One of the greatest chroniclers of the Sasquatch phenomenon has passed on to another part of his journey.
By Loren Coleman
John Willison Green, who was born on February 12, 1927, died May 28, 2016 in Chilliwack, British Columbia, Canada, at the age 89. His family withheld the news from the general public until early June 2016.
The tireless Canadian journalist was one of the world’s foremost researchers of Sasquatch in the world.
John Green has enriched the study of unknown hair-covered primates in North America for decades. He once told a reporter he had a database of more than 3000 sighting and track reports, before the advent of the Internet. He holds the title as the first primary chronicler in Sasquatch studies. His work in the field had lead some to affectionately refer to John Green as “Mr. Sasquatch.”
John Green was born and raised in Harrison Hot Springs, British Columbia. His father was Howard Green, a long-time Member of the Canadian Parliament and a Cabinet Minister. His mother, Marion Green (nee Mounce), was the daughter of a Vancouver Island lumber baron and the first woman to graduate from the University of British Columbia (UBC) school of Agricultural Sciences.
John Green’s writing career began in 1944. When Green was a student at the UBC, he wrote for the student newspaper, The Ubyssey and the Totem yearbooks. He also covered campus news for theVancouver Province. After graduating at 19 (UBC, BA, 1946, major English), he immediately went to Columbia University, and soon obtained a Masters in Journalism.
Green worked part-time for The Globe and Mail in New York City, and then for two years as a full-time reporter at the paper’s Toronto headquarters. He returned to Vancouver to cover local news for The Province, worked for a time at the Victoria Times Colonist, and then decided to purchase the Agassiz-Harrison Advance in 1954.
As a journalist and publisher, Green had access to a variety of British Columbia news, and was first asked about Sasquatch in 1956 when Swiss-born René Dahinden entered Green’s office to inquiry about two-legged upright creatures, like the Abominable Snowmen, reported in the area. Green told Dahinden the accounts were nonsense.
But Green continued hearing about lore and sightings from people he respected. Thus Green started investigating Sasquatch reports in earnest in 1957, interviewing witnesses and conducting on-site inquiries. In the late 1950s, Green was the first to conduct an in-depth interview of Albert Ostman, regarding Ostman’s 1924 Sasquatch abduction incident. John Green also extended the modern history of Sasquatch back to a 1941 encounter labeled by Green as the “The Ruby Creek Incident,” because it happened a half-mile east of that little settlement in British Columbia. Although only the Chapman family was involved in this encounter, others in the Ruby Creek area also saw the footprints.
During 1958, hundreds of large footprints were found on a logging road near Bluff Creek, California, by construction workers and reported to authorities. One man, bulldozer operator Jerry Crew, took a plaster cast of one track to a local newspaper as “proof,” and the moniker “Bigfoot” was born. John Green and his wife June immediately drove south to investigate, but were told they were too late; the tracks had been back bladed. Green grew skeptical and told his wife they might have just driven three days for a prank. He asked the road construction crew if they could look around, anyway.
Green says that what happened next was June opened her car door and there was a footprint a few feet from their vehicle. What particularly impressed John Green was the similarity between the outline of these Bluff Creek tracks and the tracings he had of one of the Ruby Creek footprints. John Green was the last surviving investigator of that significant first American Bigfoot case. The death of John Green marks a milestone as now the entire first generation of that 1958 Bluff Creek incident have passed away.
During the years after 1958, Green became a well-known member of a loose group of Bigfoot-Sasquatch hunters and researchers working together and apart throughout the Pacific Northwest. He was hired by Texas millionaire Tom Slick to track Sasquatch in British Columbia, and suggested to Roger Patterson he might wish to look for Bigfoot in the Bluff Creek, California area. When Patterson and Bob Gimlin encountered and filmed a Bigfoot there on October 20, 1967, Green was one of the initial researchers to understand the footage’s importance and get a screening of it before scientists at UBC.
John Green’s first book On the Track of the Sasquatch, was soon published, and through various edition, has sold nearly 250,000 copies since its release in 1968.
Green published three books over five years while he owned a printing business. The books, On the Track of the Sasquatch, Year of the Sasquatch, and The Sasquatch File, sold mainly on magazine racks. The first two were combined and published in 1973 by a California pocket book publisher, selling 100,000 copies alone.
Green sold The Advance in 1972, “when income from my [Sasquatch] books exceeded the net income from the overall business,” he told reporter Michelle Vanderpol of The Observer, August 22, 2007. He worked off and on over the next 18 years, part-time, for the Hope Standard, the Sidney Review and the Advance.
Green’s Sasquatch investigations were merely one part of his life. He raised his family, ran a business and pursued his political aspirations. He ran for provincial office as a Conservative and lost four times. Finally, he was elected as village mayor of Harrison Hot Springs in 1963, and got funding to have hundreds of thousands of tons of sand from the lake bottom cover the large boulders found along the shore. He was responsible, therefore, for creating the popular beach that exists there today and transforming the area into one of southern British Columbia’s most popular tourist locales. He is the founder of the World Sand Sculpture Championships.
Green took on many challenges in his life. He was a competitive sailboat racer in his youth, and designed and constructed the first fiberglass hull sailboat to steer through British Columbian lakes. He also was a successful investor of the inheritance he received from his father, and a philanthropist. Then finally, years after being mayor, Green returned to politics. Forty years after first being elected, he won a commissioner’s seat in 2002.
