Susan Allison's Ogopogo Sighting, Okanagan Lake

Long before settlers reached Okanagan Lake, the Syilx and Secwepemc peoples knew its creature. They called it N'ha-a-itk, or Naitaka. Tourism Kelowna gives the spelling nx̌aʔx̌ʔitkʷ, translated as "Spirit of the Lake." It was tied to Rattlesnake Island and Squally Point. Tradition held that it demanded sacrifices for safe crossings, and that it capsized the canoe of chief Timbasket. Syilx representatives Pat Raphael and Jordan Coble describe it as a sacred protector, not an evil spirit.

Susan Louisa Moir Allison heard those stories herself. Born in Ceylon in 1845, she married John Fall Allison in 1868. A timeline from a Library and Archives Canada exhibit says that in 1867 she heard frightening stories about Naitaka from Indigenous people. In 1891 she published ethnographic papers through the British Association for the Advancement of Science and the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.

The Allisons lived at Sunnyside Ranch, on the west shore of the lake. The site is now Quail's Gate Winery in West Kelowna. A furious storm was blowing. John Fall Allison was out on the water. His wife stood gazing across the lake, waiting for him to return.

Then she saw a snake-like creature, swimming against the waves. The British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club puts it at about 70 feet long. Ogopogo Quest says she was very specific in her description, and that it closely mirrored the local legend. Tourism Kelowna says simply that Susan Allison was certain she saw a dinosaur in the lake. The Library and Archives Canada timeline adds that after the storm, the creature was sunning itself on the surface.

She may not have been alone. Thomas Smitheram, a mining superintendent, is said to have seen the same animal from the opposite shore at the same time. No account in his own words has surfaced.

Her husband was less impressed. One story, attributed to the writer Arlene Gaal, has him laughing it off as the result of "a nip of two from the wine barrel." That line has never been traced to a firm source.

Most sources date the sighting to 1872. Ogopogo Quest says 1873. The Library and Archives Canada timeline tells it in steps. In 1873, travelling on the trail from her husband's ranch, she met Indigenous people who said they had just seen Naitaka at Squally Point. In 1874, she saw the creature herself after a storm. Allison's memoir, A Pioneer Gentlewoman in British Columbia, was edited by Margaret A. Ormsby and published by UBC Press in 1976. Every quoted detail of the sighting, however, comes from later writers.

No official inquiry followed. Benjamin Radford and his co-author Joe Nickell have offered explanations for Ogopogo in general: otters swimming in a line, beavers, waterfowl and floating logs. Radford also proposes waterspouts as an origin of the Indigenous stories. Allison's description echoed a legend she had known for years. Sceptics see expectation at work, supporters see independent confirmation.

The family story did not end there. In 1962, ninety years after her mother's reported sighting, Alice Allison was alerted to a long black creature with humps. Susan Allison died in Vancouver in 1937. In 2010 she was named a National Historic Person. On Okanagan Lake, she is still remembered as the first settler to see Ogopogo.