"It's definitely not a bear," said Weenusk First Nation Chief Abraham Hunter about the massive footprints. The dotted line was added to this photograph to better show the footprint's size in comparison with a human foot. In May, reports that a monkey man with steel claws was killing people as they slept panicked residents of New Delhi. Last week residents of Santiago, Chile, were enthralled by tales that a 10-year-old boy had been found living in a cave with a pack of dogs. Now, Canada is fielding reports that Bigfoot is prowling around Northern Ontario. Footprints 35 centimetres long and 12 centimetres wide have been found on the Weenusk First Nation reserve along the south shore of Hudsons Bay, 1,600 kilometres north of Toronto. "It's definitely not a bear," said Abraham Hunter, chief of the 260-member band. "I looked at them. They were six feet [two metres] apart, walking." Brett Kelly, a non-believing spokesman in the office of John Snobelen, Ontario's Environment Minister, noted no official analysis has been done of the print. "It's just big, shaped like a human footprint, and ... further analysis will be required to determine its origin," said Mr. Kelly. He said the official position of the ministry is that officials are "bemused." Such sightings are typically cultural-specific, said Dr. Laurence Kirmayer, director of McGill University's division of social and transcultural psychiatry. No one would believe that a crazed monkey man was on the loose in Canada, but in India, where monkeys are common, people did believe -- until it was proven to be the product of mass hysteria. The dog-boy of Chile, meanwhile, turned out to be embellishing. "These things happen all the time, but we're surprised because we underestimate the power of the imagination and the power of belief," said Dr. Kirmayer. At the Weenusk First Nation, elders have spoken of the existence of a sasquatch for hundreds of years, Mr. Hunter said, and two elders claimed to have spotted the beast about 20 years ago.
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