Bittersweet Infamy - #103 - Mine, All Mine

Episode Date: July 18, 2024

Taylor tells Josie about the legend of Slumach's gold, and the curses, killings, and calamity surrounding the mythical lost mine of Pitt Lake, British Columbia. Plus: Pakistani-American artist Shahzia Sikander and the controversial sculpture that lost its head in the culture wars.

This winter, take your ICON Pass North. North to abundant access, to powder skiing legacy, to independent spirit. North where easy to get to meets worlds away. Go North to Snow Basin. Now on the Icon Pass. of participating Wendy's in Canada, Taxes Extra. [♪ music playing, no lyrics, only guitar playing. [♪ music playing, no lyrics, only guitar playing. [♪ music playing, no lyrics, only guitar playing. [♪ music playing, no lyrics, only guitar playing. [♪ music playing, no lyrics, only guitar playing. [♪ music playing, no lyrics, only guitar playing. [♪ musicso. And I'm Josie Mitchell. On this podcast,

we share the stories that live on in infamy. The strange and the familiar. The tragic and the comic. The bitter. And the sweet. Much has transpired since the last time you and I sat down for the podcast. It is a very true statement. None-truer has been made. None-truer. Let's look at some of these celebrity deaths, respectfully, that have occurred in just like the past 72 hours largely. How about Richard Simmons?

I know, RIP. Exercise guru, sparkly exercise giant, Richard Simmons, may he rest. How about Shannon Doherty? You didn't know. I didn't know. Shannon Doherty passed away from cancer. Oh.

A certain for a future episode of Bittersweet Infamy, she's been on my list for a while as a subject. Ohhhh. A certain for a future episode of Bittersweet Infamy, she's been on my list for a while as a subject. Oh my. She had a reputation as a real wild child of Hollywood in her day. Everyone who's ever watched the original 90210 through a critical eye knows that Brenda was flawed yet righteous. Awwww. Kelly Taylor was a fucking snake. Is the name Dr. Ruth Westheimer familiar to you?

No, but poor thing she's dead. She's dead. Don't get attached she's passed away. She's a German-American sex therapist up in Canada we had Sue Johansson who died this past year around this time and now Dr. Ruth who's sort of your equivalent she's the German lady who talks about you know the clitoris and whatnot. She's passed away. And last but certainly not least, actor Houston's own and bird enthusiast, Shelley Duvall. Shelley! Oh my gosh. Just the...

The weight of the humanity. Yeah, Grim Reaper news over here. Absolutely. But there's more than just that. We've ended up having to push this episode back a little bit and we ended up taping on July 14th, which is actually when the episode would come out usually. And as a result, the circumstances I think under which we deliver a cheery preamble here have changed,

e.g. there was an assassination attempt yesterday on Donald Trump in Pennsylvania. Someone took like seven shots at Donald Trump during a rally. So, so the assassination attempts have started. Yeah I guess so. How you doing? How you doing America? How you doing?

I'll speak for all of America when I say. Yeah, that's a famously an easy thing to do. Yeah. Everyone, everyone broadly there tends to be of the same opinion. Very agreeable to having someone else speak for them, etc. I mean, I think I was kind of feeling this before, but this just like pushed me even further. I'm just like, I have my life. And then there's the politics and I will stay informed,

but I am not going to like, I guess, engage is the word. I'm just like, okay, all right. Yes, that's a thing that happened. Okay. And now I have, you know, laundry to do and I have a life to live and I'm, I'm really on. But part of it is like the media machine that it keeps pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing it. I'm like, I'm stepping away from that. I'm going to read about it. I've read one article. I read another one. I'm looking at my sources. Great. I'm done.

I'm putting that away and I'm not going to feed that machine anymore. Part of it is just, I'm putting that away and I'm not gonna feed that machine anymore. Part of it is just I'm tired. I'm tired of like being thrown around, you know? It also just seems like the machine is moving with so much grit in it. There's like just so it's just so messy. All of it is so chaotic that I want to stay informed because I want to know what's happening. But I also, I know who I will vote for in the presidential race. And it's a vote that's not for Trump.

And that's all I kind of need to know about that. Right. I hate to have a voice that's like, well, I just, I can't pay attention to that because it's too much, but I think it's just too much. It's just too much. The two reactions I think that I just too much it's just too much the two reactions I think that I've seen to this on sort of I guess like the left end of a conventional American left

right spectrum have been people sort of unequivocally condemning the violence which I completely understand I think a lot of those people you'll see are politicians so obviously they have like a vested interest in their not being violence against politicians in the same way that I hope there's not violence against podcasters. Right. But I do also think that there is like a huge group of people, especially people raised in countries where they've never known like war on their own soil, for example, for whom like violence is never a feasible option and never a reasonable thing to do. I also think that especially among young people,

I'm seeing a lot of apathy. I mean, that's what I just expressed to you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I certainly condemn the violence. And I think if that bullet hadn't missed and had hit him, we would be having a different conversation because it would be a different scenario. I think there would be a lot heavier things happening than just like a whipped up news cycle. You think it would have started off cities burning basically? Yeah. I don't know, it's hard to say. For context, it literally did just happen yesterday. The info is rapidly changing and so it's like if I seem cagey about going on the record with anything it's because like right now we don't know the shooter's right now. Yeah, yeah.

Right now what we know is the attempted assassin was a guy named Thomas Matthew Crooks. He was 20s from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. He was killed on sight by FBI. This young man, all we know about him right now is that he's a registered Republican, but he donated 15 bucks to some ActBlue type super pack at some point. So there you go. Now there's just enough for everyone to point fingers at each other.

Right, yeah. He's your guy. No, he's your guy. No, he's your guy. Yeah. When really we don't even, last time someone took a pop at the president, it was so Jodie Foster would notice him.

We don't even know what the hell's happened here. There was a non-Trump victim, Corey Comparatori, 50 of Sarver, Pennsylvania. And there's a lot of video and there's this amazing photograph by this guy named Evan Vucci, who's already got a Pulitzer and he's gonna get another one for this shot

of fucking Trump sticking his fucking fist up with the flag in the back. And I don't even like the motherfucker, but I looked at it and I was like, oh, it's a good photo. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. It's very much in line with Trump's kind of like rhetoric

of himself, you know, very bloody, very defiant, very triumphant. Yeah, I think besides maybe the residual apathy, I think my initial reaction was like, I felt so bad for the bystander who was shot and killed and for the because there's two others in critical condition. Oh gosh, yeah. There's also the folks who were like kind of there nearby and had to witness. There's the families. There's kind of...

Yeah. I hope to never be shot one, but two, I hope to never witness somebody be shot. I really, that sounds really bad too. It feels disingenuous to me that anyone from any side would be kind of saying like, how did this happen? Because it's very evident how this happened. Yeah. Both sides. I would say when it comes to like gun shit, the Republican side of things more egregiously, but both sides have contributed to like a militarized society with no health care, easy access to guns. I sort of like find myself bristling against the disingenuity of like,

how did we get to this point rhetoric? We were all thinking about this point. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. This was in the air. I'm shocked it took this long. Yeah, I mean, and another angle of it too is like, in Palestine, there's so much violence

that's being like condoned or just not spoken about or like, that's not our place. That like, of course that's like, that's in the news, that's in the air. That's part of it too, is that when you don't... We're surrounded constantly by images of violence and this is a violence that like, is a, like you say, is like a sanctioned violence. I think it's the video games. Fuck you.

Shut up. I love Hitman. I've been playing nothing but Hitman and I didn't kill the fucking soul. Listen. Funnily enough, I am bringing a Mimphemus to the table here that is also kind of in the news of the moment, tied to this crazy week. But the other element of this story is that it is kind of close to home for me, geographically close to home for me, but also in some other ways. So which home are we talking? Are we talking San Diego? Are we talking Houston? We talking the rare China Josie story? What do we get now? We are talking Houston. Okay. We are talking the University of Houston. The other way that this is near and dear is that it is regarding a piece of public art that's on campus. The foundation of many, a great minfamous. Yes.

So we know about this crazy hurricane that was happening in Houston. A hurricane that had actually swept through the Yucatan Peninsula, had gone up through the Gulf, and they thought it would hit Brownsville, the very tip of Texas, but it swung further and further north and it hit closer to Houston. Extremely high winds. It made landfall late late Sunday night, practically Monday morning, like kind of like, you know, 11pm into the early early early morning of Monday, July 8. Sometime after the fierceness of the storm and you know, then it was just power outages

and flooding that we were dealing with. Somebody got onto the UH campus, which is a public university. It is paid for with taxpayer dollars. It is open to the public. So they didn't hop any fence or anything. Somebody had climbed this piece of outdoor public art. This piece is called HAVA, to Breathe Air Life. That's the full title.

And it is two pieces of art. One is a video animation. It's like a, you know, a video project and that that specific piece is called Reckoning. And there's a camera and a screen. It's all outdoors. But then the other part is this 18 foot golden statue called Witness. 18 feet, that's very tall. It's very tall. Somebody climbed up this figure which depicts a woman. Okay. And they beheaded the statue. They killed the witness. They killed the witness. Yes. Brutal. Brutal. They killed the witness. So not only is this kind of very strange that somebody would come at the tail end of a hurricane to deface public art on a university campus,

that kind of seems a bit wild. Yeah, I guess that is odd, oddly to eat priorities, right? Yeah. Perhaps the desolation of the recent hurricane makes it the perfect time. And distraction and the campus was closed. It was closed all week last week. So maybe they were capitalizing on that, certainly. But the story of this sculpture does not start here with its defacement, even on UH campus. It starts when it was first installed in February of 2024 to a lot of protest. A lot of pretty boisterous, robust protest. Let me share a little bit about the statue itself.

