Some of the most popular videos on this channel are stories involving Little People – diminutive, mischievous, mysterious men and women with preternatural abilities, said to live in the wilderness and at the edge of the civilized world. In my videos ‘Elves from the North Pole: More than a Fairytale?’ and ‘Little People from the High Arctic’, we explored Little People stories from Northern Canada and Alaska. In ‘Elves, Dwarves, Fairies, and Goblins in Canadian Settler Folklore,’ we delved into the legendary fairies of Newfoundland, the dwarves of the Madawaska Highlands, the huldufolk of New Iceland, and the lutin of old Quebec. In Part 3 of my series on the British Columbia Triangle, we took a look at the mountain-dwelling dwarves of Interior Salish tradition. And in ‘Legends of Prince Edward Island,’ we dug up forgotten tales of the small folk whom legend says were the first inhabitants of Canada’s smallest province. In this video, we will take a look at three possible first-hand encounters with Little People in the Canadian province of Ontario, each story told to me personally by a friend or subscriber, and each eerily evocative of a legendary goblin of Ontario folklore. Enjoy!
Our first and most recent story was told to me by my good friend J.R. Lucas, founder of the Ontario-based Great Canadian Camouflage Company. On June 10th, 2023, following his own strange experience in the storied forests of Northern Ontario, outside the remote town of Bancroft, not far from Algonquin Provincial Park, J.R. sent me a series of intriguing messages via social media.
“Got another weird occurrence for you,” J.R. wrote. “I just got back from an ATV ride in the backwoods here (there is a maze of old logging roads but no human habitations). A trail of bare human footprints appeared in the dirt near a swamp, and continued in only one direction for just under 7 km. They disappeared as innocuously as they started. They were smallish footprints, they looked like about the size of a woman’s feet to me. I did not intentionally follow them but stayed on my planned route and they just happened to stay on that same route too.
“The tracks were fresh since it rained early this morning here. The tracks passed by several rough public campsites (all of which looked like they hadn’t been used at all yet this year), and several lakes, all of which were unfished. I kept expecting the tracks to end up at a camp or something (but still that wouldn’t explain why they only went one way).
“I’ve heard stories about beings that lure would-be rescuers to their deaths on fake footprint trails, and of course the ‘Smallfoot’…
“Now that I’m looking at a map,” he later elaborated, “the tracks appeared at an elevation of around 322 m, and disappeared at around 390 m.”
At first blush, the notion that the small footprints were simply left by a barefoot woman seems the likeliest of all conceivable possibilities. When I asked J.R. whether he thought the tracks might have been left by an especially hardcore hippie, he conceded that the prospect of bumping into a nudist had indeed crossed his mind. However, the profound remoteness of the location in which the tracks were found, the ruggedness of that part of the Canadian Shield, and the disturbing legends endemic to the area hint that something stranger might be afoot.
J.R. himself alluded to mysterious entities whom legend says lure pedestrians off the beaten path by posing as fellow travellers. In the traditions of the Tlingit Indians of the Pacific Northwest, one type of creature that practices this devious trick is the ‘Kushtaka’, or ‘Land Otter Man,’ which sometimes masquerades as the flickering torch of a would-be rescuer to drowning men. Other legendary entities with the sinister proclivity for leading travellers astray include the Wills-o’-the-Wisp of English folklore, and the fairies of Celtic legend, to which subjects we will return shortly.
The ‘Smallfoot’ to which J.R. referred is a less common variation of ‘Littlefoot’, a generic denotation for alleged or legendary hominids described as being shorter than the average human, like the Mongolian almas, Sumatra’s Orang Pendek, or the Teh-Ima of the Himalayas. The term could also potentially be applied to a wildman spotted on several occasions near the northwesterly town of Cobalt, Ontario, throughout the 20th Century, which newspapers dubbed ‘Old Yellowtop’.
