The Sea Serpent of Haro Strait • Strava art by Stephen Lund on the streets of Victoria, BC

The Okanagan Valley has Ogopogo. Québec’s Lake Memphremagog has Memphre. And Scotland has Nessie – the Monster of Loch Ness.

Not to be outdone, Crescent Lake (Newfoundland) has ‘Cressie’. Lake Tahoe (California) has ‘Tahoe Tessie’. Lake Erie (Ohio) has ‘South Bay Bessie’. Even Japan’s Lake Ikeda has ‘Issie’.

Isn’t it about time Victoria had a legendary sea serpent of our own?

Well, now we do. Rising up out of Haro Strait with a neck nearly 10 kilometres long, she was spotted today munching seaweed over Victoria’s downtown area.

What shall we call her? (‘Messie’ for her sloppy seaweed-munching? ‘YYJessie’? Something, perhaps, that doesn’t rhyme with Nessie?)

ERRATUM • Shortly after I published this post, a couple members of my cycling club pointed out that Victoria does have a mythical sea creature of its own. Its name is Cadborosaurus willsi, or ‘Caddy’.

A couple factoids about this sea serpent, which I doodled with 71.1 kilometres of cycling:

• For the first time in Stravadoodles history, my route passed through Ross Bay Cemetery (for the front edge of the creature’s crest)
• The sea serpent’s eyeball is the long curved driveway on the grounds of Government House (official residence of the Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia), where a friendly lady with a drooling dog offered to take my picture (posted below)

See it on Strava

Victoria’s Stravadoodler pauses for a photo op at Victoria’s Government House