Friday, February 05, 2016
The St. Paul UFO Landing Pad
In response to a question from someone, I had found a review I had written many years ago of the first St. Paul UFO Conference in 1998. I was one of the invited speakers for the event.
I originally posted the review to the former UFO Updates, and I posted it recently to the new UFO Updates Facebook page. In case you didn't see it there, here's my review.
The St. Paul UFO
Conference: Little Pad on the Prairie
July 10-11, 1998
"This is our first
try at this, so if anything goes wrong, you can't blame us for it, because
we're just learning," said Paul Pelletier, organizer for the UFO
Conference in St. Paul, Alberta, Canada, on July 10-11, 1998.
Paul had nothing to worry
about. The conference was an outstanding success.
Almost 500 people
registered for the event, most travelling more than two-and-a-half hours from
Edmonton, although there were many there from Calgary and other Alberta towns,
but also many from Saskatchewan, Manitoba and British Columbia. (I noted that the
UFO museum guest book had signatures of people from Las Vegas, Billings,
Whitehorse, Winnipeg and Boise.)
For an out-of-the-way
location, St. Paul did well to make its presence known on the international UFO
scene, and rightly so. It boasts the first and longest-maintained UFO landing
pad in the world. The platform was built in 1967 as part of an eccentric
project to mark Canada's 100th birthday.
"We were just going
to make an ordinary park," said Jules Van Brabert, mayor of St. Paul at
the time. "But I started having a few beers with some committee members,
and we got to thinking that we wanted something
really different. Well, someone had just watched something on TV about flying
saucers, and laughed that we should make the park into a UFO landing pad. It
seemed like a great idea at the time."
And it was. The pad didn't
cost St. Paul anything. Materials were donated by local businesses, and the
publicity of its inauguration made it a tourist attraction.
But then, as the years
wore on, interest in the pad faded. It fell into disrepair in the 70s, but then
in the 80s, someone had the idea to restore the pad and turn it into a larger attraction.
The site grew, and became
more well-known. Mother Theresa (yes, the
Mother Theresa) visited the site and extolled the virtues of helping others,
even others "in outer space." Later, a museum was built adjoining the
pad. The CUFOS travelling exhibit was installed there, too, when John Timmerman
"retired" from taking it across North America.
A toll-free hot line was
set up, for people to report their own UFO sightings. Reports are maintained by
the energetic Rhea LaBrie, who runs the museum and makes sure there are enough
UFO t-shirts, spoons and bumper stickers to sell.
"It has all been a
great success," she boasted at the conference.
I was invited to be a
guest speaker there, on the program which featured Stanton Friedman lecturing
about why Flying Saucers Are Real. Gord Kijek of the Alberta UFO Study Group
talked on an outstanding case involving triangular UFOs as well as some Alberta
crop circles. Cerealogist Gord Sobczak showed some of the striking shots of
recent British crop circles and attracted a lot of interest from the audience.
One of the best-received
speakers was Fern Belzil, a cattle rancher and mutilation investigator. His
years of experience in raising cattle give him a definite edge when it comes to
interpreting mute evidence. (I only wished his talk wasn't immediately after
lunch.)
John Timmerman of CUFOS
gave both a history of ufology and commented on its future, describing the
under appreciated work of James McDonald and others, and how there are so many
avenues for future research.
Clinical psychologist
Helen Neufeld described her work with abductees, in particular
"Sharon", who agreed to share the podium and answer questions.
The conference ended with
a surprise presentation by Martin Jacek, a UFO investigator from the Yukon and
affiliated with UFO BC.
Those were the formal presentations. Then there was all
the other stuff.
Gord Kijek drove me to the
conference from Edmonton. We got there about noon on Friday and met Stan for
lunch. He had already done several media interviews and wanted to grab
something to eat before
dashing off to another one. We had a great chat, catching up on UFO gossip and
exchanging some material each of us had brought along. Stan had not yet seen a copy of the new Sturrock
Report and I gave him my copy to view. He showed me some of the
declassification notices he had received recently about some ELINT programs
from the 50s and 60s and only just now admitted.
After lunch, Stan was
picked up to go to the conference site, while Gord drove me around town to
check out the UFO kitsch. Sure enough, St. Paul is exactly like Roswell.