Considering the nature of J.R.’s sighting and the location in which it occurred, it might not be out of place to make brief mention of a dark saga that unfolded in the woods outside Bancroft a decade earlier, which was detailed in Season 2, Episode 3 of the 2022 Netflix true crime docuseries Catching Killers. In 2013, while following a lead on what they supposed to be a cannibalistic Canadian serial killer, a team of Toronto detectives came across a suspect’s email conversation describing a cabin near Bancroft where kidnapping victims were butchered and eaten. Investigators subsequently examined a cottage in the Bancroft area matching the murder shack described in the correspondence. In addition to a large open-pit barbecue and a scaffold for hanging large game, this property had a tree to which a number of charred boots and shoes had been nailed. Investigators suspected that the shoes might belong to the victims of the serial killer they were pursuing, which the latter kept as trophies. When DNA extracted from the footwear did not match that of anyone listed in the RCMP’s National Missing Persons DNA Program, however, the detectives dropped the Bancroft lead. Although no crimes were proven to have taken place at the cabin, its role in the Toronto Police Service investigation and the suggestive discoveries made there cast an eerie light on the bare footprints found by J.R., conjuring up images of an escaped kidnapping victim intended for the barbecue making a frantic getaway through the Bancroft woods.
There is yet another phenomenon which the small footprints evoke, particularly considering their proximity to lakes and a swamp. According to the traditions of the Ojibwa, the forests of Ontario were once inhabited by hairy dwarves called Memegwesi – a word which, further to the east, denotes a race of long-haired sirens that abide in various bodies of water. To the Ojibwa of Northern Ontario, the Memegwesi were little hairy-faced men and women who dwelled atop the cliffs that border lakes and rivers.
In his posthumously-published 1916 article on Ojibwa tales from the north shore of Lake Superior, American anthropologist William Jones, a scholar of Fox Indian heritage, included a short story which indicated that Ojibwa sometimes left gifts for the Memegwesi of Lake Nipigon, Ontario, which the dwarves sometimes reciprocated with gifts of their own. Jones’ story also indicates that the Memegwesi were easily offended, and would go so far as to fatally stone those whom they imagined had insulted them.
In their 1962 book Ojibwa Myths and Legends, American anthropologists Sister Bernard Coleman of the Order of St. Benedict, Ellen Frogner, and Estelle Eich touched briefly on the legend of the Memegwesi, which they learned from Ojibwa elders.
“Many times,” they wrote, “when the Indians are travelling in their canoes they see the strange little people, but they can never get near them. Sometimes the little people are in a canoe and sometimes they play on the cliffs along Lake Superior.
“One time some Ojibwa saw some of these little men in a canoe on the lake. When the Indians tried to get near them, the little men jumped out of their canoe and ran up the cliff hiding their faces in their arms.
“One time an Indian killed a partridge and when he went to get it, it was gone. The little people had taken it away. The hunter could hear them laughing in the distance.”
Whether or not the small footprints discovered by J.R. in the hills outside Bancroft were leavings of the Memegwesi is a matter of pure conjecture. Another experience sent to me by a retired medical laboratory technician named Bob, however, was directly imputed to a run-in with that creature by the witness himself.
In an August 3rd, 2023 email with the word “Memegwe” as the subject line, Bob detailed a frightening adventure he had with two teenaged friends in the mid-1980s, on a camping trip in the Rouge River Valley beyond the northeastern edge of Scarborough, a district of Toronto, Ontario. The three companions had made their camp on a hill overlooking the Rouge River, or perhaps its tributary, Little Rouge Creek, in what is now the Rouge National Urban Park. Bob placed the camp somewhere between what was then the Beare Road Landfill (now Beare Hill Park) and Bead Hill, an archaeological site on the banks of the Rouge River where Seneca Iroquois invaders established a village during the Beaver Wars of the 17th Century.
No ordinary adventurers, Bob and his camping buddies were the self-described “scary kids” in town – a crew of violent troublemakers who routinely got into fights, made homemade firecrackers, committed crimes, and generally walked on the wild side. On the night in question, these mischief makers were itching for trouble.
