Canadian Monsters - The Gougou

This week in Canadian monsters is a strange beast from native and European folklore. This creature bridges the gap between the Old and New World as its stories were shared both by the people of Canada and its new French explorers.

When looking for information on the Gougou, the ideas can be all over the map. I found stories of a giant sea serpent to a ghost-like forest apparition. Most modern stories make it out to be just another Sasquatch. But my issue with cryptozoology stuff is that the pseudo-scientific method purports every local legend to be Bigfoot or a lake monster.

Digging further into the old native legends and the folklorish accounts of early French explorers I found something more interesting. The idea that the Gougou was a giant ogress. Now ogres are a very European monster, so I rather like the idea of a North American species (I always thought we've got great forests, we just need some good ogres, ettins and trolls roaming about). I am not entirely satisfied with my sketch, but I could only stand to look at photo references of large unattractive women for so long.

According to the tales of the explorers, the Gougou appeared like a giant female beast moving from the waters to feed and then disappearing into the forests. The stories don't just tell of her being an eight-foot sasquatch creature, but a thirty meter tall ogress with the rainbow shimmer of fish like scales across her body.