18 feet, like you say, tall. She's a tall gal. It was made by a Pakistani-American visual artist by the name of Shazia Sikander. She is a very well-known sculpture artist and painter. She has quite a list of credits to her name. This specific piece actually appeared previous to this in Madison Square Park in New York City. The video installation that she made appeared in Times Square. She's originally from Lahore, Pakistan, and she made a name for herself by pulling this very old technique of miniature painting. So like very, very small.

I love miniature work. Yeah. As someone with like dog ship fine motor skills, absolutely dog ship fine motor skills, who is also an artist mind, but like not an artist of the type that could like assemble a ship in a bottle or paint in a really exquisite miniature.

I think it's a very cool talent. It's very impressive to me. Yeah. And her specific entree into it is that it was and is a very traditional Pakistani art form. And when she was doing it in Pakistan, it was not very trendy. So she revitalized it a little bit, made her name doing that. She moved to the US and attended RISD, the Rhode Island School of Design. So after RISD, she did a program in Houston actually connected to the Museum of Fine

Arts Houston called the Glassell School of Arts Core Residency program. So she has quite a few ties to Houston, but she's also kind of a big name artist, I'd say at this point in her career. Right? Got it. Sure. big name artist, I'd say, at this point in her career. Right? Got it. Sure. So her coming to the University of Houston and bringing her artwork is great. That's great for the university. That's a bigger name. Houston is a pretty big art center. There's a lot of art that happens here. There's a

lot of very rich people from oil and gas industry who can pay for a lot of art. So there's a lot of the industry that's here and UH Public University is not the center of that, but they are, you know, they're in the ecosystem. They're in the ecosystem. Yeah, they're trying to bring their students into the ecosystem as well. So the Public Art University of Houston system, it's not really even its own department on campus. It's an entity that oversees all of the outdoor installation art as well as some indoor more traditional like art gallery art. So it kind of makes sense that with Sikander's ties to Houston that she would be maybe called in to bring a piece to the University of Houston. What she brings is what I described the HAVA to Breed Air Life. That's the full title.

And it came from Madison Square Park in New York City. And it was brought to UH in kind of this collaboration between Madison Square Park Conservancy and Public Arts University of Houston system. One important thing I think to note is that the sculpture in her very specific artist statement surrounding the sculpture witness, Sikander includes this note and I quote here, the recent focus on reproductive rights in the United States after the Supreme Court overturned the landmark 1973 decision of Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed the constitutional right to abortion, comes to the forefront.

The enduring power lies with the people who step in and remain in the fight for equality. That spirit and grit is what I want to capture." End quote. Okay. She's very clearly talking about abortion rights, bodily autonomy. Let me show you a picture. So with this picture, yeah, what are you seeing? What can you describe for us? We've got a head with big ram-like spirals of hair coming out of it. A lady with a very stoic expression looking outward. Her arms turn into kind of spaghetti at the shoulder and flare out behind her.

She's wearing like a big, whatever the hooping under a hoop skirt is called, the skeleton of it. It looks like that. Yeah, like the boning of a big old fashioned skirt, yeah. Yeah, thank you. And then the legs are the same as the arms. They kind of turn into spagooter at the knee. Uh-huh.

And then there's like a big, um, what looks to be like a mosaic of maybe some Arabic script that I don't understand. It's very pretty and it- unlike the rest of the piece, which is a gold statue, this is like a very bright and colorful mosaic. Yeah. And that is, I guess, how I would describe it. Yeah. Do you see what's around her neck? It looks like a Ruth Bader Ginsburg type collar. Bing bing bing bing bing bing bing bing. Oh my god, is it an RBG collar?

Yeah, it's an homage to Ruth Bader Ginsburg's jabots, like that lace judicial collar. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. So when anti-abortion groups in Houston, in the Texas area, on campus at UH saw this sculpture and saw that it was going to be installed in the middle of campus, they saw these ram-like horns and considered it to look kind of satanic.

They saw the spaghettifying limbs. I can see how you could get there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It does look a little Baphometty a bit. Yeah. The mosaics on her skirt, that actually spells words in Arabic. It spells hava in the name.

That is the Urdu word for air or atmosphere. It also means eve in Arabic and Hebrew. So it has the name, the title of the piece has these biblical references. But if you're in the middle of Texas and you see a ram head and these spaghettifying limbs, and you know that the piece of art is tied to bodily autonomy then... But not every piece of art that makes you uncomfortable is satanic. And I do think that is something that we need to start having a conversation about. Yeah. Just because you don't like the Pokemon card doesn't make it satanic. Just because you don't like Harry Potter doesn't make it satanic. This is very true. Josie, I'm sick of you telling me that everything is satanic. I've had enough of it.

You don't like ketchup? Ketchup is satanic. It's true. Satanic. So when they installed the sculpture in February of 2024, Like any piece of art, they wanted to activate it and they wanted to have a opening reception and invite the artists to come and do an artist talk. I've been to some of these, they're fantastic, they're wonderful. This one though, I didn't go to because it never happened. The university cancelled the artist talk and they cancelled the opening reception. Cancel culture. That goddamn cancel culture.

Exactly. When they were asked why, they said, oh well, the artist is unavailable, is no longer available, so we just can't have it. But the way that you're expressing that to me, Josie, makes me think that there may be other factors at play. Sikander, who read this article, gave her statement, which included posting onto her own social media platforms. That's always a bad sign. I hate the arts, dude. I hate academia. I hate it. This is like the confluence of what you hate.

This is triggering me, man. This is triggering me hard. I remember these. I remember these. She said, I was available. I was planning to go. I was very excited to go. They're the ones who canceled it and did not supply me a reason. So there's a lot of thinking then that it's like, well,

the university didn't like the heat that the anti-abortion groups were supplying to the sculpture. So they just thought, you know what, let's just not do this. Did they take the statue down? No, they kept it there. But protests kept going on and kept going on. In fact, one of my friends who works at the university, she said there was like this bubble of bad press too, because the sculpture is stationed next to this big, beautiful fountain that

is almost as big as like a soccer pitch. And it's lit from underneath, the water is lit from underneath. And because the cougar color is red, they illuminated these red lights for cougar Fridays and somebody started snapping pictures of this quote unquote satanic sculpture with the red blood satanic lights illuminating it from behind. Oh no. Yeah. Oh no.

Oh no, that's not good. We got to have a we got to have an artist statement about the lighting for sure there. We need a we need some directions. Yeah, it's not great, not good. There's an anti-abortion group called Texas Right to Life, which is kind of an established anti-abortion group that came out against the sculpture. They had seen a video of Sikander saying

that Eve could be considered the first law breaker, quote unquote, and that really got them riled up because Stax referenced to Eve and blah, blah, blah. So it's pulling on all of these anti-abortion strings, right? The Christianity of it, the support of abortion, the support of women, I think, in particular. Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Arabic. Arabic. Yeah. All of these things are just like alarm bells, alarm bells, alarm bells. And they had all these statements where they get to talk about art. And here is Texas Right to Life saying, art should reflect truth, goodness and beauty. Three timeless values that reveal the

true nature of God. Art cannot have beauty without truth. Art cannot have truth without goodness. A statue honoring child sacrifice has no place in Texas." And also kind of sad to me is a anti-abortion student group on campus called Cougs for Life. So these Cougs for Life said, quote, the pro-life movement persists under Roe v. Wade, and we will persist even with the erection of the statue on our doorstep, end quote. Which is their right? I would say that beheading may be not the tactic to take. Not to say that Cougs for Life did this or are involved,

but July 8th, the staxxu was beheaded. Now, the head remained beside the staxxu. A question there is, okay, well, there was a hurricane. There were huge downed branches all next to it. No, no, no, no, no, no. You can tell when something got banged off, when something got sawed off. Exactly, yeah. And I mean, it would be one thing if the statue were maybe on its side, like it had been knocked over, but this was specifically at the neck. The head is in the University of Houston Police's possession. The university's executive director of media relations told Art News, We were disappointed to learn the statue was damaged early Monday morning as Hurricane Barrel was hitting Houston. The damage is believed to be intentional. The University of Houston

Police Department is currently investigating the matter. There is video footage of somebody up there sawing away too. That has not been released to the public. Interesting. But we know not just from circumstantial evidence but from actual video evidence. And I haven't been on campus in about a year now. I went to go look at it just before taping this. I went just a few hours ago and the

staxu is located right next to the English department, like right in front of the English department. So where I studied for three years and then taught for like five years, like Roy G. Cullen is like a second home to me and like boom, right there in front of my old office and my old classrooms is this beheaded staxx shoe. They currently have a tarp over the top of it. That's depressing. It's a hardware store blue tarp that's like tied to the lattice of her dress and just covering the top. The head is not there. The head is definitely in some locker. They should have left. I know that they couldn't because it would get stolen and they'd have to get a guard for the head or whatever,

but they should have like there's got to be let me think. What would you do? What do you do? What do you do? What do you do? What do you know? What do you think? What do you think should happen? Too early for a jack-o-lantern. Okay. Yeah. Oh, this is a tough one. This is a what do you do? You leave it headless and visibly so with a statement about what has happened. Another ding ding ding, my dog, because that is exactly- Fucking got it, fucking got it! Yes. What Sikander said from the very get-go, once she heard that the statue had been... Not just because I said it too.