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John Willison Green, who was born on February 12, 1927, died May 28, 2016 in Chilliwack, British Columbia, Canada, at the age 89. His family withheld the news from the general public until early June 2016.
The tireless Canadian journalist was one of the world’s foremost researchers of Sasquatch in the world.
John Green has enriched the study of unknown hair-covered primates in North America for decades. He once told a reporter he had a database of more than 3000 sighting and track reports, before the advent of the Internet. He holds the title as the first primary chronicler in Sasquatch studies. His work in the field had lead some to affectionately refer to John Green as “Mr. Sasquatch.”
John Green was born and raised in Harrison Hot Springs, British Columbia. His father was Howard Green, a long-time Member of the Canadian Parliament and a Cabinet Minister. His mother, Marion Green (nee Mounce), was the daughter of a Vancouver Island lumber baron and the first woman to graduate from the University of British Columbia (UBC) school of Agricultural Sciences.
John Green’s writing career began in 1944. When Green was a student at the UBC, he wrote for the student newspaper, The Ubyssey and the Totem yearbooks. He also covered campus news for theVancouver Province. After graduating at 19 (UBC, BA, 1946, major English), he immediately went to Columbia University, and soon obtained a Masters in Journalism.
Green worked part-time for The Globe and Mail in New York City, and then for two years as a full-time reporter at the paper’s Toronto headquarters. He returned to Vancouver to cover local news for The Province, worked for a time at the Victoria Times Colonist, and then decided to purchase the Agassiz-Harrison Advance in 1954.
As a journalist and publisher, Green had access to a variety of British Columbia news, and was first asked about Sasquatch in 1956 when Swiss-born René Dahinden entered Green’s office to inquiry about two-legged upright creatures, like the Abominable Snowmen, reported in the area. Green told Dahinden the accounts were nonsense.
But Green continued hearing about lore and sightings from people he respected. Thus Green started investigating Sasquatch reports in earnest in 1957, interviewing witnesses and conducting on-site inquiries. In the late 1950s, Green was the first to conduct an in-depth interview of Albert Ostman, regarding Ostman’s 1924 Sasquatch abduction incident. John Green also extended the modern history of Sasquatch back to a 1941 encounter labeled by Green as the “The Ruby Creek Incident,” because it happened a half-mile east of that little settlement in British Columbia. Although only the Chapman family was involved in this encounter, others in the Ruby Creek area also saw the footprints.
During 1958, hundreds of large footprints were found on a logging road near Bluff Creek, California, by construction workers and reported to authorities. One man, bulldozer operator Jerry Crew, took a plaster cast of one track to a local newspaper as “proof,” and the moniker “Bigfoot” was born. John Green and his wife June immediately drove south to investigate, but were told they were too late; the tracks had been back bladed. Green grew skeptical and told his wife they might have just driven three days for a prank. He asked the road construction crew if they could look around, anyway.
Green says that what happened next was June opened her car door and there was a footprint a few feet from their vehicle. What particularly impressed John Green was the similarity between the outline of these Bluff Creek tracks and the tracings he had of one of the Ruby Creek footprints. John Green was the last surviving investigator of that significant first American Bigfoot case. The death of John Green marks a milestone as now the entire first generation of that 1958 Bluff Creek incident have passed away.
During the years after 1958, Green became a well-known member of a loose group of Bigfoot-Sasquatch hunters and researchers working together and apart throughout the Pacific Northwest. He was hired by Texas millionaire Tom Slick to track Sasquatch in British Columbia, and suggested to Roger Patterson he might wish to look for Bigfoot in the Bluff Creek, California area. When Patterson and Bob Gimlin encountered and filmed a Bigfoot there on October 20, 1967, Green was one of the initial researchers to understand the footage’s importance and get a screening of it before scientists at UBC.
John Green’s first book On the Track of the Sasquatch, was soon published, and through various edition, has sold nearly 250,000 copies since its release in 1968.
Green published three books over five years while he owned a printing business. The books, On the Track of the Sasquatch, Year of the Sasquatch, and The Sasquatch File, sold mainly on magazine racks. The first two were combined and published in 1973 by a California pocket book publisher, selling 100,000 copies alone.
Green sold The Advance in 1972, “when income from my [Sasquatch] books exceeded the net income from the overall business,” he told reporter Michelle Vanderpol of The Observer, August 22, 2007. He worked off and on over the next 18 years, part-time, for the Hope Standard, the Sidney Review and the Advance.
Green’s Sasquatch investigations were merely one part of his life. He raised his family, ran a business and pursued his political aspirations. He ran for provincial office as a Conservative and lost four times. Finally, he was elected as village mayor of Harrison Hot Springs in 1963, and got funding to have hundreds of thousands of tons of sand from the lake bottom cover the large boulders found along the shore. He was responsible, therefore, for creating the popular beach that exists there today and transforming the area into one of southern British Columbia’s most popular tourist locales. He is the founder of the World Sand Sculpture Championships.
Green took on many challenges in his life. He was a competitive sailboat racer in his youth, and designed and constructed the first fiberglass hull sailboat to steer through British Columbian lakes. He also was a successful investor of the inheritance he received from his father, and a philanthropist. Then finally, years after being mayor, Green returned to politics. Forty years after first being elected, he won a commissioner’s seat in 2002.
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