“We were there for nine days,” Bob wrote. “Our liquor had run out on the evening of the third night and by the fifth night we were jonesing, so we decided to scout for partyers closer to town. We armed up with machetes, knives and a pellet gun then camouflaged our faces. The plan was to find… a group of partyers to attempt an alcohol theft.”
Bob and his companions hiked out of the hills, crossed a road, and plunged into another stretch of wilderness to the north, beyond which lay a residential area. They then veered off the main path and headed down a familiar game trail completely enclosed by greenery, which they had dubbed the “tunnel of darkness”.
After taking a few steps into that silent verdant corridor, Bob and his companions were all smitten by the same unaccountable wave of dread – a sensation so sudden and powerful that it stopped them dead in their tracks. “We came out of the tunnel,” Bob wrote, “and up on the edge of the ridge, both slow and wary. Suddenly, a little dude, maybe two and a half feet tall, just comes walking up the ridge path to our left. Naked, grayish and dirty, with a short coat of fur, he came strolling, swinging his arms and looking down at his feet. We were… frozen, but he suddenly stopped in shock, noticing us, both arms stiff and out to the side a bit, palms down. Then he dove down the side of the ridge, away from us in fear.”
Terrified, the three teenagers screamed and bolted for the tunnel. A few moments later, when the edge had worn off their initial shock, the friends looked at each other shamefaced, brandished their weapons, and tore after the fleeing dwarf.
“We never found him,” Bob wrote. “We stayed three more nights in the hills south of the roadway, but we never went out for hikes alone. I have been telling myself that I will return and investigate further but I never have and, come to think of it, I’ve never camped in the woods again, only in campsites.”
Our third story is the sequel to an old family legend told to me by my friend, Bexx Korol, of Oshawa, Ontario. This tale begins far to the east, in the Canadian Maritimes, near the village of Neils Harbour, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, on the Cabot Trail.
Around the turn of the 20th Century, Neils Harbour was home to Bexx’s great-great grandfather, Simon Meade. Meade was a railroad brakeman, whose job often included clearing brush and obstructions from the tracks.
One day in the early 1900s, when he was between 16 to 18 years old, Meade was clearing a stretch of railroad in the Cape Breton Highlands when he spotted an unusual figure up ahead on the tracks. The fellow had the size and proportions of an eight-year-old boy, but was very clearly a mature man, with dark eyes, olive skin, and a short beard. He wore a brown suit, and carried a leather satchel.
“His foot had become stuck between a switch in the tracks, and he was stuck,” Bexx wrote. “My grandmother tells the story that her grandfather saw much scuffing and broken twigs, so he looked to have been there a while. My great-great grandfather Simon somehow unstuck the little man, who introduced himself as Edward.”
Edward asked Simon if he would like anything in return for his assistance, to which Simon insisted that the little man perform a kind deed for another person in need. In his heart, he felt that he needed nothing in return for helping another living being. Edward then told Simon that he would bestow a special gift upon him and his family, and would watch over them.
Simon went on to become a sort of faith healer, who could cure maladies by the laying on of hands. According to family tradition, he was well-known for his mysterious ability in that corner of the Canadian Maritimes.
Edward’s beneficence towards the Meade family appears to have extended down the generations to Simon’s descendants, and across provincial lines to Ontario, where Bexx’s family settled. Every day in December, Bexx told me, each member of her immediate family will inexplicably come across a single Canadian dollar, placed by some mysterious benefactor in a conspicuous location, most often the depression of a particular household ornament. In accordance with family tradition, these coins are all allocated for the purchase of a gift for someone special. “Eddie the elf knows if you get greedy though,” Bexx explained, “so if you spent the money on yourself, you get nothing the next day.”
Bexx concluded by telling me that she is almost positive she once briefly saw Edward in her family’s kitchen in Port Perry, Ontario, when she was a child. When she boldly dashed into the kitchen to investigate, however, there was nothing there but four quarters on the floor, neatly stacked.
