Although he never saw a sasquatch with his own eyes, he never stopped believing. "I will keep on searching 'til I find the damn thing."
Rene Dahinden was one of the pioneers of sasquatch research in North America, one of the original four : one the Four Horsemen. [Dahinden, Peter Byrne, John Green, and Grover Krantz].
Born in Switzerland August 23, 1930, he emigrated to Canada in 1953. He settled in Alberta and began working on a dairy farm. One day he heard about an expedition being formed to go look for an elusive creature, the Yeti, in the Himalayas. He told the farmer that sounded fun and exciting. The farmer told him he didn't have to go halfway around the world for that type of fun and excitement. If he went to the mountains of British Columbia he could look for sasquatch instead.
All winter long the farmer told the stories he knew of sasquatch and in the spring, Dahinden moved to British Columbia. Getting a job in a saw mill, he spent spare time at the Vancouver Public Library, reading everything he could find on sasquatch. Most of what he found indicated that it was only a Native legend, nothing more. But this didn't stop him.
By 1956, Dahinden felt he had enough convincing material to make a pursuit of the creature worthwhile. He began to keep a file of sightings. He also met John Green in 1956 and the two joined forces several times investigating reports and began trading information and encounter reports.
"I really wan't equipped at that time to evaluate what I was reading and hearing. I accepted - probably because I wanted to - the word of those people who said the thing existed and who pointed to stories that had never been investigated," explained Dahinden.
And initially maybe Dahinden did start the research for the fun and excitement. But then he began to carefully analyze each encounter story he came across. He began to reject some when he "thought the people unreliable or just looking for publicity". Some he considered obvious lies or were simply mistaken when they had really seen an ordinary animal. Dahinden carefully followed up every sighting and found witness reports dating back 200 years.
Every penny he made went back into his research. A lot of his research was funded by his collecting lead shot from spent shotgun shells at a gun club. He would gather it up, clean it off, bag it up, and then resell it to shell manufacturers.
He did it all. He did field research, witness interviews, and collected and examined physical evidence.
Dahinden's voice was the loudest when any group of researchers got together for meetings or symposiums. If a group got together, he would show up, invited or not. He was called "brash", "opinionated". "He could not suffer those, that he considered to be, foolish people".
For example, on June 24, 1989 the Department of Anthropology from Washington State University partnered with the International Society of Cryptozoology to host a sasquatch symposium. Jack Lapseritis was invited to speak when the planners decided to try to include as many different views as possible. [Lapseritis claimed to be a contactee and believed sasquatch talked to him using telepathic contact]. When he began to speak, Dahinden led the loud protest that interrupted the presentation.
Loren Coleman met him in 1974 and found him "open and friendly". Coleman loved "his humor, insights, and encyclopedic" knowledge of the field.
Dahinden was featured in several documentaries : "Sasquatch Odyssey:the hunt for bigfoot" (1999); "The Force Beyond" (1977); "The Fifth Estate" series - 'Track of the Sasquatch' (1976); "In Search of Bigfoot" (1976); "Bigfoot:Man or Beast: (1972). He wrote one book "Sasquatch", coauthored with Don Hunter. It was later re-issued as "Sasquatch/Bigfoot". In the movie "Harry and the Hendersons", it is said that the role of sasquatch hunter portrayed by David Suchet was loosely modeled on Dahinden.
Dahinden was involved with the Patterson film. He owned the rights to some of the footage of the film. He sold rights to tv producers and used stills from it to produce sasquatch posters. And before anyone screams out angrily, he never made much money from it. And most likely it all went back into his research. He was the first to show the Patterson Film in the former Soviet Union. He worked hard to get scientific attention for the film and for sasquatch.
"His quest, his mission, was to have the government put some money into research and to convince the scientific community to do something about finding it and protecting it." -- Christopher Murphy, friend of Dahinden.
Did Dahinden believe the Patterson Film? His only comment shortly before his death : "It's definitely real."
Dahinden joined Tom Slick's operation to search for sasquatch but left soon after joining. He disliked the way Slick was running the project, offering additional monies and rewards to anyone who caught one. Some claimed he was disgruntled when he had to ride in the backseat of the car with the tracking dogs from one of the local hunters brought in by Slick without consulting with any of the "real" researchers. Some of the people involved became so gung ho and sloppy that Dahinden said he left because it "turned out to be a disorganized gallop through the woods".
Another notable investigation was in 1987 when he was called in to check out the Feller's Creek, British Columbia encounter by a logging crew. After finding and examining footprints and based on his conclusions of the evidence, he ruled out pranksters and hoaxers.
"Something is making those god damned . . . footprints and I'm going to find out what it is." Dahinden died on April 18, 2001, never gaining his definitive proof of the existence of sasquatch.
But he died leaving a great legacy behind. A legacy of perseverance, of never giving up, of investigating every claim, every piece of evidence, of not being afraid to doubt a claim, or to back the ones he felt worthy. He was no hero; he had his faults. He was loved; he was hated. But he never left anyone indifferent to him. He was human.
"I have my doubts all the time about what I'm doing. I've always had them. It's a lonely place to be, on one side of the fence, with the rest of the world on the other side. But it's where I have to stay." -- Rene Dahinden
Nancy
"I'll spark the thought; what you do with it is up to you."
Thanks to the following :
"Sasquatch: the apes among us" by John Green;
"Bigfoot" by Norma Gaffron;
"Sasquatch : North America's enduring mystery" by Rupert Matthews;
"Rene Dahinden" / imdb.com
"Rene Dahinden: obituary" by Loren Coleman /
"Rene Dahinden" / sasquatch-bc.com
wikipedia
bigfootresearchnews.com
Excellent
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