.

Reports were nothing new. A heritage marker on the Barrie waterfront says sightings have appeared in Lake Simcoe newspapers since the mid-19th century. The Simcoe County Archives index local headlines about a "Sea Serpent" from 1880, 1882, 1900 and 1912.

1952. Near Georgina Island, in the southern part of the lake. The island is the home of the Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation. Four people saw it. Only one name has come down to us. Wellington Charles.

According to Grove Koger, writing in an encyclopedia of American folklore, the creature was large and black. It had a face like a dog. It had ears like a cat. No one recorded how long they watched it, or how it moved through the water.

Eleven years later, on 1 July 1963, The Globe and Mail looked back on the sighting. The paper described Charles as a local fishing guide. In its account he spoke of a marine animal with "a neck like a stovepipe" and a face like a boxer dog.

Koger calls Charles a chief. A Georgina Island band history lists a Chief Wellington Charles serving from 1932 to 1938, so by 1952 he may have been a former chief. The two descriptions differ: Koger's creature is black with cat ears, while The Globe's has a stovepipe neck. Both share the dog face. The earliest account that can be dated today came eleven years after the event, which may explain some of the gap.

No photograph, film, tracks or physical trace from the 1952 sighting is known. No official body investigated it.

Sceptics have offered several candidates for Lake Simcoe's monster. Seals or otters are one suggestion. The Simcoe County Archives point to the lake sturgeon, Canada's largest freshwater fish, which can reach 2 m and more than 180 kg and carries a ridged back. In 1983, William W. Skrypetz recorded a long-necked sonar contact in the lake. Sceptics suggested it was a school of fish. None of these has been tied directly to what the four witnesses saw near Georgina Island.

The 1952 sighting is one link in a long chain. The Lathangue family reported the creature near Jackson's Point in 1963. An alleged photograph followed in 1976. A 1991 video of "a large, seal-like animal" was reported, but by most accounts it was never released.

Barrie embraced its monster. On 28 June 2016, Ron Baird's Sea Serpent sculpture, first made for Expo 86 in Vancouver, was unveiled in Barrie's Heritage Park. The creature appears in books by Benjamin Radford and Joe Nickell, among others. And in many tellings, it still begins with Wellington Charles and a face like a boxer dog.