The implication of Bexx’s story that Edward the elf may have followed her family from Cape Breton Island to Ontario echoes an element of Ontario folklore described in two related articles in the 1888 issue of the Journal of American Folklore. According to Canadian archaeologist William John Wintemberg in his essay on the folklore of Ontario’s Oxford and Waterloo counties, some English immigrants believed that pixies, or “piskies,” as they called them, had followed them from the Britain to Ontario, pixies being small, mischievous, fairylike creatures said to inhabit the moors and ancient landmarks of Devonshire and Cornwall, in South West England.
One of Wintemberg’s informants, an Englishman named Samuel Horrel, claimed that he had been led astray by pixies while out walking one evening. “I have forgotten the exact details of the story,” Wintemberg wrote. “In substance, however, it is as follows: One night, as he was coming home, he was misled by the piskies, who so bewildered him that he did not even know his own home village. To discover where he was, it was necessary for him to turn his pockets inside out.”
Regular viewers of this channel may recall that, according to Newfoundland folklore, turning one’s pockets inside out is a remedy against the machinations of fairies, who play similar tricks on their human victims. According to Wintemberg, elements of fairy folklore similar to this found their way to Ontario as well, imported to the province by Irish immigrants. In his article on the folk traditions of Grey County, Ontario, which he co-authored with his wife, Katherine, Wintemberg listed several pieces of fairy lore he collected in the Georgian Bay area, including the belief that fairies are really fallen angels, the superstition that salt sprinkled in the butter churn will prevent fairies from stealing the milk, and an eyewitness description of fairies which depicts them wearing red caps.
One of the stories the Wintembergs unearthed in Grey County strongly evokes Bexx Korol’s old family tradition, specifically Edward the elf’s numismatic allowances and aversion to greed. After outlining the story of a man whom the fairies punished as retribution for a certain transgression, the Wintembergs wrote:
“Another man found a sixpence in his shoe every morning, but one morning his brother woke up before him and took the coin. On awaking, he found the coin gone, and said to his brother, ‘You’ve spoilt my luck.’ This proved true, for the fairies did not put any more money in his shoe.”
A third article by W.J. Wintemberg, dedicated to folklore collected in the Toronto area and published in the April-June 1918 issue of the aforementioned publication, includes a paragraph describing an ardent belief in “little people” held by an informant named Robert, an Irish-born Torontonian. When asked whether he believed in fairies, Robert told Wintemberg a story about a man who built a wall in the city of Kilkenny, Ireland, unwittingly blocking a path used by the fairies. “Although they could have used a gate at each end of the wall,” Wintemberg wrote, “the fairies promptly tore down the wall. The man rebuilt it, and it was torn down again; so he let the fairies have their way. Robert firmly believed this, because he had seen the place, and seeing is believing.”
Correspondence between J.R. Lucas and Hammerson Peters, June 10th, 2023
Tracking the Man-Beasts: Sasquatch, Vampires, Zombies, and More (2011), by Joe Nickell
Season 2, Episode 3 of Catching Killers – “Missing Men: The Toronto Village Killer (1/2)” (February 9th, 2022)
“Ojibwa Tales from the North Shore of Lake Superior,” by William Jones, in the July-September 1916 issue of The Journal of American Folk-Lore
Ojibwa Myths and Legends (1962), by Sister Bernard Coleman, Ellen Frogner, and Estelle Eich
Correspondence between Hammerson Peters and Bob Frezno, August 3rd, 2023
Correspondence between Bexx Korol and Hammerson Peters, May 14th, 2022
“Folk-lore Collected in the Counties of Oxford and Waterloo, Ontario,” by W.J. Wintemberg in the 1888 issue of the Journal of American Folklore
“Folk-lore from Grey County, Ontario,” by W.J. and Katherine H. Wintemberg in the 1888 issue of the Journal of American Folklore
“Folk-lore Collected in Toronto and Vicinity,” by W.J. Wintemberg in Volume 31 (April-June 1918) issue of the Journal of American Folk-lore