Richard Roy

Memphré, the sea serpent of Lake Memphremagog, is alive and well, or is it? If anyone would know the answer, it would be "dracontologist" Jacques Boisvert, who has been diving in the lake since 1980. But Boisvert, who logged his 6000th dive in the lake in December 2001, has yet to find evidence of the creature's existence.

"Everyone expects me to convince them that the monster exists, but I never attempt to persuade anybody," he says, leaning forward over the table to sip his espresso. "At first I laughed at the idea of the creature and still I laugh. I don't have to believe in the serpent. My job as an archivist is to document all sightings and to promote the lake."

Boisvert does believe that he once touched something he thought was a tree stump while swimming with his son. He has been quoted as saying that when his hand grazed the "stump" it disappeared leaving a murky cloud. "I couldn't say that it definitely was Memphré, because I didn't see it. It could have been anything, or it could have been its tail."1

According to tribal legends," Boisvert says, Memphré lives in a "lair beneath Owl's Head Mountain or near Skinner Island, west of Magoon Point at the entrance to Fitch Bay. The Indian people were afraid to swim in these areas and warned the first European settlers in the region about Anaconda [Memphré's Abenaki name]." The first documented "evidence" by a white man dates to 1816 when Ralph Merry IV, although not a witness himself, reported sightings by other people who had brought the subject to his attention. An interesting note is that Merry, in his diaries, does not refer to one serpent but to several.

The next documented sighting, according to Boisvert, was in the Stanstead Journal of 1847. An extract from the Journal reads: "I do not know if it is common knowledge that these strange dwelling creatures like giant sea serpents inhabit Lake Memphremagog." In 1855, also in the Journal, David Beebe, the founder of Beebe, reported that "a strange animal something like a sea serpent…exists in Lake Memphremagog."

In 1986, Boisvert founded the International Dracontology Society of Lake Memphremagog, whose mission is to investigate the whole phenomenon. "Dracontology" is a word coined for Boisvert by Benedictine monks. A branch of cryptozoology, "dracontology" refers to the study of unidentified lake-dwelling creatures. The word has been made official by l'Office de la langue française du Québec and by the American Heritage Dictionary.

By the year 2000, Boisvert himself had collected 50 sworn sightings from 124 people, bringing the grand total to 229. He has recently created a pictograph representing Memphré that has become the emblem of the Dracontology Society. It has been posted at various places around the lake to encourage people to keep an eye out and to report any sightings.

"Memphré is not the only object of my diving career," says Boisvert, who is also the founder of Magog's Memphremagog Historical Society. Placing his espresso cup back on the table, he says that "when I started, my aim was to tell the history of the lake from its very beginning. Three weeks after I started, I found an anchor that a steamer had lost about fifty years before. After much research, I located Gilbert "King" Woodard who was the stoker on the [steamer] Anthemis, and he identified it for me."

His espresso finished, Boisvert leaves me with a final thought. "Whether you believe in sea serpents or not," he says, "Memphré is known worldwide and is "visited" by people from all over." Then, leaving me the bill, he is up and away before I have the chance to say goodbye.

Note:
1) Sonia Bolduc, "Memphré: Myth and Reality," Université de Sherbrooke, 1997.

(Photos: Courtesy of www.memphre.com)