If one searches the news for stories of aliens visiting Canada, it quickly becomes apparent that the country is no stranger to unidentified flying objects (UFO), or as officials tend to call them, unidentified aerial phenomena. How true are the stories?

The truth is always subjective when dealing with the unexplained, but for the stories that I will detail I went to a very reliable source: The Canadian Government. In the Library and Archives of Canada, there is a wealth of information about UFO. Several events are listed as “unsolved,” meaning no explanations for the incidents exist.

I chose my first story because I’m a former Nova Scotian. At the southern tip of Nova Scotia, Shag Harbour is a small and quaint fishing village. Before the incident, it was unremarkable and unknown to the larger world. That all changed on October 4, 1967 when four orange lights were spotted in the night sky by locals.

Witnesses, including five teens and an RCMP officer, described lights flashing and then heading at a steep angle towards the ocean surface about a kilometre offshore. The initial consensus was that it was an airplane in distress, and witnesses called the RCMP. Constable Ron Pound, the RCMP witness, said there were four lights, but that all were part of a single object about 60 feet long. After arriving at the shoreline, Pound was joined by two other RCMP officers (dispatched from Barrington Passage), as well as several locals. All saw the lights moving along the water's surface, leaving a yellowish foam in their wake.

A Coast Guard and several local fishing vessels hastened to the spot of the sighting to rescue passengers thought to be on the supposed aircraft, but they found only a glittering yellow foam. Believing the object had sunk, the search continued until the wee hours. The RCMP checked with other authorities but discovered there were no missing aircraft that evening, civilian or military. The next day, a report was filed with the Canadian Forces Headquarters in Ottawa, stating that an object of “unknown origin” had impacted the water off Shag Harbour.

Divers were deployed to search the ocean floor at the site of the incident but found nothing. That could have been the end of the story, except a MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) investigator, Chris Styles, decided to revisit the details of the incident in 1993. He interviewed original witnesses and new ones, and an unofficial story began.

HMCS Granby divers revealed that nothing had been found at the crash location because the object had already left the area, travelling underwater to come to rest about 40 kilometres east of Shag Harbour, near the entrance to Shelburne Harbour. At that time, a top-secret NATO submarine detection facility sat near the harbour. Personnel at the base detected the object off the coast, and others detailed military study of the craft. After a few days, a second object arrived to join the first. After a week of observation, a Russian submarine entered Canadian waters and navy vessels in the vicinity were deployed to investigate. During this lull in observation, the two objects shot off underwater to the Gulf of Maine, before breaking the ocean surface to escape into the skies. All of this was relayed “off the record”.

We may never know for sure what the object was off the coast of southern Nova Scotia, but the Department of National Defence has identified the Shag Harbour sighting as “unsolved.”

For more information on the Shag Harbour Incident, there is a documentary on YouTube about it. The Shag Harbour Incident Society also runs a website devoted to it.

In part two, I will look at Canada’s best documented UFO case.

Sam M.

Sam M. has a love for all forms of speculative fiction across all media. Possessed of natural curiosity, Sam enjoys learning and new experiences. Each new piece of knowledge or endeavour adds to who she is and how she sees the world. She is a firm believer that some of the most amazing experiences and events could even be in your backyard (figuratively, if not literally).