She was very clear and she has been on her social media platforms posting about this once twice a day. Because now that's part of the artistic statement. Yeah. A quote from her, and this is as reported to the New York Times, Sikander says, it was a very violent act of hate and it should be investigated as a crime. I don't want to repair or conceal. I want to expose, leave it damaged, make a new piece and many more, end quote. To some degree, it proves the point of the piece, right?

Exactly. That like these are the things that we need to be resilient against. I mean I just saw it a few hours ago. There's still a blue tarp over it and she has said publicly, please remove the tarp. The piece is finished. You are interfering with the piece of art right now by covering it with a tarp. Perhaps there's part of it in that the university was closed all last week and they just don't have, you know, they're not quite in a position

to set up everything again. But I mean, the tarp is just tied on. It would not take a lot. There has to be three committee meetings about this first. Oh yeah. And then a subcommittee. Don't forget the subcommittee. Or I don't I mean I can't really understand why some university official would be like no no no we need to keep it on because now it's just compounding with the fact that you're not following the art. You let the piece of artwork get destroyed and now you're following the artist. Maybe you want to save face. Maybe you want to save face. Save face. Stop it! Stop it! This winter, take your ICON Pass North. North to abundant access, to powder skiing legacy, to independent spirit. North where easy to get to, meets worlds away. Go North to Snow Basin.

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So you can ask for so much more. Visit HealthyDelaware.org slash prostate or call 211 to learn more. Alright, I got a couple of gifts to promote. Gifts for our listeners. One of them is a coffee subscriber exclusive that of course is our upcoming episode of Bitter Sweet Film Club on May December. We still haven't taped it yet, it's been very hectic. All these, you know, hurricanes and world events and whatnot. We're gonna get to it shortly but we all watched the movie,

we're really excited to chat about it. Me, Josie, special guest Mitchell Collins and you over at coffeek0phen fi dot com slash Bittersweet infamy and you can also find out how you can basically just pick a movie for us to watch You know things to consider things a Free gift for everyone it has bothered me that the old Episodes that we did back before we knew audio levelation are so fucking quiet Such varying audio tracks and we didn't know how to do we did back before we knew audio levelation are so fucking quiet and have such varying

audio tracks and we didn't know how to do fucking noise reduction so you can hear every fucking crackle of static in the air in the background. No longer I have started the process of remastering. We're remastering the episodes so that they are louder, clearer, minor things might be trimmed out for pacing, but nothing that will seriously impact. Like, you're not going to lose any jokes. They're loving recreations of all of our awkward, cringy early glory, only this time you don't have to like crank up your computer to barely hear what we're saying. You can just hear our cringe loud and in living audio color.

It's like the Wizard of Oz. The remastering of it is fantastic. It makes it... There you go. It's even better than the original. This is the Blu-ray edition. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, Taylor is making you all Blu-rays. It's reminded me that we've really got some gems and those first 11 episodes, by the way, are finished. You can go and listen to those first 11 episodes now.

I'm going to be doing about the first 50, plus a couple of sporadic other ones that I noticed. There's some really great episodes, early episodes. We've got the JT LaRoy episode in there about the literary hoax. We've got Betty and Dan Broderick, Gnarliest Divorce in San Diego. We've got the fabulous Mula, the most controversial women's wrestler of all time. Of course, the legendary pilot Pilot about Barbara Streisand. We've got this is the one that really really sounds better now Jean Rebert if you want to go back and re-listen to episode 11 Jean Rebert about the ogres a very treasured episode

Occult favorite among our audience that one is now I've trimmed out four minutes of ums and pauses. Oh I don't know how folks That one is now, I've trimmed out four minutes of ums and pauses. Oh. I don't know how, folks, I don't know how we let it get to you in that condition, but now, you go back and you listen, you're like, it feels like Josie and I are sitting in your lap like whispering it at your face. ASMR. It's amazing. Little puppies, kittens in your lap

speaking right at you. Exactly. So yeah, we'll keep you up to date on that, but for now, go and enjoy those first 11 episodes, remastered, like hearing them again for the first time. Where can folks find them, Taylor? Just in our regular feed? Just in our regular feed, just in our regular feed.

If you go back and click on the episode, the audio file has been replaced. Beautiful. Same, the same, but different. Beauty. I love it. Beauty. Ah. And I got one last gift for you and it comes in the form of my main story for today's episode at long last. We finally made it. Okay, here we go.

First and foremost today's story topic comes courtesy of my father Dan Basso. Oh my gosh, Dan! Hey Dan, it's a very dadly pick. Like as you listen, you're gonna be like, oh yeah, a dad obviously picked this. But like, we reach out to the dads at least. I try to reach out to the dads semi-often in my programming. I think they're like a valuable demographic. You need a podcast on in the garage while you're tinkering. You need a podcast on while you're mowing the lawn.

You know what I mean? Those dad things. Maybe you've already seen all the World War I specials that are on TV, you need something new. That's what we're here for. Noice. The time of year, it is July, it is hot. Deep summer, baby, deep summer.

Tempers are flaring. I could really use a summer vacation, I guess, of sorts, but I got nowhere to be, at least not right this second, but it does put me in mind the fact that last summer, summer 2023 around this time, you and I were linking up in person to do Bitter Sweet 604. That's wild that that was a year ago. That feels like exponentially much longer than that, and yet also like perhaps a week ago.

Not a week ago for me, much much much. I was like no that was at least 2022, what are you talking about? That had us out of course among other things it had us at the 604 Podcast Network Studios, it had us out and about in Jordan River and we were all hunkered down on Vancouver Island around the fake Twinkly Lake campfire next to our VW bus with the tall trees Fire ban. That's right. Fire ban. I'm gonna avail you of that image of the fake campfire because I'm gonna need you to conjure up with your mind Another fake campfire and I want you to plunk yourself in those BC woods again

Ooh, we're gonna be moving inland this time. We're gonna be on the mainland as I tell you to plunk yourself in those BC woods again. We're gonna be moving inland this time. We're gonna be on the mainland as I tell you, a bit of a local campfire legend. Dog, I need a BC story so bad. I didn't know I needed it. Here it is. But now that I'm here, I'm like, oh. Like all, I'm just like, oh, I'm home. This is nice. I'm so glad, I'm so glad I'm so glad welcome back. Oh, come back. Thank you. Thank you. Kurti. Thank you

No worries, you can shop at urban planet. I'll buy a coffee crunch all the hits right? Oh go to yoga. Yes Timmy house, let's go. But for now, let's let's let's head back to this fake campfire This this local legend. And the thing about legends, Josie, is that not every part of the legend is true. But it's all fact. I've heard that, yeah, I've heard that adage. I don't know that adage.

I just added it, that's why. That's why it's an adage, because you added it. you added it. Exactly yeah. It hadn't been added up yet now that you've added it up. Yeah. I see I see. Legends grow and they change their roots are forgotten they get tumbled over and over in the retelling until they become smooth and glossy some most essential version of themselves. That is the case with the legend I'm just about to tell you. Not everything I'm about to say is true, and I can't vouch for whether it's all fact, but it sure makes a good story and we've all gilded the truth from time to time. This is true. So appropriately enough,

to the 18 foot golden woman that you brought me in, in the Minphemous. Yes, yes, you're welcome. It was the tantalizing prospect of gold, baby gold, that first brought European settlers to the wild west of North America in the mid to late 19th century. When you imagine the wild west town with its stereotypical signifiers, boardwalks and horses, saloons dotted among fresh tree fells and untouched natural vistas,

uneasy relationship between the local indigenous people, white transplants, and a burgeoning population of Asian immigrants and others seeking their future. That was New Westminster, British Columbia. New West! New West, founded in 1858 by prospectors who'd come to the area, the home of the Kwantlen First Nation, upon the discovery of gold in the Fraser River. Dem dare golds in that Fraser River.

Dem dare golds in dat dare rivers, dare dat. Nowadays New West is best known as a suburb of Vancouver, though a large one of about 80,000 people in its own right. But during the gold rush, New Westminster was the yet-to-be-confederated province's capital and its largest city. A population with gold on the brain. And Josie, nobody in New Westminster was flashier with his gold than ol' Slumok. Slumok?

Slumok. S-L-U-M-A-C-H, although that's definitely not- Scottish? He's an indigenous dude whose name has been like anglicized over time. I see, okay, okay. So Slumok, he doesn't live in the US, mind you. He actually lived up in the mountains near Pit Lake, home of the Cutse First Nation, about 20 miles or 32 kilometers away. Okay.

They say Slumok was a hermit. When he wasn't on one of his spending sprees in town, Slumok liked to keep himself to himself and keep himself scarce, almost like he had some big secret to hide. Golden secret? Well there are all these stories Josie about how Slumok was a remorseless killer who'd slain god knows how many unsuspecting victims out there in the remote bush to satiate his bloodlust. Oh shit.

