Thinking it was a city helicopter doing some spraying, I called the non-emergency 311 line myself. I simply wanted to know what time the helicopters were flying that night.
The reply: "No flights were scheduled on Sunday night."
Of course, that was ridiculous, since we clearly saw the helicopters flying along the ditches in the area.
Stymied, I then emailed a media reporter asking him for help, since he does some work on crime and has good rapport with the police.
His response after a brief inquiry with the same city 311 line was that there was indeed larvaciding going on that night. Contradicting what I was told, of course.
However, he did not get details on the time, which to me is crucial to my investigation. I know there were helicopters in the area at 8 pm, but what about 11 pm?
I tried calling 311 again. This time, I was told that a person from the insect control branch would call me back in a day or so.
Meanwhile, I made an appeal on the radio, asking for additional witnesses to the event. I figured that someone else besides me must have seen the helicopters Sunday night, whether at 8 or 11 pm.
The Winnipeg Sun newspaper carried a story on Tuesday about a major police operation Sunday night on the south Perimeter Highway, exactly where the UFO report originated. The police had been trying to crack down on drag racing on that stretch of road, separating St. Norbert from Fort Richmond. So that would explain why the police arrived so quickly after the UFO was reported. (Not that response time was slow at all.) The note I had received from the police said that the officers responded, took a statement, didn't see anything in the sky themselves, then left. That was the extent of the police UFO investigation.
The next day, I finally heard back from the city's insect branch. He said that yes, larvaciding had taken place around 8 pm on Sunday night, but that after dusk, all flights were grounded. In other words, city helicopters were not responsible for the UFO seen over St. Norbert Sunday night at 11 pm.
Okay, then.
I called and spoke with the primary witness to the event. She was forthcoming and essentially reiterated what she and her son had seen before contacting her friend.
I had asked her if she remembered seeing anything else odd in the sky at all that night. Aircraft, fireballs, satellites... anything. She said that they had not seen anything out of the ordinary. I find that particularly interesting, since the helicopters flying low would certainly have been a bit out of the ordinary.
She did say that they had thought the lights were on a helicopter originally, but that because the object was flying so erratically and so close to them, they did not think it was any conventional aircraft. Besides, the city said that no copters (or light planes) were flying after dark. "If we can't see the water, we can't larvacide," the city employee explained.
The question is, then, what did these three witnesses see? If they did not see a helicopter, then what was it? What about their physical effects? As a matter of fact, the witness told me that even days after the event, strange "energy" was still lingering in the house.
The most obvious question is why others in the neighbourhood didn't report anything that night. There are a few hundred people in that specific area, and many more in the surrounding neighbourhoods. It was a nice enough night, many people would have been out. In fact, cars on the highway would have had a clear view, too.
So, what I thought was an easy explanation didn't pan out. And we're left with...
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