A lady had come across an amputated leg in the bushes while walking on a beach in Vancouver in 1887. As the foot was carefully kept inside a boot, the place became popular as Leg in Boot Square! Although the incident initially triggered a stir, people forgot it later. The same thing happened again in 1914, with the locals discovering a man’s foot on the beach. Since then, many such shoes have been found near the shores of British Columbia, and such incidents naturally attract the attention of the Global Media.

At least 21 severed feet have been recovered from 2008 to 2019, in that region! Such a foot was found from Jetty Island in Washington in the last of those instances. In some cases, coroners and investigators could identify the owners of those feet. One such amputated leg, rescued in 2019, belonged to a person, named Antonio Neil, who had been reported missing since 2016. Another foot, covered with a blue shock inside a Nike shoe, was discovered on a beach in West Vancouver in 2018. Although the investigators came to know that the foot belonged to a 50-year-old man, they failed to identify the person. May be, there were issues of keeping the name secret, by request of their families.

In 2007, a teenage girl from Washington found an Adidas shoe lying on the Vancouver beach. She got scared, as the girl found an amputated foot inside the shoe. The US officials failed to identify the person. Meanwhile, the Herzogenaurach-based German multinational corporation that designs and manufactures shoes informed the investigators that it used to make those shoes in India especially for the Indian market. Hence, the foot most probably belonged to an Indian. In 2008, a foot inside a Nike shoe was recovered on the same beach, and it belonged to a 21-year-old man who had committed suicide. However, the concerned authorities were unable to identify the person.

Over the years, people have been terrified of discovering mysteriously amputated legs and feet in the shoes on beaches in British Columbia. This mystery has remained unsolved for a long. At first, investigators speculated that the crime was committed by a serial killer, who used to amputate the feet of victims after killing them, and floated their body parts in the sea. Later, the ocean current brought those feet to the beaches of British Columbia.

Recently, the researchers have claimed that bodies of victims of maritime accidents float in the sea. Those bodies get decomposed quickly because of the salty sea water. However, feet, covered inside the boots, cannot be easily exposed to the salty water. Hence, that part of the body takes time to get decomposed. Furthermore, as the boot floats in the water, the chances of water getting inside the shoe are reduced. So, only the feet, carefully left inside the boots, come to the beaches. No other body part has ever been discovered on the beaches.

Another question arises naturally, here… Why do they float to the beaches in British Columbia, time and again? Richard Thomson, the Senior Research Scientist at Ocean Sciences Division of the Institute of Ocean Sciences (Canada), has explained that it happens only because of the movement of ocean currents in a particular direction.

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Published by Koushik Das

Koushik Das (born on May 16, 1976 in Kolkata) is a career journalist. Based in the Indian capital of New Delhi, Koushik writes mainly about foreign policies and current geopolitical issues, and rarely about other topics. His own political ideas are highly influenced by Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Michael Oakeshott and others. English philosopher and political theorist Oakeshott (Dec 11, 1901-Dec 19, 1990) says that “in political activity, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea. There is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place, nor appointed destination. But we have to keep afloat”. (Rationalism in Politics, 1962) As a student of Political Science, Koushik loves to share his views on issues, which have great impacts on his thought process (and also on India, South Asia and of course on the global community), with his readers through his website – Boundless Ocean of Politics. By doing so, he tries to keep himself afloat. You will find some of his articles in https://inserbia.info/today/ (https://inserbia.info/today/author/kou_das13_i/), as he has been trying to assess the global geopolitics since 2003. You can also mail him at kousdas@gmail.com View all posts by Koushik Das