Other whispers said that he was a shaman, able to speak with the animals and bend them to his bidding. Ugh. Slumok was an older guy, a craggy fellow of about 60 or so. He was Stalow, a member of the cutsy First Nation. Slumok is his last name, or at least the anglicized version of it, that lives on in legend. You can find retellings where he's got all kinds of different first names. John or Louis or Peter or Charlie.

Maybe his name should have been Rich, because that's how he acted. The amount of gold this man would throw around Josie was like he had his own private vein. They say he'd enter the saloon with palms full of gold nuggets the size of walnuts and hurl them to the ground just to watch the white men scramble to pick them up. Every time he came to New Westminster from the mountains, tales would spread quickly of golden orgies and reckless vice, and every time Slumak left the city for his mountain homestead, he had a new, beautiful young woman on his arm. Rumour began to spread that Slumak would bait these girls back to his mine with golden promises,

use them to slip through those cracks in the mountain that only a slender young woman with nimble hands could reach, and then those beautiful young women would never be seen again. Well, as you might imagine, many attempts were made to follow Mr. Slumok up in the hills to see what would become of these young women, or to track Slumok back to the source of his endless wealth. But Slumok was a consummate outdoorsman, and any efforts to trail him were lost in the low-hanging mist that clings to the top of the dense evergreens and dangerous mountain crags of the Pit Lake area. Slumok's golden ways attracted a lot of attention, and one person who took notice was a beautiful

young woman named Molly Tyneon. The daughter of Chinese and Irish settlers, Molly was one of the many seeking to improve her fortunes in Old New West. She decided that she was going to make sure she got her hands on Slumox Gold. She got a job at the local Sasquatch Cafe and ingratiated herself to the old man, but it ended for her just like it ended for the other women, although unlike them, Molly's body was found, floating in the Fraser River with Slumok's knife stuck in her heart. How did they know it was Slumok's knife?

Mother identified it. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh Gorgies had to stop, but that was fine. Slumok was a highly proficient survivalist. He went fugitive, living off the land, vanishing as if consumed by the mountains themselves. Even Slumok couldn't live rough forever, though. After a couple months, the old man emerged from the wilderness, gotten broken, and turned himself into the RCMP. He was found guilty of the murder and sentenced to hang. There are tales that a mysterious woman with a canoe full of gold showed up on the night before the execution to negotiate a commutation, but Justice Montague Drake was unwavering. On January 16, 1891,

Slumak was led to the gallows where, immediately before being killed, he uttered a handful of words in Chinook jargon, Nika memlus, mine memlus, translated, When I die, the mine dies. These words, cryptic as they are, have echoed in infamy as Slumak's curse, he who finds my mine is cursed to die just as I am now. But what's a little curse in the face of adventure and profit? For over 100 years, prospectors, thrill-seekers, and get-rich-quickers have obsessively scoured the Pitt Lake area near Lost Creek, searching for Slumok's mine and the rest of his fabled gold.

One by one, these interlopers have fallen, plagued by injuries and death. And as these unfortunate slip the veil, it's easy to imagine the glimmer of gold somewhere in the distance and the cruel laughter of old Mr. Slumok, as yet another hopeless adventurer falls victim to his final curse. Josie? Taylor? This is the story of Slumok, his supposed murders, his supposed mine, and his supposed curse. It's a story about a man

whose basic biographical facts, down to his name, have been misreported, misrepresented, and lost to time, replaced with a cloud of untruths, half-truths, innuendos, and crude racial stereotypes. It's a story about gold and legends, facts and lies, and which lasts longer. This is the story of what might be Canada's most infamous and elusive gold cash, the Lost Mine of Lost Creek. Ooh, so lost! Double lost! It's a lost mine and a lost creek and we're all lost, nobody knows,

the compass is spinning and spinning and spinning. I shouldn't have left it on the fridge right next to the magnets. So yes, this is, have you ever heard of Slumox Gold, Slumox Curse, Slumox Mine, the Pit Lake Mine, the Lost Creek Mine, any of the above? No. I'll verbiage for the same kind of thing.

I have not, no, I've not heard of this, no. Okay, awesome. So as I said very early on, a lot of what I just told you is not true. Right. We don't have any evidence, for example, that this man was a shaman who could talk to animals, but if you need to make him seem mystical

because he needs to deliver a curse later, dot, dot, dot, you know what I mean. Ah, I see, yes, ah, ha, ha. So to be clear, a lot of what I just kind of told you right off the top, I want you to know I will end up kind of debunking that and addressing sort of some of the dicier thought patterns underpinning it.

I will say the way that I told it off the top there, the details, very few of those were my personal embellishment. Like, I'll explain to you Molly Tynan and the knife and the heart and Slumok and is he actually from here and what was he actually like? And did he actually have the golden nuggets and all of that?

I'll explain it all forthrightly to you, but just know that like that is the version that captivated Rick Antonson, Brian Antonson and Mary Trainor, whose book Slumok's Gold In Search of a Legend was my main source for this episode. Nice. They were kind of just interested in the story and sought to like actually go about debunking

and preserving and documenting it. And so in 1972 they released the original version of this book and the same year, I think by coincidence, another book called Quanson, The Golden Years by an RCMP officer named Don Waite comes out, who is also like a kind of amateur historian at that point of this legend. Yeah. And they end up kind of combining their information, ends up getting updated and updated, and I use the 2007 version which I believe is still the foundational text for this field of slumachok Martin studies.

Wait, sorry, those two groups came together and produced a third resource? It ended up being that they incorporated Don Waite's material into their own book, which is... Basically, Don Waite ends up being a very important person because he has... he gets a series of interviews with a really important elder that become an important source in our understanding of Slumok, because the elder, Mandy Charnley, is related to Slumok. I see, okay, okay.

The Slumok, the real guy, not Slumok, the gold orgy shaman that I just introduced you to. Right, yeah. And so we will kind of, his stuff gets incorporated into the Slumok school text by the Antonson brothers and Mary Traynor and that gets kind of gradually updated over the years. And apparently this is a book that people are very fond of taking from libraries because there are maps in it and there's information in it about Slumak Skoll.

So if you're looking for Slumak Skolls, what better way? Well, a website. Funny you should say, all of these resources including the original Turn of the Century news articles they sourced, have been digitized and archived at slumok.ca where you can access everything I'm talking about for yourself. Nice. Very thorough job. That's very cool. Yeah. And if you get service out there, then bada bing bada boom, save some paper. You don't get service out there then bada bing bada boom save some paper. You don't get service out there. Okay. You don't get service out there and certainly nobody in any of the stories that I'm about to be telling you even had the option because we're going back to uh we're really going to be taking

the the time machine back to the 1890s for this. Okay okay okay good stuff. Now I promise I promise I will tell you all about the real Slumok in his story, and there was a real Slumok. Okay, okay. He was a member of the Cutsey Nation, he was a hermit and an outdoorsman, he was convicted of murder, and he did hang on January 16th, 1891. Wow. Those are about the only things the avaricious, bloodthirsty Slumok of legend has in common with the real man. But that doesn't stop new adventurers from attempting to trace the location of Slumok's mine every single year. So before I tell you about the real deal Slumok, let me tell you

about the history of attempts to find Slumok's lost gold mine. Okay, yeah, that's what I want, yeah. There have been legitimate fatalities of people seeking Slumok's fortune. Oh no, that's a bummer. As of the 2007 printing of the book Slumok's Gold, the authors estimated based on reports that between 11 and 36 people had died while seeking the Old Man's Mine. I didn't personally confirm all of these, so I couldn't tell you. Yeah.

But there did seem to at least be a handful of specific examples with verifiable sources. In 1910, newspapers reported that a father and son from nearby Coquitlam, both named George Blake, were crushed in their tent by a falling tree. Oooh, bummer. In 1951, Alfred Gaspar from Langley vanished while on the hunt for Slumox gold, never to be found. In 1961, prospector Louis Earl Hagbo died of a heart attack. His body was found at the bottom of a cliff.

Evidence of a curse, perhaps? Or evidence of strenuous environmental conditions and prospectors who ranged from experienced occasionally, even elderly veterans to complete amateurs. If you want to look for perils of a non-supernatural variety, the curse of Pitlake Mine may just be impenetrable thickets of bushes, 1500 year old trees prone to falling, sheer cliff faces with long drops and abrupt conclusions, glaciers with deep crevasses, rushing rivers with treacherous crossings over slippery rocks, dark nights, wild animals,

insects, bad weather, poor planning, et cetera, et cetera. Sounds beautiful. It's fucking beautiful, but it's not the kind of spot that you wanna be stuck without your bearings. It's a very rugged terrain and difficult to mountaineer. I went for a little walk in the nearby pit lake marshlands in prep for this, like we were saying. Yeah we were saying, go to the source, right? Go to the source.

Oh yeah, and that's how they do dovetail. There's local for each of us, respectively local. Even just in like the wetlands little hike that I did the little loop, I was just like, there's too many insects here, I wouldn't enjoy it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for any more time than I'm here that I wouldn't fare too well. Yep The history of recorded attempts to claim gold in the supposed pit Lake mine starts in

1901 with an Alaskan miner named Jackson writing to a guy named shot well dot dot dot maybe We have a letter from Jackson to shot Well, whose name may also be Andrew Hall or maybe Hill. Okay. Giving directions to the supposed mine. Other than this letter, I don't believe we have any proof that either of these guys exist. So like, always the possibility that it's just a very, very, very good forgery in the

back of your head. There's word that Jackson brought a bunch of raw gold from BC down to San Francisco around this time, but the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 took care of all the city's records and for that matter the great New Westminster Fire of 1898 wasn't particularly helpful in the preservation of archival materials around this case either. I could see that, okay, yes. In any case, here are the highlights of this letter from Jackson to this guy who shot well slash hall slash hill. Right.

