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EDITOR'S COMMENT:

I sent out an abbreviated story about the passing of reknowned Big Foot
hunter, René Dahinden, in News Bytes 12. Here are two more stories that
explore his life long search for Big Foot in more depth. Both stories
contain photographs of René Dahinden, including one from his famous Big Foot
beer commercial.

Thanks to Alfred Webre.

--- David Sunfellow

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TRAIL ENDS FOR BIGFOOT'S BIGGEST FAN
B.C. man's 50-year search:
A disputed film, a few footprints and a beer ad - but no sightings
Mark Hume
National Post

http://www.nationalpost.com/search/story.html?f=/stories/20010427/545558.htm
l

VANCOUVER - René Dahinden, the world's leading authority on Sasquatch, has
died after spending nearly 50 years searching for the legendary beast.

He never saw one, but right to the end he believed an ape-like hominoid was
haunting the forests of British Columbia -- even though a few doubts had
started to creep into his mind.

Mr. Dahinden, who was 71, collected hundreds of footprint casts and traipsed
all over the Pacific Northwest investigating sightings and interviewing
everyone who had a breathless story to tell about a hairy encounter with
Bigfoot. He spent "years and years" in the bush by himself, trying to find
one piece of solid evidence that would convince the scientific community to
take the legend of Sasquatch seriously.

"His quest, his mission, was to have the government put some money into
research and to convince the scientific community to do something about
finding it and protecting it," Christopher Murphy, a friend of Mr.
Dahinden's, said yesterday.

"It never came about, because nobody ever found any proof, other than
footprints. He thought most of the footprints were fake, the vast majority,
but he believed in some of them. He put faith in the footprints because he
said, 'They couldn't be left by the imagination.'"

His pursuit of Sasquatch made him so famous that a few years ago the brewers
of Kokanee beer asked him to play himself in a television commercial.

Even then he didn't get to see the Sasquatch. Facing the camera, with the
modest trailer he lived in as a backdrop, an off-camera voice asks if he
ever used B.C.-made Kokanee beer to lure a Sasquatch.

"Do you think I'm crazy or something?" asks Mr. Dahinden, unaware that
behind him a Sasquatch is sneaking into his trailer to make off with a case
of beer.

If it had happened as depicted, you can be sure Mr. Dahinden would have
poured a puddle of plaster goop on the ground to make a cast of the
footprint.

Wherever he travelled, Mr. Dahinden had a collection of footprints with him.
They were his touchstone to reality in a world where people armed with
little more than absolute faith try to prove the existence of a mythical
creature.

Dmitri Bayanov, in his book, America's Bigfoot: Fact, Not Fiction, writes
that in a 1971 visit to Moscow, Mr. Dahinden was challenged at a public
meeting to produce evidence. "Dahinden held up a weighty plaster cast of a
huge footprint and quipped: 'If anyone finds this kind of evidence
immaterial, let me strike his head with it'."

The Russian author and Sasquatch hunter wrote that Mr. Dahinden had a
considerable impact in Moscow, where he presented a film that purportedly
shows a Sasquatch running into the woods near Bluff Creek, Wash.

The film, shot by Sasquatch hunters Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin in 1967,
was called a fake by many. But Mr. Dahinden, who bought the rights to some
of the footage shortly after it was shot, believed in it.

In Moscow, he showed the film in the boardroom of Izvestia, the national
newspaper, to the Union of Writers of the USSR and to the Central Scientific
Research Institute of Prosthetics and Artificial Limb Construction.

"As the meeting at the Institute began, over one hundred scientists and
technicians, wearing white coats, assembled to watch the film. In Dahinden's
words, 'the whole joint came to a standstill,'" wrote Mr. Bayanov.

Mr. Murphy, who is writing a book about the film titled Circumstantial
Evidence, said Mr. Dahinden was skeptical of many Sasquatch sightings, but
he defended the film, even after it was widely dismissed as a hoax.

"For a long time I was never really able to nail him down on his view of the
film. But towards the end he said: 'It's definitely real,'" said Mr. Murphy.

Mr. Dahinden sold rights to the film several times to television producers,
and used stills to produce Sasquatch posters, but he never made much money.

To support his Sasquatch expeditions, Mr. Dahinden worked on the grounds of
the Vancouver Gun Club, where he collected lead shot from spent shotgun
shells.

"He worked really hard," said Mr. Murphy. "He'd go out and salvage the lead.
He'd clean it off. He'd end up with hundreds of pounds of lead. He worked
with his bare hands ... I don't think it could have been too healthy. He'd
put it in bags and sell it back to the people who manufacture shotgun
shells."

