Canadian Hoaxes

What is a Hoax?

A hoax is an act, document, or artifact intended to defraud the public. They are deliberately deceptive and often used to gain attention. The word originated during the 1700’s and is believed to be a contraction of hocus, as in hocus pocus magic trickery. Hoaxes are very prevalent since the advent of the Internet because it is easy to spread false information to the masses.
Geographical Causes

The geography of Canada encourages people to defraud others. From the vast ice fields in the north and all the mountains and wildlife, Canada is a broad area full of mystery and the unknown. For that reason it is very easy for residents or outsiders to make up myths to defraud the public.
The Coleman Frog
Summary
According to legend, Fred Coleman was out fishing in his canoe in Killarney Lakelands and Headwaters Provincial Park 1885. An average sized frog jumped in and Fred gave it food and from then on it was his pet, but still lived in the wild. Fred spent his time caring for it. He fed it whiskey, june bugs, buttermilk, whey and cornmeal and the frog grew to an enormous size of 42 pounds. Soon he had to feed it with a shovel because it ate so much.
Public Response
The frog was said to race bobcats, tow canoes and perform various other feats normal frogs could not. People who wanted to see the frog could only see it if Fred was around because the frog was shy. The frog died in 1899 during a dynamite blast on the lake. Some believe it was on purpose by fisherman because the frog was supposedly eating all the fish.
Debunking
Fred Coleman sent the frog to Maine to be preserved by a taxidermist and put him on display in the lobby of The Barker House, his hotel. The frog has resided at the York Sunbury Museum since 1959. Skeptics believe it is a wooden display piece used to advertise cough medicine that would “relieve the frog in your throat.”
Kingstie
Summary
Kingstie is the loch ness monster of Lake Ontario. The locals call this serpent Kingstie because he shows up around Kingston Harbour. There have been multiple sightings of the creature starting in ancient times. Back then the beast was called Gaasyendietha; a dragon that breathed fire and could “cross the heavens on a trail of fire.”
Public Sightings
The more recent sightings all happened during the nineteenth century. One sighting occurred on the beach in Grantham in 1829 by children. They said “Kingstie” looked like a water snake or remarkable size. The serpent made another appearance in 1833, 1842, 1877, and 1882. Most of these encounters say the monster is thirty to fifty feet long with a long neck and dragon- or snake-like head.
The most recent sighting was in 2004. PSICAN, Paranormal Studies and Investigations Canada, reported the incident. The witness went to the lake on May 16 to fish. He claimed he could not pull one of his catches out of the water, and in turn set the line free. Minutes later it is reported that three large bumps emerged in the water, and although the monster did not surface, the shadow was seen; “the shadow under the water was about 4 feet by 8 feet,” the witness claimed.
Debunking
There is no real evidence to prove the existence of Kingstie, the Lake Ontario loch ness monster, so it is often said to be a hoax. The only real confession saying Kingstie was indeed a prank came from three local men in 1979. They claimed in 1934 they had spotted the animal, but admitted forty-five years later that they had “fabricated a semblance of the creature using a barrel filled with empty bottles for buoyancy and fitting it with a dragon-like head.” Because of instances parallel to this one, Kingstie is said to be a fraud.
Awful Disclosures
Summary
Awful Disclosures is a book written by Maria Monk in 1836. Monk claimed to have written it about her time working at a convent in Montreal. It essentially accused the nuns of the local Montreal convent of engaging in sexual relations with priests from a nearby seminary.
Public Response
In response to Maria Monk’s publication, the general public was in uproar. Religion was a large part of life in the early 19th century so any blasphemous act would be very scandalous. The convent’s public image was destroyed by this publication even though it was untrue. Many people were calling for an investigation of this convent and eventually it took place.
Debunking
Colonel Stone, the editor of a New York newspaper, led the investigation into the convent. He decided that the best way to prove Maria Monk’s claims as correct or incorrect would be to analyze her descriptions of the interior of the convent with his own observations that he made while inside the convent. Stone found that the description in Awful Disclosures did not at all match the actual interior layout and design of the convent, proving the work to be fraudulent and a hoax.

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