<b>Champ Across the Border: </b>Blake and Karen welcome back historian Dr. Joseph Gagné, a specialist in New France and the French colonial period of North America, to talk about Champ - the famous monster of Lake Champlain. Most of the lake sits between New York and Vermont, but about 7% of it lies in Quebec, and Joseph's upcoming paper in the ethnology journal Rabaska asks a question almost nobody else has: how does the French-speaking side of the border see this most American of lake monsters? <br /><br />The answer involves a fabricated Samuel de Champlain quote, a five-foot fish that really was a monster in its own way, nearly 300 years of digitized Quebec newspapers, and a curious case of cross-border monster pride - because why borrow Champ when you already have <a href="https://cryptidz.fandom.com/wiki/Ponik" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Ponik</a> and <a href="https://file///H:/PodcastWorkshop/mt/MT_2026-06-25_Champ-Lake-Champlain-Monster/cryptidz.fandom.com/wiki/Memphr%C3%A9" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Memphré</a>? Plus hoax serpents, colonial werewolf panics, and how Nessie taught every lake monster what a lake monster is supposed to look like.<br /><br />Extended show notes at <a href="https://www.monstertalk.org/%F0%9F%A6%95-s05e38-champ-across-the-border/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">MonsterTalk.org</a><br /><br />Become a supporter of this podcast: <a href="https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/monstertalk--6267523/support?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss">https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/monstertalk--6267523/support</a>.<br /><br />Some product links may be affiliated with Amazon revenue sharing.