In going upstream, I came to a place where the bedrock was bare, and there, you could barely believe me, the bedrock was yellow with gold. What? Some of the nuggets was as big as walnuts. And there was many chunks carrying quartz. After sizing it up, I saw that there was millions stowed around in the little cracks. On account of the weight, I buried part of the gold at the foot of a large tent-shaped rock facing the creek. You can't miss it. There is a mark cut out in it.

I took with me what I supposed to be $10,000 in gold, but afterwards proved to be a little over $8,000. Oh, how I wish I could go with you to show you this wonderful place, for I cannot give you any exact directions, and it may take a year or more to find. Don't give up, but keep at it, and you will be repaid beyond your wildest dreams."

So that was a little bit of a abbreviated quote. I might've trimmed here or there for brevity, but that's the basic gist. Yeah, yeah. Conspicuously absent, you may note any reference to bloodthirsty old Slumok, his spending orgies, his dying curse. Yes, yeah. All that good juicy stuff. All that good juicy stuff. It's almost as if that joins the story later, but for right now just put a pin in it. This letter from Jackson to Shotwell and or Hall and or Hill becomes a hot commodity so much so that one

enterprising American entrepreneur makes copies which he sells in volume for 12.50 a pop. So word gets out, it gets advertised in the paper, word travels fast when you're in the mine cart together, right? Yeah, yeah. As for the original copy of this letter from Jackson to Shotwell, it ends up in the effects of prospector Robert Allen Brown

Man of a million nicknames. He was also known as Doc Brown Sunset Brown Crazy Brown, Million Dollar Brown, North Fork Brown, Gold Tooth Brown. He had a set of gold dentures I like that, that's good But the name he was best known by is Volcanic Brown But the name he was best known by is Volcanic Brown After his mid-1880s claim on the volcanic mine in South Central BC and founding of volcanic city

Now one of the many ghost towns that dot the landscape of British Columbia Let's go Volcanic Brown is in his own right a legendary figure in local prospecting as you might imagine a guy with that many names has a Lot of stories to fill his own episode of a podcast, I'm sure. Speaking in episode 505 of the TV show Gold Trails and Ghost Towns, which there's a million of these on YouTube and you should watch them all because they're like 23 minutes. They're an easy watch. Oh, beautiful. And it's got like the host who's a great, unmemorable guy who I don't remember and it's got this great historian Bill Barley Who reminds me of like a wrestling manager sort of this like fast talking guy in like a in double denim He's wearing a Canadian tux. He's got a bitchin

Auburn comb over just slicked right over. Ah He knows his shit and he tells it very animatedly you can tell he's he's since passed away But you can tell he was like a very knowledgeable and excited archivist of this type of like prospecting history in the area. It sounds like he kind of leaned into the larger than life situation too with it all maybe. He tells the story of how Volcanic Brown was tried in North Fork, BC for the murder of a guy named Kentucky Brown. There's no relation that I can discern.

Volcanic and Kentucky Brown are from different brown mamas. It's okay. But the story goes that Kentucky Brown was having a dispute with his own stepson, Kentucky Brown's stepson. The stepson was acquainted with Volcanic Brown, fled to Volcanic Brown's cabin. Kentucky comes to Volcanic's cabin, tries to bust in. Volcanic says, if you bust in here, I'm going to kill you. And so it was. Oh, okay. Volkanik says, if you bust in here, I'm gonna kill you. And so it was.

Oh, oh, okay. And so, well, there you go. And the North Fork jury ends up, they were sympathetic. They deemed that it was justifiable homicide and found him innocent. He didn't have to serve time. Oh, wow. So by the time Sunset Brown enters the Slumok stories

in his sunset years, one of the many haunted old loners dotting the forests of BC, much like Slumok himself. He's come into the Jackson Letter and he's determined to follow the golden promises to their source. He has tall claims about why he will be the one to find the cash before anyone else. He claims that he met Slumok's granddaughter as she was near death on a trail. Using his herbalist skills, he nursed her back to life, and in gratitude, she told him the secret location of this mine. A likely story, but okay. Why wouldn't you trust

a man with the golden dentures, Josie? What's wrong with that? You know, if it's about finding gold, he's already found it. He's got the track record. It's right there. Right between the incisors. The evidence is there every time he smiles. So privileged with this information acquired in this very plausible and realistic way from this dying granddaughter on the side of the road, Volcanic Brown sets off into the Pit Lake Mountains like Jackson before him. His first attempt in the 1920s is waylaid when he finds an injured fellow prospector like the angel he is, Volcanic Brown, escorts the unfortunate soul back into town before doubling back, but by now he's treacherously off schedule. Winter sets in during his gold hunt. In October 1926, at

over 80 years old, he ends up having to be evacuated, having amputated his own toe due to frostbite. Oh, I hate when that happens. That's the worst. He describes falling down hundreds of times as he attempted to stagger back to civilization. So if you imagine an 80-year-old man just trying to walk on slippery glaciers and rocks, he's just cut off one of his toes and he's fallen every three steps, and he doesn't make it back to civilization. They came and got him when he didn't show back up in town. However, quoting an article in the British Columbian published in 1926, the prospector

still retains a lot of enthusiasm in the country he'd prospected the past years. He has reported yesterday the discovery of three valuable aluminum ledges. Okay. So. Yeah. Silver lining on every cloud, right? Aluminum lining on every cloud, really? You can make a new toe out of aluminum, easy peasy.

Yeah. But you don't get to be the greatest cantankerous prospector of a time and place by giving up Aluminum lining on every cloud, really. You can make a new toe out of aluminum, easy peasy. But you don't get to be the greatest cantankerous prospector of a time and place by giving up that easy. The dauntless Doc Brown returns in 1931. He goes off on his quest, fails to return, and after a 27 day search a party finds his camp on an ice field near the headwaters of the Stave River. What do we find at this camp? A glass jar. We find a glass jar containing 11 ounces of raw gold hammered from a solid

vein. What we don't find? Gold Tooth Brown himself who is never seen again. Well, then he took his golden teeth and hammered them down, and that's the 11 ounces. And then just went off somewhere to die. You know how it's like a cat going somewhere to die, but it's just someone that you gotta hammer over the teeth. Under the porch. It's like, it's ritualistic.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You gotta mush them down for the next guy to use. Exactly, need I say more? You put the pieces together for me. Yeah. Another case solved. Let's knock off early and go to the diner, right? As with all stories like this, I should add, we hear whispers that Brown has popped up

in California living luxuriously as people in these stories tend to do. If you remember, Brother 12 Also kind of popped up San Francisco way after it was all over. He was another BC legend with a cash of hidden gold. So Volcanic Brown, a tired prospector who finally cashed in, or another victim of Slumok's curse. He died doing what he loved. That's all that we can ask for, really. They had to haul his 80-year-old ass out of there with nine toes and he still went back in. Oh my god. Well, I salute you, sir. Why don't we finally take a moment to confirm or debunk the individual aspects of the popular Slumok legend?

Ooh, okay, yes. Quick warning, I'm going to be sourcing and quoting some relevant news reports from the late 19th and early 20th century. As you can imagine, their language and attitudes towards indigenous folks are not particularly enlightened. What do we know about the real Slumok prior to the murder that saw him swing? Very little, honestly. Yeah. We know he was an avid and skilled hunter from the Cutse First Nation who spent most of his time living in the mountains of Pit Lake. We guess that he was between 60 and 80

when he was hanged for the September 8th, 1890 murder of Louis B. on the Lillooet Slough near the Pitt River. Oh, so not Molly Tyne. Not Molly, to Louis exactly right. Louis B., what about Molly Tyne in our comely Chinese Irish lass who schemed her way into Slumuck's confidence and her own demise. She's cool, let's confidence in her own demise. She's cool.

Let's make a movie about her. Well, it would be a fictional movie if you did, I'm afraid to say. She and the other dead women under Slumok trance were folded into the Slumok narrative in 1947 by broadcaster Clyde Gilmore and then elaborated upon by a writer named C.V. Tench, whose fictionalized 1956 version of the story written for a publication called Liberty gave these women names and faces, introducing the world to the unfortunate Molly and her fateful knife through the heart. Slumak's many dead damsels, it seems, are a myth.

Fabrications! Speaking of myths, you may notice that my list of true facts about Slumak up there mention nothing of golden orgies or hurling nuggies to the floor to watch the white devils debase themselves. Whenever you say nuggies, I'm just thinking like chicky nuggies. The ultimate golden nuggies, baby. Yeah, golden arches nuggies. I'm loving it. If you go to slumak.ca, that's S-L-U-M-A-C-H-dot-C-A, I really recommend it. You can see an extensive archive of the contemporary articles about the Slumach case, the murder case as it played out in Living Color. Articles from the 1890s, mainly from a paper called The Daily Colombian. They're

pretty slanted and ruthless in their depiction of Slumok as not only guilty of this murder, but an unhinged madman in general, and they are pretty salacious and sensational in their handling of the story. They mention nothing of spending sprees or debauchery or a new young woman every time he came into town gossip, which would almost certainly be both easily obtained from the many supposed witnesses and happily published by biased editors hoping to sell newspapers. That's true, those are pretty juicy details, so why mess out on those?

