Page 45 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - Late January 2019

“U” Is For UFOs In Ottawa, Ontario 45

U is for UFOs in Ottawa:

The truth is (still) out

there

www.ottawacitizen.com

One fine summer evening in 1953, with Bank
Street bustling as thousands of ball fans headed
to Lansdowne Park to watch a game, Wilbert B.
Smith, a senior radio engineer with the
Department of Transport, and his research team
released a weather balloon over the area. Not
just any weather balloon, this one was covered
with aluminum to make it disk-shaped, while
fastened to its centre was a large aircraft flare
timed to ignite when the balloon reached 5,000
feet, or 1,524 metres.
The silver object rose slowly in the air
and, at 5,000 feet, glowed brilliantly for 15
seconds as its flare ignited. What Smith and his
team, dubbed Project Magnet, expected to
happen next was a deluge of phone calls from
panicked and concerned citizens about the
unidentified flying object they’d just seen. It was attack, the sighting were later blamed on opportune time so many people could witness it.
1953, after all, with the post-Second-World-War fireworks-laden balloons released in According to Smith, it took place on
Cold War in high gear and UFOs and their Morristown, N.Y. to celebrate a century of Remembrance Day that year: “We looked up to
possible extraterrestrial origins frequently in the peace. the north-west of Ottawa and there was Tyla’s
news. What they got, though, was nothing, or, Smith, who in 1955 became one of City little craft, an egg-shaped affair in the sky, and
rather, the conclusion that people just don’t View’s three inaugural trustees, was himself an coming out of the tail-end of it was what looked
watch the sky all that much: not one person ardent believer in aliens. In a speech delivered to like an almost dissipated portion of a jet trail that
called to report the strange object. This, the Vancouver Area UFO Club in 1961, a year was dropping down.”
however, hardly deterred Smith and his before his death, he claimed to have By summarizing sightings reported in
colleagues. communicated with extraterrestrials, whom he 1952, Smith reported that UFOs were “a
Project Magnet was formed in December at least occasionally referred to as “the boys hundred feet or more in diameter; they can travel
1950 on the authorization of Commander C.P. topside.” An engineer, he was particularly at speeds of several thousand miles per hour;
Edwards, then Deputy Minister of Transport for interested in such technical matters as how their they can reach altitudes well above those which
Air Service, with the aim of investigating UFO spacecraft was built and how they were should support conventional aircraft or balloons;
claims in Canada. It ran separately but in propelled. He claims they explained to him how and ample power and force seem to be available
conjunction with a multi-department effort the speed of light is not constant, and that time for all required maneuvers.”
coordinated by the Defence Research Board, was not the measured chronological ticking we The sightings, he noted, occurred at
named Project Second Storey, to investigate imagine, but a “field function” that changed approximately six-week intervals, and most
reports of UFO sightings. According to Smith, throughout the universe, and which could be frequently when Earth and Mars were nearest to
Project Magnet was never officially sanctioned altered. Their ships, he was told, were supported one another. In his 1952 report, he wrote: “We
and no government funding was provided; he on the Earth’s gravitational field. The fields are forced to the conclusion that the vehicles are
had simply requested some space and surplus surrounding their ships, he added, created areas probably extraterrestrial, in spite of our
equipment at a Transport Station at Shirley’s that reduced areas that weakened the strength of prejudices to the contrary.”
Bay, with which to collect research in his own objects that came into contact with them, The Project Second Storey committee, of
spare time. Project Magnet’s primary goal was accounting for the destruction of earthly military which Smith was a member, developed a
to study how the Earth’s magnetic field could be craft that flew too close to them. This explained, weighted 28-question questionnaire for those
harnessed as a propulsion system for vehicles, a among other phenomenon, the May 1956 crash who reported seeing UFOs, to try to determine
technology Smith believed extraterrestrials of a military jet into the Villa St. Louis convent the likelihood that what they thought they saw
used. in Orleans — the jet, Smith said, flew into a actually happened. The conclusion, according to
At the time, 50 per cent of Canadians “very strong vortex of reduced binding,” Smith, was that there was a 91-per-cent chance
believed “that these mysterious disks are not just causing it to break apart. that reported sightings involved real objects, and
imagination and that they are not just a natural “I wrote a very stiff memorandum to the a 60-per-cent chance that those objects were
phenomenon,” according to a poll conducted by appropriate people in my own department extraterrestrial vehicles.
the Canadian Institute of Public Opinion. pointing out some of these facts,” he wrote. But On Aug. 8, 1954, Smith and his team at
“So many reliable people are among the his letter, he maintained, “wound up on the Shirley’s Bay recorded a disturbance they
witnesses,” noted the Fort William Times- crank file.” believed was caused by a UFO. Among the
Journal, “it is no longer possible to ignore Similar unstable vortices, he added, were telling signs were Morse code transmissions too
entirely the possibilities that some aerial survey created when nuclear explosions occurred. An rapid for a trained operator to decipher.
of the earth is being taken by personalities from unnamed friend of his who had also been in
some other part of the universe.” contact with “these people from outside” (Continued on Page 48)
Reports of UFOs in Canada stretch back claimed to have spoken with one, Tyla, a
to 1792, when explorer David Thompson garbage collector whose job it was to clean up For The Best of
reported a bright blob flying overhead in the radioactive messes created by such man- Paranormal Radio Programming
northern Manitoba. In February 1915, the lights made explosions. Tyla, Smith said, gathered the 24 / 7 / 365
of Parliament Hill, Rideau Hall and the Royal material, took it aboard his ship where it was
Mint were extinguished after reports of rendered inert, and then dumped it in some with Shows Hosted by
unknown lights crossing the St. Lawrence River secluded spot on Earth. In 1948, Tyla reportedly Rob McConnell, Kevin Randle,
and headed for Ottawa reached Prime Minister told his friend that he would dump his next load Larry Lawson and Kal Korff
Robert Borden. Thought to possibly be an aerial near Ottawa, and that he would pick an Visit - www.XZBN.net