A whale, a pair of mammoths, a beach full of creatures and three different Sasquatches, every one seen in person
Beside a road in Campbell River, a driftwood Sasquatch is holding his hand out to a bear cub. At the other end of the Island, a mother mammoth and her calf stand at the entrance to a Colwood park, rebuilt after the first pair burned. And on a beach near Victoria, a flock of wooden birds keeps changing as old ones disappear and new ones arrive.
Driftwood sculptures on Vancouver Island are built from wood that washed up on its beaches, and the best-known ones come from three artists. Alex Witcombe of Drifted Creations built Drift, a 9-metre humpback whale at Ken Forde Park in Campbell River, and the Colwood mammoths. Paul Lewis builds the birds at Esquimalt Lagoon and an eleven-foot Sasquatch in East Sooke. Tanya Bub’s cougars, bears and birds stand along the Malahat SkyWalk.
Some sit in plain sight. Others take a bit of looking.
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Alex Witcombe: dinosaurs, mammoths and a Sasquatch by the river
High Point Resort, Quadra Island: a collection of driftwood dinosaurs
A short walk from the Quadra Island ferry terminal, a whole collection of Witcombe’s driftwood sculptures stands on the grounds of High Point Resort, dinosaurs included. Start there once you’re off the boat from Campbell River.
The Forest Guardian, Campbellton Loop: a Sasquatch and a bear cub
Beside the road near the Canyon View Trail in Campbell River, a driftwood Sasquatch holds out his hand to a small black bear sitting on a stump.
This is station 6 of Quinny’s Quest, a series of Witcombe sculptures along the Campbellton Loop, posted in October 2025 and made possible by Campbellton River Village. Witcombe calls the Sasquatch a Forest Guardian and wonders what wisdom he has for the cub. His answer: ride the Quest and find out. His station 6 video shows exactly where it sits, across from Detwiler Road by the Campbell River. Stations 3, 4, 5 and 7 have his work too, and Elk Falls is close by.
Beachlands Park, Colwood: the mammoths that came back
At the south end of the Island, Witcombe’s first driftwood mammoths went up at Royal Bay in 2017. In July 2024, someone set them on fire. By June 2025, they were back.
Witcombe rebuilt the mother and calf over welded steel frames, then went looking for wood. He’s said he’ll walk a beach for hours, sometimes days, to find one piece that works, and the tusks were the hardest of all.
The new pair stands at the entrance to Beachlands Park, up from the beach where the originals stood. Take a close look at those tusks.
More Witcombe in Campbell River and on Quadra
Drift is a life-size juvenile humpback, about 9 metres long, made entirely of driftwood at Ken Forde Park in Willow Point. The city planted a garden around it and added spotlights, so the whale is lit up at night. Parking and the seawalk are on the Campbell River Driftwood Whale page.
Sarah takes more searching. She crouches in the bushes beside the Willow Point Seawalk, near Drift. She started as a velociraptor, got torn apart by vandals in 2020, and came back as a Herrerasaurus after the community crowdfunded her rebuild.
Back on Quadra, near Rebecca Spit Marine Provincial Park a driftwood humpback named Mordecai breaches straight up out of the ground beside the office at We Wai Kai Campsite, run by the Cape Mudge Band, with Witcombe’s driftwood eagle on her nest just behind.
The date that started it all
Witcombe’s first sculpture was a date idea that fell through. In August 2016 he suggested building a driftwood dinosaur on the beach with a woman he’d just started dating, who loved dinosaurs as much as he did. She had other plans, so he went and built it himself. Hours later he texted her a photo of Sheila, a velociraptor on Stories Beach, south of Campbell River, and she admitted she hadn’t thought he was serious. Sheila took off on social media, and he never stopped.
He works from Quadra Island now and says about 70 percent of the job is finding the right wood. New pieces show up first on his Instagram and Facebook, and the Drifted Creations website has more of his work.
