Floating feet mystery picked as newsmaker of the year
Last Updated: Tuesday, December 16, 2008 | 3:47 PM PT
CBC News
Readers of the CBCNews.ca site for British Columbia have selected the ongoing mystery over seven human feet that have washed up in the province and nearby Washington State as newsmaker of the year.
The readers voted in an online poll on the site earlier in December.
The other choices, which were all originally nominated by readers, included the introduction of the provincial carbon tax, various bear attacks, falling house prices, and the theft of the Bill Reid art from the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver.
The mysterious feet made headlines around the world after they began washing ashore in the summer of 2007. The most recent was found in November.
Six were found on B.C. shores along the Strait of Georgia. A seventh was found on the coast in Washington State.
Reports of an eighth foot turned out to be a hoax: somebody put an animal paw in a shoe and left it on a beach near Campbell River on Vancouver Island.
So far, four of the feet have been matched to create two pairs, but only one has been identified using DNA testing. That foot belonged to a depressed man who was reported missing from the B.C. Lower Mainland in 2007 and whose identity has not been released to the public.
There had been speculation that some of the remaining feet may have come from a plane that crashed into the Strait of Georgia and was never recovered, but the theory was eventually disproved by DNA testing.
Despite the fact that the feet are often described as "severed," police have said there is no indication the feet were severed by force or foul play was involved.