And they're willing to say truly any old thing about this guy to sell a paper and paint him as guilty. And not even just guilty, but guilty because he's evil andhinged and like a menace and a danger to society. Right, yeah, yeah. The first time we see these walnut-sized gold nuggets, that conspicuous description, right? And New West Spending Sprees, they enter the written record via an article in The Province by Jack Mahoney in 1939. So everyone's kind of just freestyling, adding

their own little take to things. Yeah, as legends do, they like roll downhill and they build up debris. That was an article in the province, but yes. Okay, yeah, fair. That was, that's notionally that's journalism, but yes. Well, you know, there's a lot of pages in the newspaper. There's a line, and I don't even know if it's a fine line. It's like a super fine non-existent line

between journalism and story, you know? So who then is Slumok and who is Louis B and what happened on that fateful September day on Lillooet Slue? Here we turn to those same biased newspapers for our answer but we also have a contrasting version of events. Thanks to that policeman who I mentioned earlier, Dawn Waite.

Dawn Waite. And a cutsy elder named Amanda Charnley, AKA Aunt Mandy. Aunt Mandy. Aunt Mandy, you know Aunt Mandy's got the truth. I do, I was gonna say everybody instantly, I'm like, oh, her, she knows exactly what happened. Yeah, yeah, whatever comes out of her mouth,

that's what we're leaning towards. That's the truth. I trust it. Yeah, so Which you shouldn't blindly trust anybody and anybody and everybody could have their own reasons to lie to save face to do that I never trust you what I will offer you is huh? What? Mandy is I think broadly seen as a Credible source here at least mostly and I take her that way based on the way that I receive it. I put her version of things to you thusly, and it comes by way of this cop, Don Waite.

So the story goes, late 1960s, 22 year old rookie at the Burnaby Detachment of the RCMP. He's moving boxes, is specifically moving the evidence from the old Slumock case. Oh my gosh. And he asks his corporal, like, what's this about? Or the corporal volunteers at unbidden, I'm not sure. Wait, what year is this?

Late 60s, late 1960s. So the case itself will have happened about 70 years ago at that point. Yeah, pretty old, yeah. Yeah. So the corporal launches into this story that they hung old Slumok right there from that beam and he points up to the beam of the storage room. Of course, they hung him in a fucking gallows.

They did not hang him in the beam of the basement of the Burnaby detachment of the RCMP. But this, again, in the way that everyone finds the story that hooks them, mine is sexkular, which is a terrible thing. In the way that everyone finds the story that like sucks them in and makes them want to like repeat it and figure out what its origins are and what makes it tick. Just like the Antonson brothers and Mary Traynor who kind of got sucked into this legend and just kind of wanted to document it,

wanted to find out more, wanted to find out more. So too does Don Waite. And I think as part of his police work, he ends up coming into contact with people from the Cutse First Nation. And he mentions Slumok to them, and he realizes that they view him, to some degree the people he's speaking to, view him as a hero because of the injustice they perceive him to have been subjected to.

And he also gets introduced to Amanda Charley, Aunt Mandy. Her father, Peter Pierre, was Slumok's nephew. Her father was... Was Slumok's nephew. Her father was Slumok's nephew. So don't try to figure out what that makes her to him. Right, no, no. Just all you need to know. Is that she's. Because I don't know how to do that math.

Yeah, yeah. She's Slumok's nephew's daughter. Don Waite basically, I guess, ends up establishing his credibility to Aunt Mandy to such a point that they're far along in their friendship and acquaintanceship that she's like, okay, sit down and I'll tell you what I know about the Sloomock story because I know that you're interested in it. And he interviews her and we have the transcript of that interview available at Sloomock.ca and she gives a very different version to what the sort of newspapers at the time were reporting. Although it is something that she's telling third hand in a slumok told

my dad acts kind of way. So you've got three different narrators there, slumok, the dad, Peter, Pierre, and her, any of whom might bend the truth and forget something or omit something or whatever. But we can assume kind of some transfer of information from the other sources as well. So, you know. So according to the Daily Columbian, so this is the sort of more biased newspaper. Okay. The murder went like this. Louis B., whom other sources name as Lully Boullier or Lully Polali is a half French, half Pacific Islander guy. He's out in the woods near Pit Lake looking for fish bait with his buddy Charlie Seymour

and a parent news source for this article. It's unclear how many witnesses there are because I saw a talk of witnesses at trial, but in terms of accounts, it really only seems to be this guy Charlie Seymour, so it may have just been the two of them there together and a witness is also like, encompasses other people or something, I don't know.

Okay, okay. As Louis B and Charlie Seymour are hunting for bait for their sturgeon line, there arises from the woods a gunshot, and then oh, barges Slumok wild-eyed with his shotgun. Louis B, quote, sauntered up to Slumok and asked him in a casual way. Smooth, smooth, very smooth dog. What he's shooting. Completely out of nowhere and for no evident reason, Slumok points the gun at B. Not gun safety. No, B begs him not to shoot but to no avail,

Slumok fires and because the two men are close to one another, the entire shotgun blast enters B's body and he dies instantly. The Daily Columbian describes how B quote, lay weltering in his blood while his murderer coolly proceeded to reload his piece. Weltering. Ugh, rough. Going on and quoting the recollections of Charlie Seymour, who again very evidently sort of the witness who's being drawn upon for this piece. He describes the countenance of the murderer after the act was committed as resembling that of an incarnate demon.

Slumok is insane and what he had done seemed to have kindled all the wild disorderly fancies of madness in the maniac's brain and lit up his eyes with a ferocious gleam that boated no good to anyone whom he should encounter when his gun was reloaded. Slumok slowly retreated to the impenetrable and pathless jungle surrounding that part of the Lillooet Slough and plunging into its gloomy recesses was lost to sight and is still at large. So you just burst out of the woods and shot a random guy and went back? its gloomy recesses was lost to sight and is still at large.

So he just burst out of the woods and shot a random guy and went back? For no reason other than he's like an evil crazy maniac. Okay, alright, yeah. And like the murder seems to have supercharged him. The murder seems to have like filled his special meter and now he's like, he's going like ultra mode in the woods and if you see him you're next It's like the very clear implication. And the idea is like that's the motive. Yes So now we've got a sensational murderer and a murderer on the lam in the woods

Reckless illogical murderer The worst kind. A reckless and illogical a demon incarnate in an attempt to starve Sumac out of the woods his cabin is ransacked and his Canoe burned during the time of the search and for years After his death the local rags paint the suspect as a frightening character Feared by the local indigenous people his sort of fellow indigenous folks with an ever-increasing number of murders Attributed to him by a rumor and scuttlebutt some select descriptions. These are all quotes a bloodthirsty old villain Without fear of man or beast and possessed of a nature vicious and the extreme, the terror of Pitlake who murdered trespassers for no apparent reason,

other than he liked to be monarch of all he surveyed. So he's all around bad, dude. Bad egg, a bad egg. Starting to think he's not a very nice man. Yes, perhaps. This Luma. Yeah, yeah. And by contrast, Louis B., our casual, unassuming saunterer, is described as follows.

He was tall, well-informed, and very muscular, besides having a rather handsome face. It is related of him that once, when in the city and under the influence of liquor, six stalwarts could not hold him down, and it was only by their dogged perseverance that they at length got him to the police office. Big boy. B figured several times in police court owing to his fondness for alcoholic stimulants, but otherwise he was a quiet and respectable man. Just to not do well with the drink, that's all.

No, no. So if you're spotting contradictions or things that don't seem quite right in this story, Louis is a great, quiet, respectful guy who tends to turn up in police court for getting drunk and belligerent. Uh huh. Werewolf vibes. Yeah, when that moon comes out, big one. And this is a great time to bring Aunt Mandy and her version of events into our telling here. That's what I want, give me that Aunt Mandy good stuff. To hear Aunt Mandy tell it, and the testimony at Sumox Trial will support this, Louis B

was actually a pretty abrasive guy. Okay, yeah! Crone to starting shit with any random person he came across. Uh huh, yeah, seems about right, yeah. And specifically, he really had it out for Slumok, who according to Mandy's parents, was a kind old man, a harmless widower, who lived in a shack at the bottom end of Pit Lake on the abandoned Silver Creek Reserve. Widower? Oh, sad little guy who collects jars of himself.