Mr. Dahinden was born in Switzerland, but immigrated to Canada in 1953. Just
a month after he arrived, he heard a radio report about a Daily Mail
expedition to the Himalayas to search for the legendary Yeti, a hairy beast
that supposedly wanders the mountain wilderness, high above the tree line.

Don Hunter, who in 1973 co-wrote the book Sasquatch, said that on hearing
the report, Mr. Dahinden turned to the Alberta farmer he was working for,
and said: "'Now wouldn't that be something; to be on the hunt for that
thing?' And he said, 'Hell, you don't have to go that far; they got them
things in British Columbia.'"

And so the mission began. He promptly moved to B.C. and began his life's
quest.

Mr. Hunter said Mr. Dahinden "investigated with an exhaustive thoroughness
countless stories of Sasquatch sightings, thousands of footprints -- and not
a few Sasquatch hunters themselves. He has badgered every branch of science
in North America that could possibly relate to the existence of a hairy
bipedal giant hominoid, with little success. For the most part he has met
with responses that ranged from vague expressions of 'cautious interest' to
the attitude of: 'It can't exist, therefore it doesn't exist.' ... He has
never seen a Sasquatch; he is not easily persuaded by those who say they
have seen one ... He says: 'Something is making those goddamn footprints and
I'm going to find out what it is.'"

He never did find out -- but his unwavering belief inspired others to take
up the cause.

"He got calls from absolutely everywhere," said Mr. Murphy. "And he went
everywhere. He spent years and years in the bush," he said. "He never, ever
found anything when he was out on his own. But when he responded to others,
to reports, he'd scout the area, and he'd find footprints. He'd take
statements from people, he'd interview everyone.

"His passion overwhelmed him. But one day he said to me: 'You know, I've
spent over 40 years -- and I didn't find it. I guess that's got to say
something.'"

That's as close as he ever came to admitting defeat.

Mr. Dahinden died last week of natural causes. His memorial will be held at
the Vancouver Gun Club, in Richmond, tomorrow.

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DAHINDEN LEFT HIS OWN IMPRINT
Ad people marvelled at his off-the-wall yet down-to-earth aura
By Patrick Allossery
Financial Post

http://www.nationalpost.com/search/story.html?f=/stories/20010430/547531.htm
l

Before hiring a celebrity spokesperson, advertisers will often search far
and wide to find the candidate who exhibits just the right mix of star
wattage and natural brand fit.

Sometimes, however, the stars align on their own, and the ideal person
simply appears out of nowhere. In the case of René Dahinden, the spokesman
for an enormously successful Kokanee beer campaign in the late 1990s, that
is precisely what happened.

To say the least, Mr. Dahinden, who died April 18 at age 70 after a brief
illness, was a colourful character. Shortly after immigrating to Canada from
Switzerland in 1956, he became enthralled by the mystery of the Sasquatch,
and he set off in dogged pursuit of the mythical beast. It was to be a quest
that lasted 45 years and, by all accounts, came to define his existence.

In 1997, Scot Keith, then an account director with Vancouver agency Bryant
Fulton & Shee, which at the time handled the Kokanee beer account, was
looking for an angle to revive a campaign already based on the myth of the
Sasquatch. By chance, he read an article about Mr. Dahinden in a newspaper,
which led in turn to a number of phone conversations between the two. The
rest, as they say, is history. "Our talks formed the basis of an ad
featuring René that tested through the roof," said Mr. Keith, who now works
as an account director at the Vancouver office of MacLaren McCann.

The 60-second spot shows Mr. Dahinden (who is dressed in his own clothing
because wardrobe could not make him look more authentic) responding to
questions from an off-camera interviewer.

Toward the end, the questioner asks him if he has heard the talk that the
Sasquatch prefers Kokanee-brand beer. Mr. Dahinden dismisses this as a myth,
but as he is speaking, the viewer catches a glimpse of a large furry animal
exiting his trailer with what look suspiciously like a case of beer.

"One of the great things about René is that he was serious about what he
did, but he could laugh at himself," Mr. Keith said. "He knew what people
thought of him, but he didn't care."

It was precisely this combination of the down-to-earth and the off-the-wall
that made Mr. Dahinden the perfect spokesperson for Kokanee, said Rick Kemp,
the creative director of the spot. "Essentially, our idea was to send up his
life's work, and he was okay with it."

Mr. Dahinden's attitude and the situation fit Kokanee's brand like a glove,
said Mr. Kemp, who is creative director with J. Walter Thompson in Toronto.
"I don't think you could have invented him. What made it work was that he
was a real person. That, to me, was the magic of the campaign."

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