Mysterious Fibrous Balls of Heydon Lake

Daily Colonist October 26, 1969

By LYNTON BLOW . . . their origin baffles experts

“It’s unwholesome! It repels me,” declared my wife, Gonda, hastily thrusting the huge, hairy, tan-colored specimen back into my hands. “It brings monsters, of all things, into my mind. Lynton and Gonda Blow have lived in Victoria for eight years, at 2437 Rambler Road. Born in England, Lynton Blow has flown most of his life. One of his wartime duties was testing the prototype Horsa troop-carrying glider, later used in Allied invasions. For many years he was a prospector-pilot in Canada’s north.

Gonda has always had an inherent ability to discover much of the past history of an object by touch. This is known to researchers in the field of extra sensory perception as tactile clair-voyance, commonly known as psychometry. “Nonsense,” I said, laughing. “It’s exactly as Hazel described it. A large fibrous ball. There’s nothing unwholesome about it.” Nothing was further from my mind then than a connection between this unusual object and ESP.

“Well, don’t keep it in the house. I don’t feel right with it around,” Gonda insisted.

“Lend me your tape measure,” I compromised, “and I’ll store it outside, if that will make you happier. But, tomorrow, when I take it to the museum, they’ll identify it in a jiffy as some little known species of aquatic coconut. I’m sure there’s nothing sinister about it.”

The mysterious, odorless ball had a circumference of 27 inches and a weight of just under six pounds. It had been out of the water for more than a month.

Friends of ours, Bob and Hazel Davidson of Sayward, on Vancouver Island, B.C., had sent the fibrous sphere down to us for identification after finding it and many others from the bot-tom of Heydon Lake. No one locally could tell them what these oddities really were.

Bob is an expert woodsman; a noted cougar hunter who, in one year when there was a bounty on these marauders, bagged 29 of them. He is also expert at catching large steelhead. I knew if he could not identify these globes, it would take a botanist to do so.

Heydon Lake is some 35 air miles from Kelsey Bay. The quickest way in is to charter a plane there. It is on the mainland, across Johnstone Strait. The sheet of water, some five miles long and one and half miles wide is, judging from the inky appearance of the water from a study of an aerial photograph, very deep.

Heydon Creek drains out of the lake into Loughborough Inlet, some 150 feet below.

It is surrounded by 4,000 feet high mountains at a distance of approximately five miles on all sides.

Next morning, when I showed the specimen to Dr. Adam Szczawinski of the botany depart-ment of the B.C. provincial museum, he was soon able to tell me I had not brought him any living organism.

After superficial examination he believed it tobe a tightly compacted mass of short lengths of some grass and possibly grass roots of a type to be found in swamps and marshes. Although he had seen a very small ball of sedge grass roots that had been caught on a branch and rolled by tidal action, he had never seen anything of the size of this queer ball.

It was most unusual and definitely interesting, he told me, and asked me if I could get more details from my friends. Without knowing all the facts, and cutting into one, he could not, of course, definitely commit himself to a firm opinion.

Later I learned the lake was not tidal. Nor is there any sedge grass in the vicinity so far as my friends could ascertain.

Why this lake should be the only place in B.C. and probably in all Canada, where these spheres are found has been a puzzle to all the experts who have seen them.

I wrote to Bob and Hazel Davidson that eve-ning. Soon they telephoned to say they were flying into Heydon again on Sunday, Sept. 14 to check on some of my queries, collect more specimens and take some pictures.

I showed the ball around a lot while awaiting their report. Many people were convinced it was sawdust. Knowing that it was not, never-theless, I took it to B.C. Forest Products. There, I was immediately assured it has no connection whatsoever with any waste product from a saw or pulp mill.

Experts at the B.C. provincial forest research laboratories were greatly interested in it. No one had seen anything like it previously. It was suggested that in the pre-historic past cata-clysm had changed the entire landscape in that area. Possibly a large, deep swamp had been compressed into a layer only a few feet thick. In a subsequent earth upheaval, Heydon Lake had been formed. Part of this compressed swamp might protrude into the water, it was thought, and from time to time large chunks broke off and were rounded by tidal action.

As dinosaurs would have roamed these swamps in a remote age this might explain Gonda’s thoughts of monsters in connection with the balls.

Several people suggested, quite seriously, what I was showing them was a monster’s excreta. Some pre-historic reptile was still surviving in untold depths, venturing out to sea once in a while, to be seen off nearby Campbell River. Actually, I have reports a sea creature with a long neck and a horse’s head, complete with mane, was seen and photographed in that area five years ago and that the local papers ran a story on it.

It was also suggested Sasquatch in the area chewed grass and grass roots in the spring, compressed it into these huge balls with their enormous hands and stored it in the lake for winter fodder.

Hazel came down on the weekend of Sept. 20 with a car load of the balls. Although she said she had left the biggest one at home, most

of them dwarfed my original specimen. The largest was 37½ inches in circumference and weighed 16½ pounds.

She told me they had brought out another 80; also pictures. “But I don’t like them any more than Gonda does,” she added. “I wish Bob would dump them back in the lake where they belong . . . just handling them has burned my hands!” She held out her palms. It was evident the skin was peeling, especially around the base of her thumbs.

I tested one with some blue litmus paper. It turned slightly pink, indicating some acid present. Possibly this was leaching out from whatever material it is that is compressed into these spheres.

Bob, she said, now believes some abnormal wind and wave condition at the lake is respon-sible for their formation. However, as I learn most were recovered from the western end of the lake this surprises me, for the prevailing gales are southwesterly. That portion of the water should remain comparatively ruffled during storms.

My personal opinion is an enormously powerful and fast running underground river feeds Heydon Lake. In the spring, when the snow melts on the surrounding mountains, this becomes a raging torrent. Somewhere en route this river cuts through an ancient, compressed swamp, breaks off large segments and rounds them as it tumbles them for miles.

Everyone is puzzled by the fact the short lengths of material on the outside of the ball stick to the sphere as if held there by glue. Even when reasonably well dried out, as my original specimen is, rubbing one’s hands smartly over the surface does not dislodge the smallest piece. The experts are more puzzled than ever now they know such a large number were taken out last trip in such a short period of time. Hazel tells me Bob could see more, lying in up to 25 feet of water, from the flimsy raft he constructed.

Whether or not we shall ever really understand how these odd fibrous balls came into being, one thing seems clear. That is, in the not too distant future, Heydon Lake will be subjected to considerable scientific study.

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