Exactly, he should be allowed to shoot whoever he wants. So, the trial testimony indicates that upon Slumok's emergence from the woods, an altercation took place between the men. Now Aunt Mandy says that Slumok told her father, Peter Pierre, that when he and Louis B had encountered one another,

Louis B charged Slumak with an axe, threatening to chop off his head. Slumak raised his gun in fear and shot in self-defense. That doesn't sound any more realistic on its face to me. They're both, I showed up and the other person without warning like instantly tried to murder me. He said he said, but I do think the backstory of like, no no no, he just liked to get sauced a little bit, but he was really a nice guy. Like that kind of feels like,

okay, but what if he got sauced a lot and then got really aggressive? And then went out hunting and ran into someone he didn't like in the woods. Yeah, yeah. So, Aunt Mandy for the win, that's all. That's all I have to say.. Yeah, yeah. So, Aunt Mandy for the win, that's all. That's all I have to say. All right, fair enough. So, by Aunt Mandy's account, but the thing is too, is I believe that Aunt Mandy is telling the truth, but it's possible that

Slumok, in order to save face, didn't tell the complete truth to his nephew, Peter Pierre, who then told his version of the truth to Aunt Mandy, because there was also implications, and I can't verify this, but there was also implications that the two of them might have been involved in some kind of criminal activity together, so maybe this is a disagreement about that, but you don't want to air yourself out for that, so you just say, oh yeah, he just came,

what are you gonna do? Yeah, it's a he said, he said, he said, dead guy. Three generations ago, yeah, so it's, yeah. Really, really, really. It's really hard to verify. So by Aunt Mandy's account, Charlie Seymour, the, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really,

really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really,

really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really Peter Pierre, Mandy's father, as an intermediary. Ohhhh. So they were they were close. Whatever else, he and Peter Pierre and Slumak were close. Yeah.

He's put in the care of physicians at the provincial jail until his trial where the jury deliberates. Within 15 minutes, Slumak is found guilty. Ohhhhh my. He is sentenced to hang on January 16th, 1891, and so it goes. For what it's worth, far from being an insatiably evil villain, Slumok's jailer Jason Allard describes him as a very kind and accepting of his sentence. He spoke to the province in 1926, quote, Mr. Allard says that Slumok was a most charming personality with the manners

of a French dancing master. Oh, okay, interesting. Yeah, going on, with long hair, Slumak had wonderfully large eyes which reminded Mr. Allard of the eyes of the grey lynx. Wow, okay, so this dancing French lynx. This dancing French lynx, yeah, Mr. Allard was on that good good when he was a jail guard and I want to hang out with him. I want to exchange ideas.

I want to swap business cards. Yes. Let's get creative. Come on. Let's make a movie. Slumuck's nephew Peter P. prays with him the night before and stays overnight with him. The next morning, Slumuck eats a good meal. Father Morgan baptizes him into Christianity,

giving him the name Peter. And they just pray together until the execution at 8 a.m. And that curse, that curse that so eloquently spilled from his lips, Nica Memlus, Mein Memlus. So that phrase, as I have said, is Chinuc Jargon, which is so much fun. Do you know what Chinuc Jargon is? Is it Pig Latin? No, that's funny. I love that though. I wish that it was Pig Latin. I've seen it described as a Pidgin language or creolization that developed among Indigenous slash settler communities kind of out west. It's descended from the language spoken by the Chinookan peoples of the Pacific Northwest. And long time time bittersweet infamy listeners and even hosts already know a bit of Chinook jargon.

It comes in the form of a word that Josie and I frequently use. If you've ever heard us use the word skookum before. S-K-O-O-K-U-M. So this is one of the most, it's lauded for being one of the most versatile words in all of Chinook jargon. And it means a few things, but I typically use it as an adjective to mean able, strong, big, genuine, reliable.

This is from, I think, the Wikipedia language thing. Quote, he's a skookum guy means that the person is solid and reliable while we need somebody who's skookum means that a strong and large person is needed. A carpenter after banging a stud into place might check it and decide, yeah, that's skookum. Asking for affirmation, someone might say, is that skookum?

Skookum can also be translated simply as okay But it means something a bit more emphatic. Yeah, I'd love the implication to that like especially in this Time period and this terrain where like to have strength and to be sturdy is kind of this good thing Just because the terrain is so demanding of of humans that you need to be durable You need to be able to stand up to a stiff gale. Yeah, yeah. Though I do have to say, skoogum has a special connotation for me,

in particular with women, like a skoogum gal. Like, there's something- That's because I- That's because of you. That's the phrase that I would use. Yeah. The phrase that I would use to like

illustrate skoogumness is I'd be like, ah, who's a skoogum gal? I know, Josie. Josie's a skoogum gal. She's athletic. She can swim. She's a skookum lady So so I've always thought of you as a pretty skookum gal And that's and that's complimentary you want to be a skookum gal Yeah, yeah, yeah, and since we're here I thought I would give you um what must be a long-awaited Lesson on another piece of Canadian slang that I've used throughout the podcast

That is not to Nick Jargon, but it's just since we're on the subject. Oh If you've ever heard me use the word gonch to mean underwear So this is the history of this this is used in British Columbia and Alberta alternative forms Gotch ginch gich gonchies gotchies, Gotchies, Ginchies, Gitchies. This is very, you'll hear Ginch a lot. I hear Ginch a lot. Oh really, okay. Because when I say I talk about Gonch,

like do you mean Ginch, bro? I'm like no bro, I mean Gonch. But it's all the same thing. This comes from the Ukrainian Gatchi, and Gitch and Gotch are a variance heard east of Alberta. So as you go to BC, it's Gonch, Ginch. Okay. As you go closer to Ukrainian, kind of home turf of Alberta,

you get Gitch and Gonch. Gonch is both the singular and plural form. I had a pair of Gonch in hand. The rest of my Gonch were in the drawer. Got a little bump in popularity because there was a Vancouver based underwear company called Ginch Gonch. Oh, they're covering both pronunciations.

Good for them. There you go. And rightly so. Smart, smart. I got to get the entire market, right? Why leave a segment? Why leave the Ginch market for someone else by focusing myopically on Gonch?

It's so true. So I say that every day. Thank you. I wrote it on my mirror. I wrote it on my mirror and lipstick. It motivates me every day I wake up in the morning. Yes, absolutely. A gonch pull is another name for a wedgie.

Long gonch is another term for long winter men's underwear and a gonch rodder is a release of virulent flash lines implying that the virulence destroys the underwear. I had not heard that one. That one's nice. No, a gonch rodder was a new one for me but instantly it made sense. I was like, oh yeah, that one's nice. No, Gonshrotter was a new one for me, but instantly it made sense. I was like, oh yeah, Rats the Gonsh, yeah, that makes sense. I'm gonna have to use that Gonshrotter.

There you go, that was a Gonshrotter, bud. Jesus Christ. Did you eat a dead raccoon? What the fuck? Okay. So to go back to this curse. Oh right right right. To go back to this curse. Nika Memlous, mine Memlous. The Chinook there shockingly holds up. Oh. I was ready for that to be total gibberish or to mean something like machine wash cold tumble dryer medium. Written on the gonch right? Yeah written on the gon- thank you exactly written on the gonksh, right? Yeah, written on the gonksh. Thank you, exactly, written on the label. But apparently it does mean something like, when I die, the mine dies. What that doesn't mean is that Slumak actually said those words.

He didn't. Fair, true. Okay. No curse spilled from his lips. What he actually said, according to Peter Peer via Mandy Charnley, was an entreaty to the executioner in Chinook not to waste any time. There's no record of him saying anything about the mine. At least, not while he was being executed, that is. Let's throw her back to Aunt Mandy.

It was during my father's stay in prison that Slumok told him about finding gold in the pit country. Slumok told my father that only on one occasion did he ever take gold out of the pit. He said that he had met Port Douglas Indians from the head of Harrison Lake. They gave him a handful of bullets molded from gold that they had found in Third Canyon. Slumok spent the night in the canyon and slept on a bent-shaped rock on the west side of the river. The rock was covered with a rust-coloured moss. When he awoke around 5am, he could scarcely see the sun coming over three mountain peaks

for the east wall of the canyon. During this time, he was still shrouded in darkness. As it became lighter, Slumok could see in his own surroundings. darkness. As it became lighter, Slumok could see in his own surroundings. Peeling the moss off his rock bed, he saw a yellow metal. He dug out some steak nuggets with a penknife and half-filled his shop bag with them. He sold the half-filled bag, which was about the same size of a ten pound sugar bag, to a storekeeper in New Westminster for $27. $27, rough estimate, a little less than a thousand dollars now maybe? The storekeeper went back to England a short time after the purchase. That claimed Slumok was the only gold that he ever took out of the pit country.

Sitting on the cell bench, Slumok drew a map for Peter of the location where he found the nuggets. Peter memorized the drawing and then destroyed it. Years later, he redrew the map. His daughter traced out three copies. However, the original and the copies were destroyed in the 1930s in a house fire. Oh my god, okay wow. How did he destroy it? Did he eat it? I think he ate it. Did he burn it? Acid. You have to burn it or eat it. I can't think of any other real option here other than like

soaking, like finding a basin to soak it in, but that seems like extra steps. You'd burn it, I think. All of what I just said, Aunt Mandy's account of Slumok communicating to Pierre about the location of this gold, cash, this too could be yet another myth to add to the Slumok pile, but it rings true to me. Slumok didn't have some crazy lost mind providing him endless wealth for sex and sin. Instead, he came into some information via coincidence about a small amount of gold that got him a modest windfall in his time, and he wanted to share it with his family. Peter Pierre and his buddy Dave Bailey go out looking for this gold. Peter takes a bad fall, breaks his hip, never goes back.

This slewmock story perpetuates in the public imagination and gets conflated with the extant lore about the Jackson Letter, along with a bunch of other similar lost mind stories. I haven't gone into them for the sake of time, but there are variations. Yeah, I'm sure there are a plenty, yeah. Yes, on Slumok and Jackson and different characters and different landmarks and different murder victims.