Paul Lewis: a beach full of wooden creatures and an eleven-foot Sasquatch
Esquimalt Lagoon, Colwood: a beach that keeps changing
Walk the ocean side of Ocean Boulevard at Esquimalt Lagoon and the driftwood starts turning into birds. Paul Lewis has had as many as 20 sculptures on this beach at once, and about 10 stood there at the end of 2025. Most are birds, which suits a place that doubles as a migratory bird sanctuary.
No two visits look quite the same. Pieces get damaged or stolen, and Lewis replaces them with bigger, more detailed work that can take him up to four days each. Many now carry trackers.
This beach is also where Lewis got started. In 2018 he walked past McGnarly the Beach Ent, a Witcombe sculpture built for the 2017 Eats and Beats Festival, and decided to try it himself. McGnarly is gone now, but everything on the beach today traces back to him. Parking, washrooms and dog rules are in the Esquimalt Lagoon guide.
East Sooke: an eleven-foot Sasquatch in a parking lot
Drive out East Sooke Road and an eleven-foot Sasquatch appears in the parking lot of the East Sooke General Store. Paul Lewis built him. Lewis had made other Sasquatches for private property and wanted one the public could walk right up to.
The store has food trucks on site, and it’s the only place for food and groceries on the road in the East Sooke area. That makes it the lunch stop after the trails in East Sooke Regional Park. Details are on the East Sooke Sasquatch page.
The painter who picked up a drill
Lewis was a painter until April 2018. After seeing McGnarly, he borrowed his brother’s drill, grabbed a box of screws and went to work in driftwood and bark. For his first flock, he built whichever bird he saw first when he reached the beach.
He doesn’t always tell people who he is. Ask him on the beach who made the sculptures and he’s been known to smile and say he knows the artist. His new work goes up on his Paul Lewis Art Gallery Facebook page.
Tanya Bub: cougars in the forest and a gallery downtown
Malahat SkyWalk: cougars in the arbutus forest
Tanya Bub’s driftwood cougars, bears, owl and bald eagle are placed along the route at the Malahat SkyWalk, in an arbutus and Douglas fir forest on the traditional territory of the Malahat Nation. Two of the cougars even have names, Luke and Leah.
Keep your eyes moving on the TreeWalk. The sculptures are inside the attraction, so you’ll need admission, and the walkway and spiral tower climb on a gentle incline that works for strollers and wheelchairs.
Check SkyWalk ticket availability for your dates, or read the Malahat SkyWalk guide first.
Gage Gallery, Bastion Square: her work downtown
In downtown Victoria, Bub’s work is at the Gage Gallery, an artist-run collective at 19 Bastion Square. She has filled it before: her 2023 show, WILD BC!, brought 30 life-size driftwood sculptures of BC wildlife downtown to raise money for the Wild ARC rehabilitation centre in Metchosin. What’s on display changes, so check with the gallery before you go.
The programmer who found a piece of driftwood
Bub spent about two decades as a computer programmer and ran her own web development company. Then a piece of driftwood she found on a beach walk changed everything, and by 2019 she was making sculptures. She says she now spends about 12 hours a day on her art.
She builds with nothing inside. No wire, no frame, just driftwood, kelp, shells and stones fitted together piece by piece. She loves the double take: one of her cougars, perched in a tree, was built to give people a jolt of adrenaline before they realize it’s wood. Her portfolio site takes commissions, and she posts on Instagram as Victoria Drifter.
One more, near Duncan: a Sasquatch with no signature
Bigfoot the Guardian stands beside Barnjum Road near Duncan, a big driftwood Sasquatch with no gate, no entrance and no credited artist. He’s just there, at the side of the road.
His builder is still a mystery. If you know who made him, VIBL would love to give them credit.
Here today, rebuilt tomorrow
Every sculpture on this list lives outside, in public, all year. Weather wears them down. Some get vandalized, stolen or set on fire. McGnarly is gone, the first mammoths burned, and Sarah is on her second body.
The artists keep building anyway. Lewis puts it simply: wrecking one doesn’t hurt him, it hurts everyone who comes to see them.
So go looking. The one you came for might have moved. The one you stumble on might be brand new.
More to Explore Near the Sculptures
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