Real Canadian Mysteries and Monsters

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

What does Captain Kidd have in common with explorer Sir John Franklin,
miner Jack Lemon, the freighter Edmund Fitzgerald, Bigfoot, the Ogopogo
Monster, a sturgeon fish, and strange lights hovering over the prairie?
They are all mysteries with a Canadian connection. Captain Kidd is said
to have buried his pirate treasure in Nova Scotia. Admiral John Franklin
disappeared with two ships in the Canadian Arctic. The legendary
monsters Bigfoot and Ogopogo have been frequently sighted in British
Columbia over the centuries. UFOs have been seen and blamed for
mutilated cattle and flattened grain crops in the prairies.

Real Canadian Mysteries and Monsters focuses on nine subjects the
author classifies as either mysteries or monsters. No doubt the audience
appeal of these stories is strong; unfortunately, Wheatley’s writing
skills are weak. His text tends to ramble and sometimes repeats itself.
The expert sources he quotes are often one-sided and highly biased.
(Wheatley neglects to mention, for example, that many scientists have
disputed the authenticity of a famous film shot in 1967 that supposedly
shows Bigfoot crossing a creek bed; he writes as if the existence of
Bigfoot is all but a proven fact.) The result is a book that is
unreliable as a resource and too scattered in focus to make it
entertaining reading. Not a first-choice purchase.