"Welcome to our
'Pad'," said an alien on a sign outside a Radio Shack.
"E.T. PHONE
SMITTY'S", invited the sign outside a restaurant.
The local Bingo Hall had a
saucer on its sign, and the shopping mall had a mural depicting the Roswell
crash at its main entrance.
After Stan's first lecture
that evening, he needed something to munch so he could wind down for the night.
Where did we go? UFO Pizza, of course! The restaurant was open late, had great
pizza and pasta, and the decor featured UFOs in paintings, murals and hand-painted
signs on the front window. Naturally, we all had 'UFO Coolers' to drink. (At
6.9% alcohol, they kind of sneak up on you!)
The conference site was in
a huge recreation centre. The lecture hall had more than 350 chairs set up, and
they were filled by Friday night. Stan had a table at the back where he sold
his books and papers.
The adjoining room,
however, was twice the size. It contained the main huckster room, which had
dealers selling t-shirts, caps, pins, rings and necklaces. The most popular
item (according to Rhea) was the green alien head filled with $1 'alien pops'.
One artisan was selling
her huge selection of ceramic aliens and flying saucers, including some which
had lights and made weird noises. I bought a 'UFO gun' which shoots foam
saucers, some alien key fobs, a UFO
Pizza cap and other assorted goodies.
(The St. Paul Chamber of
Commerce said they thought the conference brought in many more dollars into the
town's economy than they spent on speakers and publicity.)
A big part of the display
was set up by the Edmonton Space Sciences Centre. Director Frank Florian was
there demonstrating simple gee-whiz science experiments to the kids, and even
had a Starlab planetarium inflated in one corner of the hall. The Fort McMurray
astronomy club had a display, and that night had a star party for the
attendees, having set up their scopes outside.
The media were everywhere.
Every network, every Alberta newspaper, most radio stations. Stan must've done
a few dozen interviews, while lesser figures such as Gord and me only did a couple. :)
One weird event occurred
when a woman presented herself to reporters as the abductee who would be
speaking later in the conference. Paul was really worried because not only did
she look crazy,
she sounded crazy. Well, we're not
sure who she really was, but she wasn't Helen's abductee. The imposter had a hospital
bracelet and was just out on a stroll away from a nearby institution ...
Hot gossip: John Timmerman
had a call about a new crop circle in Ohio, just days before leaving for
Alberta ... Stan is on his way now to Australia. 'grok' magazine in Oz faxed him a list of questions which included
some real corkers, such as "Why are there only 10 theses on UFOs? Which
ones are positive?" ... Stan told me and Gord about his appearance at a
conference in Argentina, at which
officers from the Uruguayan Air Force presented a paper describing their own
official investigations, which reached the conclusion that there was no
scientific evidence for UFOs ... A farmer told me he still has some angel hair
from a batch which fell in the 70s. He gave most of it to scientists with the
Alberta government who requested it from him. When the farmer asked about their
results, the reply was: "Samples? What samples?" ... One woman told
me a weird story about how the "government" put up posters in small
towns in Saskatchewan in the mid-1980s, advertising a 1-800 number to report
UFOs. There was a flap around Kindersley at the time. The number was only in
operation for a few months ...
All in all, it was a great
time. The next St. Paul UFO Conference is in two years (2000 A.D.). Don't miss
it, you UFO buffs!
Chris Rutkowski
12 July 1998
There was a second conference in 2000, but none after that year.
A few other things of note: It was built in 1967 as part of Canada's centennial project and opened during a
special ceremony at which the emcee was none other than Paul Hellyer himself,
when he was Canada's Minister of Defence. In 1982, as mentioned, Mother Theresa visited it
and declared at that time that "If there are sick people in space, we will help them
too."
The pad was renovated in 1990. In 1998, the UFO Conference noted
above was held there, and it was shortly after that John Timmerman of CUFOS
donated the entire CUFOS UFO exhibit to the St. Paul tourism office that was
expanded and built beside the pad. It's quite a large display of UFO-related paraphernalia.
The UFO Landing Pad is still there today, ignored by aliens. Maybe Steven Greer can vector some of them to land there sometime soon.
Labels: UFO Canada Alberta Landing Pad St. Paul aliens conference 1967
