Thursday, December 22, 2016
UFOs: The Canadian Connection
1967 and all that
I was on Kevin Randle's new podcast through Rob McConnell recently, and thought I should note the cases I discussed in detail.
I focused on three major Canadian cases from 1967.
The first was the Shag Harbour incident. A bright object was seen by several witnesses to fall into Shag Harbour, off the coast of Nova Scotia. Sometimes called “Canada's Roswell,” this classic case is actually a bit better than Roswell because a number of official documents have been located suggesting something really happened, unlike Roswell. It began in the early evening of October 4, 1967. I note it among several Canadian UFO "crashes": http://uforum.blogspot.ca/2016/06/crash-go-ufos-onto-canada.html
Then, the Falcon Lake case. In May 1967, Stefan Michalak was doing some amateur prospecting north of Falcon Lake in Whiteshell Provincial Park. He encountered a flying saucer which seemed to land on a rock outcropping near him. He walked up to it and was burned by its exhaust when it took off. The case was investigated by the RCMP, Canadian Forces and even the United States Air Force, which considered it “Unexplained.” http://www.ufoevidence.org/cases/case376.htm
The third was the Camrose Crop Circle. It predated modern crop formations in England and was one of the only cases of its kind in history to be investigated by government and military officials. (In fact, the Minister of Defence directed a "Ministerial Inquiry" into it. http://data2.collectionscanada.gc.ca/e/e110/e002749320.jpg) A local farmer, Mr. Schielke, went out to his fields to collect his cows. The cows normally came back from the pasture on their own, but on Saturday, August 5, 1967, after a night of heavy rains, the animals didn't come home. It was therefore the first time he noticed the bizarre imprints on his land -- four circular marks approximately 30 feet in diameter. (I misspoke on Kevin's podcast; I said 80 feet in diameter instead of 30.) The case is "considered unsolved by the Department of National Defence." https://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/ufo/002029-1200.01-e.html
Finally, I talked a bit about the Canadian UFO Survey, which Kevin noted was a bit "boring" because it involved statistics. But I insisted that UFO reports are the foundation upon which all speculation about aliens and UFOs as spacecraft are built. And they give insight into what really is being seen and reported. And yes, I said that most UFO reports on record are terrible. Most have explanations or have minimal information on which to form any kind of conclusion. As for UFO photos, I am currently going through the hundreds of cases reported in 2016, and about 25% to 33% have photos. Very few are interesting, and most are simple artefacts of camera optics. I think anyone who uses a camera on their phone needs to take lessons in photography.
The Canadian UFO Survey web pages are at: http://survey.canadianuforeport.com/
The 2016 edition will be available in Spring of 2017.
Labels: UFOs Canada crop circle 1967 Falcon Lake Shag Harbour crash
