The Sasquatch, the Fire and the Cedar Baskets

Here is a story that features an unusual subject, the mysterious monster of the forest known in the Pacific Northwest as the sasquatch. Many have wondered how the creature came to be and how it lives. Now Kwantlen First Nation’s writer Joseph Dandurand has set out to explain all that to young readers.

First, a physical description of one particular young sasquatch:

He was over nine feet tall, and his feet were about the size of five regular feet. He had long brown hair that covered all of his body. His hands were so big he could wrap them around the widest of cedar trees. He was born here many years ago and did not know his parents, as they had been scared away by a great fire.

This sasquatch spends his days wandering among the trees foraging for mushrooms and mosses, grooming himself, and wondering why the world is so interested in his big feet. (As there is no outside contact at any time in the story, readers might wonder how he knows that that is the case.) He enjoys a good feed of salmon which he catches from the river alongside the black bears who treat him with indifference.

After a winter spent in hibernation, the sasquatch has grown (“…he was now over twelve feet tall. And his feet were now about size twenty-five.”). What comes naturally to a male sasquatch who has reached maturity, even one who has been given the grand title of “the spirit of the great cedar forest”, is curiosity about the opposite sex. He encounters a young female, and what begins as admiration soon turns into love. The “lady sasquatch” spends her time during their first winter together fashioning cedar baskets which can be used to catch rainwater. Next comes parenthood, with the arrival of a delightful little (six feet tall) girl sasquatch whose favourite pastime is chasing butterflies.

The climax of the story comes when a terrible forest fire breaks out.

With the wind blowing, soon the air was full of smoke and the three sasquatches were on the move, as a great forest fire was quickly burning up the trees around them. They climbed as high as they could but the smoke was getting too thick to breathe, so they climbed higher. As far as they could see the earth was on fire.

In the end, the male sasquatch is able to douse the flames by running from tree to tree, upending the water-filled cedar baskets. The family and its habitat are saved, and a rising cloud of butterflies seems to symbolize the rebirth of the forest.

Although the subject of the book is intriguing and there is a continuing interest in books that reflect indigenous connections to nature, this original story with a folkloric theme lacks the economy of style or the poetry of a traditional classic. The text is somewhat labored and overlong.

Illustrations are by an artist from the Kwakwaka’wakw nation who is known for both his paintings and carvings. He uses digitally-enhanced photographs as backdrops for the mountain, river and forest scenes, with drawings of the sasquatches and other natural creatures superimposed. Northwest Coast motifs are to be found on the limbs of each of the sasquatch figures. While the sasquatches are all appropriately awkward, their facial expressions are not always a match for the drama of the tale. (The female sasquatch seem to have a fixed smile which remains in place even when the family is threatened by the forest fire.) Neither do they really look the same from one page to the next.

The Sasquatch, the Fire and the Cedar Baskets is an additional purchase for libraries and schools building collections by First Nations artists.