Manipogo
Manipogo is a lake monster allegedly inhabiting Lake Manitoba, the 13th largest lake in Canada, at 4,624 square kilometres. Lake Manitoba also connects to Lake Winnipegosis, which has its own lake monster “Winnipogo”, which is likely the same “species”. Manipogo is relatively similar to other lake monsters, being a long serpentine creature with humps that moves by undulating up and down. Manipogo has muddy brown skin and is 20 to 40 ft long. Sightings of manipogo have occurred from both pre-Columbian First Nations people and Europeans.
In 1935, timber inspector C. F. Ross and a friend saw the creature. Its head was small and flat, and had a single horn. To them it looked very much like a dinosaur. In 1948, C. P. Alric reported that some sort of creature rose six feet out of the lake and gave a "prehistoric type of dinosaur cry". In the mid 50’s, Bina Nord and her children were living on Peonan Point, off northern Lake Manitoba, when she went down to the shore for a pale of water when she spotted a manipogo. She saw the creatures head, which was dark, earless and shiny. When the creature saw her, it swam the opposite direction, showing a series of bumps, about a foot high out of the water with a foot between each. A witness sketch of her sighting was done.
In 1957, Louis Belcher and Eddie Nipanik saw a giant serpent-like creature in the lake. In 1962, two fishermen, Richard Vincent and John Konefell, saw a large creature like a serpent or giant snake 60 yards away from their boat and took a photo (above). In the 1960s, Mr. and Mrs. Stople saw a "reptile-like beast” surfacing about thirty feet from their boat. In 1989, Sean Smith and his family were visiting from Minneapolis on a camping trip. They stayed at Shallow point off highway #6 on Lake Manitoba, and claimed to have seen 'many humps" in the lake about 80 feet off shore. At an unspecified date, John Maytwayashing and his friend from the Lake Manitoba First Nation saw what they first thought was a horse swimming across the lake. As they got closer, they noticed its head was shiny, earless, had frog-like eyes and noticed the rest of its body, which was about 18-20 ft long. They watched it at a distance of only about 50 yards and noticed that its skin was a light green colour and had mottled specks of yellow.
In 1990, Vera Nord, whose mother had another sighting earlier, had her own sighting when she was fishing in Lake Manitoba. She was sitting in her boat on the calm water when she saw a scaly, barrel-shaped hump roll down under the water. In the summer of 1991, Marcel Flamand and his family saw a creature much more nessie-like then most manipogo reports at St. Ambroise Beach. He described witnessing the creature “put on a show”, frolicking and undulating across the water. At one point the creature put its 20 ft, swan-like neck out of the water, and Flamand saw its head, which he said was similar to an Arabian horse’s. Flamand later had a sketch based on his sighting (above). In 1992, passengers on two boats in the bay off the appropriately named Manipogo Beach, saw a large head pop out of the water and start moving quickly, causing a large wave in its wake. The people in each boat didn’t know about each other and both were interviewed, with no contradictions in their stories. In 1997, several reports by cross country campers from Quebec staying at Lundar Beach campground saw what appeared to be a large reptilian head rise and fall in the water several hundred feet off shore. Swimmers were evacuated from the water; the head only appeared one time. In 2004, commercial fisherman Keith Haden, originally from Newfoundland, reported several of his fishing nets on Lake Manitoba near the narrows to be torn up by something with a bite mark reminiscent of an orca or shark's. In 2009, Several residents at Twin Lakes Beach reported seeing several humps a few hundred yards from their lake-front cottages. In 2011, there was multiple sightings at several times, all describing several humps emerging and then submerging. This was seen at Marshy Point, Scotch Bay, and Laurentia Beach by rescuers patrolling flooded homes and cottages.