The article in the Victoria Times Colonist describes some video footage shot by two young brothers somewhere near Tofino on the west coast of Vancouver Island.
The brothers posted the video on YouTube. Click the image below to launch the footage.
If the link changes, the clip can be found by searching for "vancouver island sasquatch" on YouTube.com The correct clip has the title "Strange Humanoid Encounter".
At the beginning of the footage there is a white page with a paragraph of text, apparently written by the cameraman, briefly explaining the footage.
The footage is very short and shakey, but it briefly shows a large hairy upright figure scurrying away.
The figure is either a man in a costume, or it is a bigfoot. The figure is not a bear.
The footage might be real, and it might be fake.
There are no images with the article, as it appeared in the Victoria Times Colonist.
As of March 27, 2007 this link to the story was still working: http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/story.html?id=e16b7305-038b-4249-bd15-d61d29387589&k=687
Bibliographical Information:
The Victoria Times Colonist is the major newspaper in Vancounver Island's largest city, Victoria.
Several other regional newspapers in Canada ran this story in print and online.
BFRO Commentary:
Up until recently there were societal barriers, even in free countries, on the circulation of amateur video footage. Amateur clips would not be seen by the large numbers of people unless television news networks chose to broadcast them.
Ever-present concerns for news credibility, combined with the highly urbanized mindset of news media people, created unwritten policy deterences against the airing of possible bigfoot clips.
Employees, at all levels, in TV news media organizations, have traditionally fended off bigfoot footage by invoking the threat of ridicule for being fooled by fakery. That threat is a powerful influence among the news media.
When it comes to video clips of bigfoots, worries about fakery are inescapable, so those types of clips almost never made it beyond the front desk, much less to the airwaves.
Now comes YouTube, and services like it, which allow even children to circumvent the former societal barriers and filters.
The mere availability of the searchable, non-linear, anonymous, filterless, shared video medium, will inevitably encourage more individuals to obtain video footage of strange things. Now average people can both collect video without societal approval, and broadcast it without societal approval.
Prior generations that could have obtained video footage of strange things, would be discouraged by certain assumptions. Often we would hear the sentiment of, "Why bother? People will just say it's fake". Now they don't have to care. Now they only have to know it themselves, and then put it out publicly for others who may or may not be interested.
Authentic footage can be expected come forward at some slow rate, often anonymously, regardless of how many fake clips pop up too.
The downside: In the filterless environment of YouTube, a video's clarity is decreased dramatically due to jpeg compression.
Image clarity does not make big a difference with most types of video clips, but it makes a big difference with bigfoot clips. On YouTube, even good bigfoot footage will look like bad bigfoot footage.
Many legitimate video clips will likley be unfairly misjudged by viewers because they will be seeing something very different from the original, clear version.
During the first big surge of YouTube popularity, various fake bigfoot/sasquatch clips were posted there. However there has been a drop-off in new fake clips being posted on YouTube in the past year.
Some of the clips for clearly for comedic purposes. Others were futile attempts to fool people.
Some examples -- click the graphics below to launch these fake clips.
There will surely be more fake footage on YouTube down the line.
