An accident delayed me-- not mine, but one that required me to reroute my trip through rural roads and a whole lot of dust, and finally back to New Hamburg. It's a picturesque town with some excellent eating establishments in its heritage-designated downtown, but we met, as Canadians do, at the local Tim Hortons.
Wayne Roth, now in his 80s, is a former mayor of Wilmot Township who recalled New Hamburg's short-lived "MonsterFest" from the 1970s and began, in 1997, to re-incorporate the local monster into local events. He also set the record straight on both my The Nith River Monster pin and the restored model. These came from the 1970s and not, as I had supposed, from the initial activity that surrounded the 1953 origins of "Nithy's" legend. Roth built, with others, a candy-coloured storybook train around an electric tractor and he drove it in parades. It would transport kids and pull costumed circus animals and, of course, display the caged local monster or, at least, a reasonable facsimile, a suit resembling a comic-book croco-gator. For a few years, they would make a great deal about the colourful escape-proof cage that contained Nithy. When the mayor displayed the key to the cage, Nithy, behind him, would reveal that he had one, too. And, of course, somewhere along the route, Nithy would escape, to the delight of crowd. The doofy look of the costume was deliberate; they wanted to make certain the monster wasn't scary, at least to most kids. I even learned the identity of the costume-wearer, though I have promised to keep that a secret.
Edward Becker, a member of council in 1997, became involved. In 2022, he drove down a rural road and was amazed to see the monster itself, sitting in a field, badly injured.
The 1970s Lion's Club model used to be a part of MonsterFest and Oktoberfest and the Santa Claus Parade-- about six years at Oktoberfest, according to Roth. That festival is a big deal in a community where about 40% of the population trace their ancestry to Germany. They would hoist their local monster atop the Home Hardware store, though Roth recalls one night when it mysteriously migrated to the roof of the police station.
The rather comical model had been sitting in a farmer's barn for years, and it had fallen into disrepair. He temporarily cleared out the clutter while working on the barn, which is how Becker came to see the damaged monster.
The Lions Club restored the model, mostly through the work of John Nielson, a retired auto body man and one of the original builders. This incarnation made its return seventy years after the first tales of Nith River wound through the town, and it now features in local events, and will make its next appearance at Canada Day celebrations.
I spoke briefly by phone with a granddaughter of George Thomas, the local Chief constable who almost certainly concocted the original Nithy story in 1953. We should be meeting upon my return to town in two weeks, and I have set up a couple of other interviews. In the forthcoming book on local cryptids and community mysteries, it is currently one of the least-documented of the stories, and the multiple interviews should give it some depth and weight, as well as, hopefully, clearing up some inaccuracies.
Of course, with these kinds of stories, the absolute truth, while it may be out there, remains forever elusive.