page_title: Mugwump (folklore)
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Mugwump (folklore) / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Print, Wright's Silver Mine, Lake Temiscaming, ON, about 1900, Ink on paper - Halftone - 10.8 x 17.1 cm. Lake Timiskaming (French: Lac Témiscamingue) is a large freshwater lake on the provincial border between Ontario and Quebec, Canada. Français&#160;: Impression, Mine d'argent Wright, lac Témiscamingue, Ont., vers 1900, Encre sur papier, 10.8 x 17.1 cm. Le lac Témiscamingue (anglais: Timiskaming Lake) fait partie de la rivière des Outaouais et chevauche la frontière entre les provinces du Québec et de l'Ontario, Canada.
context_page_description: The Mugwump is a lake monster which has been alleged to live in Lake Timiskaming, on the border of the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec.
context_section_description: The earliest reports of the creature for which there is documented evidence came in the 1970s, but reports of the Mugwump are said to go back much further. Chief Wabi, aka "Big Wabi", was a resident of Murray City (present-day Notre-Dame-du-Nord) on the Quebec side of Lake Timiskaming in the late-1800s and early-1900s. According to former Mayor of New Liskeard Jack Dent, a descendant of Chief Wabi recounted his nation's encounters with the Mugwump going back generations. In an 1879 canoe voyage along the Ottawa River and across Lake Timiskaming, the voyageur Sha-Ka-Nash described how his Anishinaabe guides made offerings of tobacco at sites like Devil's Rock to an otherworldy creature living in the lake:
  So we put off and sailed down the big Lake Témiscamingue. When we came down to the big steep rocks on the west side the Indian crews had a great talk in their own language, and everyone who used tobacco, put a little in the water in front of the steep rocks, the writer adding his quota with the rest. I never learned the real significance of the performance, but anyone who passed on the lake with a loaded canoe in front of those rocks will know that such practice was very advisable to court the favor of the water sprite.
  European traders and settlers reported in the 19th century that when out on the lake in canoes they would regularly hear unexplained noises coming from the underside of their boats, explained as being fish following the shadows of the canoes from one end of the lake to the other, keeping tabs on them for the supernatural creatures which also resided there. One account suggests that locals collected saucer-sized objects from the lake in the 1920s and 30s which were believed to be the Mugwump's scales. Reports of other cryptids, such as Bigfoot, also began to emerge in the region around this time.
  The first written documentation concerning the creature is from Jack Dent, reporting on the assertions made by his unidentified source in the North Bay Nugget on 20 April 1979. In the same article, Dent claimed that he had first been made aware of the creature ten years earlier in the late-1960s, and that the presence of such an animal in the lake could provide a boost to the town's tourism industry. Weeks later, journalist Mike Pearson published an account of Chuck Coull's early-1960s encounter with the Mugwump across two articles in The Temiskaming Speaker, sparking a brief local obsession with the creature that would last several years.
  Though no official scientific investigation was done on the Mugwump, local newspapers attempted to capitalize on interest in the Mugwump by featuring many news articles and columns centred around it. The publications, including The Temiskaming Speaker also engaged in tabloid journalism to sensationalize the mystery, the most blatant being the 1982 article 'Tessie the monster stirs scientific world' which featured three explanations for the creature presented by three fictional cryptozoologists. The journalist most central to reporting on the Mugwump was Ada Arney, who usually wrote about the creature under the pen name "Alice Peeper" but also used other aliases including "Dr. Pablo von McDonell" and "Mary Wollstonescraft Sheltey". Arney occasionally claimed to be in contact with an anonymous biologist, who offered suggestions that the Mugwump was a prehistoric animal. Arney briefly ran a column, 'Of monsters and things', in The Temiskaming Speaker as the media cycle began to move on and interest in the Mugwump died down. Running from 10 February to 31 March 1982, Arney signed off on her final column about the mysterious creature with the following:
  So if you follow the path of the flowers to Devil's Rock, chances are you may well see the monster as she swims by, forever seeking for her beloved.
  Even after the initial media interest waned, sightings of the Mugwump were reported regularly in the Baie-des-Pères on the eastern side of Lake Timiskaming in the 1980s, particularly in Ville-Marie, Quebec and along Vieux-Fort Road in the summer months. Sightings of the monster have conti
caption: Lake Timiskaming in the early 20th century
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