But this one that I told you seems to be the main one that stuck, or at least some version of it. By 1915, we have least some version of it. By 1915, we have a print account of an American named Wilbur Armstrong coming up from Seattle to look for Slumok's mind using Jackson's letter. That was the first written example I could see of the merging between Slumok's and Jackson's minds and the public imagination. This article is published in a few different American papers.

The legend is elaborated upon by various inventive writers. In 2008, a writer named Fred Brax, the late creator of Slumuck.ca, which he passed on to the three writers of the Slumuck Schoolbook, theorized that Armstrong was actually the one behind the Jackson Letter to begin with and that it and the Slumuck lore were a clever way to attract investors. After his death, Slumuck was buried in an unmarked grave at St. Peter's Cemetery in Saperton. He apparently had a daughter who tried to get possession of his body to no avail. While his physical remains rest in anonymity, a wildly skewed, practically fictional version of him lives on in the legend that iterates and proliferates to the present day. Would-be

Golden Guys and Gals continue to set out for Fortune and Fate and tent-shaped rocks. Fraser McDonald, who was the Gold Commissioner of New Westminster for 22 years, estimated that he had seen at least a dozen different maps purporting to lead to the mythical mine. Documentaries and TV specials reliably bring in ratings, because who doesn't love murders and curses and hidden gold that's still out there somewhere? ratings because who doesn't love murders and curses and hidden gold that's still out there somewhere? But for now, allow me to pour the water on our own metaphorical campfire because fire safety is important. As we bring to a close the legend of old Slumok, his golden curse, and the missing motherlode that's still out there just waiting for you to shatter your tibia looking for it.

And when you do, coffee.com slash bittersweet. I was going to say, think of us. And spare a thought for old volcanic brown and all the other would be gold rushers out there who lost, really lost their lives, it seems like, following at least a version of a story that never really existed. And even if you take it as being maybe true in some part, for me I'm willing to accept that maybe Slumok found gold once. Why not? Yeah. Yeah. Certainly by now it's gone.

Yeah. It ain't there. And I, it's really what you're chasing is not the gold, you're chasing the adventure, you're chasing the dream, you're chasing the, the Brendan Fraser's the mummy of it all, you know? Yeah, well and that's what makes like these Miss elections so virile, right? And they proliferate so much and just like how you beautifully chronicled, because the windfall is so huge if you find this gold, but even if you don't, you know, it's not about the destination, it's about the journey, right? I didn't linger on it long, but it was mentioned in one of my sources that there's an attraction of these eccentric loners to the forests of this area, right? When society is too much, why not adventure and accomplishment and identity and purpose,

right? And solitude and only having to deal with other like kooky old prospectors like yourself. And the Wild West, right? Like why not the Wild West? Why not a brave new frontier? And these beautiful terrains, you just be out in that country without having to deal with the mud and grossness and-

Oh, it's so healing to be in these trees. Until there's a flood and then it's deadly. Or a fire or yeah, yeah. Yeah or any any of the like I said there's really no shortage of ways you can die out there like you could fucking die without trying and most of them weren't. Yeah yeah. You just need to watch one TV special right as a kid and just be like that could be me I that, and there's been a million TV specials on this, and like with local camera crews that go out and attempt to find it, and invariably they don't find it

because there probably is no pit late gold casher. If there was, it's no longer there. Similarly, you have all these tales of, oh, I'm the one who found the pit late gold casher, oh, I know who did find the pit late gold casher. My great, great uncle, yeah. I saw the tent shape rock, it's actually more like a Pizza Hut roof, I saw it, you know? It's got all these great landmarks too and it's got all these different versions where

you can be like, okay, maybe if I triangulate the directions that Peter Pierre gave to Aunt Mandy with the directions that Volcanic Brown followed and this reference to this tent-shaped rock and this reference to this There's a blank here and I suspect that that means Box Canyon and you know, all of these It's got it's got just enough there for you to like decide that it's a solvable puzzle True Because you can find landmarks that look like these probably a tent shaped rock. That is a big thought Yeah, it's not that hard to find a tent shaped rock if you really really want to if you're really really in your heart want to find one. Yeah, or maybe the map was upside down the whole time and it's

Pussy shaped rock. Yeah, exactly Yeah, yeah and but like also also what a Exactly! I feel that, I feel that. Yeah, yeah. But also, what a whimsical and cruel thing fate is that like, I don't mean to say that like Slumok's reputation is entirely dictated by whimsy and fate. I also think it's dictated by people who wanted to sell newspapers and kind of had like racist ideas in their head about these sort of like savage people, kind of evil, cruel, you know, da da da da da.

Yeah, yeah, that 15 minute jury conviction may say a lot more, yeah, though. Yeah, especially when like the witnesses at the trial did acknowledge that like, Louis had a rivalry with Sumock and had been agitating him prior to this. But it also is worth noting that a lot of the public sympathy will have been dictated by the media that was a collab between these sort of journalists

who weren't doing very good journalism, evidently, as well as the lone witness being guy's like good friend who is giving his own depiction of what had happened, which may or may not have been slanted for whatever reason and certainly seemed... Had some places where the people in the story weren't really acting like people, they were acting like made-up people in the story. Yeah, yeah. That's how we know, we now know Slymak as this like bloodthirsty fucker of comely young ladies who would like

hurl gold nuggets to the floor like Scrooge McDuck every time he brought his miserable cruel self to town and then he would like bring a woman back and murder her and there was all of this. Yeah. Stubborn pretty ladies. Exactly. That really has very little to do with this person other than like we know he's a widower. I don't think we know who his wife was. We hear that he had a daughter we don't really know who she was

he gets a brother with a name but the information that's given about their childhood doesn't really it's more of this like that's how he grew up to be such a ruthless killer he killed everyone he saw outside in an IMO kind of shit where it's like that doesn't sound like a real person it's not to say that there aren't serial killers, but there's not really anything other than innuendo that indicates that this guy was that person. Right, yeah. And I don't know, where are the bodies? Yeah, exactly, yeah.

Man, a little BC folklore. A little BC, Wild West, Pit Lake, Mountain Gold Rush, Stomping Hooten Annie, pan the gold and buy your souvenir prospector helmet on the way out and enjoy. Thanks for listening. If you want more infamy, we've got plenty more episodes at bittersweetinfamy.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to support the podcast, shoot us a few bucks via our Ko-fi account at ko-fi.com forward slash bittersweetinthemy. But no pressure, bittersweetinthemy is free,

baby. You can always support us by liking, rating, subscribing, leaving a review, following us on Instagram at bittersweetinthemy, or just pass the podcast along to a friend who you think would dig it. Stay sweet! The sources that I used for this Mimthimous include a hyper-allergic article entitled Artists Monument to Women Beheaded at University of Houston, written by Rhea Nayair, published July 9th, 2024. Another article on hyper-allergic by Rhea Nayair, Shaz July 9, 2024. Another article on hyper allergic by Raya Nayyar, Shazia Sikander says no to repairing her beheaded sculpture,

published July 11, 2024. I read an article in Art News, Shazia Sikander sculpture beheaded at the University of Houston, written by Karen K. Ho, published July 9, 2024. An article in Glass Tire, Texas Visual Art. University of Houston to present temporary public art project and artist talk

by Shazia Sikander, written by Jessica Fuentes, published January 30th, 2024. An article from Inside Higher Education. University of Houston cancels art event for sculpture deemed quote unquote, satanic. Published March 5th, 2024 by Sarah Wiseman. I looked at Shazia Sikander's public art University of Houston system page that shared information about the artwork on the UH campus.

I looked at Shazia Sikander's Instagram page and quoted from her on that page itself. I also visited the sculpture itself at the University of Houston main campus. My sources for this episode included Slumock's Gold in Search of a Legend by Rick Antonson and Mary Traynor and Brian Antonson, the 2007 edition. I also extensively consulted the archive at slumock.ca. I read pretty much every article up until 1949 that they have archived. If I mentioned or directly referenced an article during the telling of

this story, I read it. I also watched episode 505 of Gold Trails in Ghost Towns, Treasure Hunters, The Mystery of Pitlakes Lost Gold Mine, and Curse of Lost Gold Mine. I read Nika Memloose Mine Memloose by Chinup Jargon, September 1st, 2018. Volcanic Brown was game till the end, left mystery in his wake by T.W. Patterson, Couch and Value Citizen, June 19th, 2015. And I read the Wikipedia articles on Chinup Jargon and Pitlakes Lost Gold Mine. And I read the Wiktionary definitions of Skookum and Gonch. Thank you to our coffee subscribers. Oh man, there's so many now John Mountain, Dylan, Eric Joe, Lizzy D If you want to join them as a monthly subscriber

You can go to ko-fi.com slash bittersweetinfamy Bittersweet Infamy is a private member of the 604 podcast network. Our interstitial music is by Mitchell Collins And the song that you are currently listening to is Tea Street by Brian Steele. Stay gold, sweetheart, stay gold up there. I'm asking to see our grandkids grow up. One in eight men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime. Ask about a prostate screening that can detect cancer when it's most treatable. So you can ask for so much more. Visit HealthyDelaware.org slash prostate or call 211 to learn more. Wendy's has a new breakfast deal.

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