CADBOROSAURUS

Opening

In October 1933 Archie Wills, editor of the Victoria Daily Times, put a name on a string of sightings in Cadboro Bay: Cadborosaurus, Caddy for the desk. F. W. Kemp and others had already described a long-necked animal off the bay. Wills ran drawings and a contest. The coast from the San Juans to the Island already had sea-serpent talk. This card is the moment a newspaper made a local animal a proper noun.

Later carcasses on Vancouver Island beaches have been offered as Caddy and read as basking shark or other known fish once a biologist arrived. LeBlond and Bousfield later treated some sightings as a possible unknown pinniped. No type specimen sits in a Victoria museum under that name.

The spine of the file is a 1933 editor and a bay. Cadborosaurus is a Times animal. It is not a mounted serpent in the provincial collection.

Timeline

Earlier coastal talk as older water. October 1933 Wills names it and prints drawings.

1930s sightings cluster around the bay and the Island ferries. Carcass claims come and go.

Late-century reviews try to sort shark from unknown. No year produces a type.

Every later Pacific serpent list keeps Caddy. That list is later life. The Times name is first.

Key figures

Archie Wills owns the name and the desk.

F. W. Kemp and the 1933 witnesses own the bay descriptions.

Later biologists own the shark readings of beach carcasses.

LeBlond and Bousfield own the later unknown-pinniped paper.

Physical and documentary trail

On the paper, 1933 gives you four hard objects and no type.

One: clustered Cadboro Bay sightings that autumn.

Two: the Times naming and drawings.

Three: later beach carcasses read as known fish.

Four: late reviews that still lack a specimen. Victoria Daily Times, Cadborosaurus naming, October 1933, is the originating tray.

There is no 1933 photograph a lab will sign. There is no mounted unknown. There is no second newspaper that produced a body the Times missed.

We have decided to call it Cadborosaurus.

Competing explanations

An unknown coastal animal. This is the 1933 desk. It has sightings. It has no type.

Sea lions, sharks, logs, a newspaper pet. The mundane door. Has to carry why Kemp and others spent the description.

Carcasses that were always known fish. True of the beach claims that were examined. Not a verdict on every wake.

Hybrid caution. A bay reported a long neck. A paper named it. Morning had no hide on the sand that held.

Later life of the case

Later reviews and tourist Caddy. I keep those on the later-life shelf. The October name stays first.

Finding

Archie Wills named a Cadboro Bay animal Cadborosaurus in the Victoria Daily Times in October 1933 after witnesses described a long neck off the beach. Believe the desk as a desk. An editor does not invent a proper noun only for a later gift shop.

What still will not resolve: a specimen with an Island chain, or a 1933 photograph a lab will sign. Either one would pin the name. The proving object is still that animal in the bay, held as shark or as unknown by more than a drawing on a news page.