Canada UFO FOIA Release — Part 15 (Pages 4201–4500)

Brief

Part 15 of an 8,759-page consolidated Canadian government UFO archive, this segment is dominated by late-1979 sighting reports transmitted by RCMP detachments across British Columbia, Alberta, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and the Northwest Territories to the NRC Planetary Sciences Section (Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics). The most substantive cases are a Richmond, BC sighting of an inverted saucer with a spinning top, four evenly spaced lights, and an audible hum, and a Naples, Alberta farm incident in which a Doberman alerted before the witness observed a hovering blue football-shaped object. Interspersed throughout are standardized fireball/meteorite observation forms routed in parallel to the NRC Meteor Centre, reflecting a dual-track intake system. NRC astronomers resolved at least one case — long-exposure photographs from a Nova Scotia witness — as star trails of Vega caused by camera instability.

Metadata

Agency

Department of National Defence / RCMP / National Research Council

Release

2010-01-01

Type

PDF • .pdf

Length

300 pages

Classification

UNCLASSIFIED

Programs

NRC Planetary Sciences Section, Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics, NRC Meteor Centre

Tags

disc/saucer, inverted saucer, football-shaped, blue glow, humming noise, spinning top, animal reaction, photographic evidence, fireball/meteorite, Canada, 1979, British Columbia, Alberta, Nova Scotia, Northwest Territories, Ontario

Key points

• The Richmond, BC sighting (79-11-29) described an inverted saucer with a flat dull-gold bottom, a black protruding center, four evenly spaced lights, triangular shaped vents, and a top that spun while the bottom remained motionless.p.3
• Witness Susan Van Den Boogaard, 19, was assessed by the RCMP investigator as intelligent and reliable, and her employment at Vancouver International Airport was cited as evidence of familiarity with normal aircraft appearances at night.p.3
• Details of the Richmond sighting were forwarded in real time to the Area Control Centre at Vancouver International Airport at the moment the report came in.p.3
• In the Naples, Alberta incident (79-12-02), the witness's Doberman Pincher alerted before she stepped outside and observed a bright blue, football-shaped object hovering approximately 20 feet above the ground with no audible sound.p.5
• RCMP investigation of the Naples site found snow imprints near the sighting location, but Cpl. MOW determined they were made by the witness's children and were approximately 75–100 feet from where the object was seen.p.5
• The Naples witness's reliability was assessed as unknown; the RCMP memorandum records she 'appears to be of a low average intelligence,' illustrating the unfiltered credibility language embedded in the Canadian reporting chain.p.6
• John Pushie of Sydney, NS submitted long-exposure photographs taken with a Minolta 150mm lens at f/3.5 on bulb setting (30–40 second and 3–4 minute exposures); NRC astronomers unanimously identified the images as star trails of Vega in Lyra caused by camera instability.p.16
• Reports flowed through a formalized multi-agency chain: RCMP detachments telexed to Canadian Forces Base operations centres, which relayed to NDOC Ottawa, which routed to NRC Planetary Sciences for UAP cases and to the NRC Meteor Centre for fireball/meteorite reports.p.9

Most interesting

• The Richmond witness worked at Vancouver International Airport as an insurance sales person — a detail the RCMP investigator explicitly leveraged to assess her competence to distinguish aircraft from anomalous objects.
• The Naples, Alberta Doberman's alert preceded the human witness stepping outside, placing an animal-reaction detail in the formal RCMP memorandum forwarded to the NRC.
• The RCMP investigator's credibility note on the Naples witness — including the low-intelligence characterization — was transmitted verbatim in an official document to a federal scientific agency, illustrating how subjective assessments were institutionally preserved rather than filtered.
• NRC astronomers achieved a full resolution chain for the Pushie case: sighting, photographic evidence, scientific review, and written explanation returned to the original witness — one of the few complete cases in the visible pages.
• A two-officer Yellowknife RCMP patrol independently observed a fireball for approximately two seconds before it disappeared behind a two-storey building, producing one of the few law-enforcement dual-witness reports in the visible portion of this segment.
• The NRC maintained two distinct intake channels within a single agency — Planetary Sciences for UAP cases and the Meteor Centre for fireballs — with some reports simultaneously addressed to both, suggesting ambiguity at the relay stage about how to classify the phenomenon.