EDMONTON - They were likely too busy cowering in terror to appreciate the milestone then, but Jesuit missionaries living in 17th-century New France recorded Canada's first -- and, perhaps, most lyrical -- UFO sighting.

"We saw fiery Serpents (flying) through mid-air, borne on wings of flame," they wrote.

"Over Quebec we beheld a great ball of fire, which illumined the night almost with the splendour of day, had not our pleasure in beholding it been mingled with fear, caused by its emission of sparks in all directions."

Steven Spielberg movies and supermarket tabloids have stripped much of the poetry and urgency from contemporary UFO accounts, but an author and self-described "ufologist" says more Canadians than ever are convinced they're seeing unusual objects -- even alien spacecraft -- in the firmament.

Chris Rutkowski, co-author with Geoff Dittman of the new book The Canadian UFO Report: The Best Cases Revealed, says opinion polls suggest one in 10 Canadians -- some three million of us -- have seen a UFO.

From 1994 to 2004, official Canadian UFO accounts more than quadrupled, from 189 to 882, as sighters took advantage of the convenience and anonymity afforded by the growing number of UFO reporting sites on the Internet.

Rutkowski's book offers a rigorous, almost scholarly, accounting of Canadian UFO sightings through history. The timeline begins with the Jesuits' eerie encounter and ends in March 2004 with the "very bright light falling from the sky ... with smoke trailing" witnessed in southern Alberta by the pilot of then prime minister Paul Martin's jet and reported as a UFO to Edmonton International Airport authorities.

Rutkowski thinks Martin's pilot likely saw a streaking chunk of meteor or comet that late-winter night. (Martin probably saw it, too, though the Prime Minister's Office refused to return Rutkowski's calls on the matter.)

Many other UFOs -- a shorthand whose simple definition of "unidentified flying object" has been hijacked by pop culture to mean "flying saucers" -- can likely be assumed to be stars or airplanes, Rutkowski says.

But Rutkowski thinks half of those who have professed to witness UFOs genuinely believe what they're seeing is alien spaceships.

"We're still fascinated by this idea that we're not alone.

"And I'm interested in those who believe the aliens really are here. I want to know them, know their belief systems, and investigate their claims," says Rutkowski, who figures he is one of "five or six" serious ufologists in Canada.

"It's not my job to say someone is foolish and did not actually see a flying saucer land in her backyard. My role is to listen to them, study the data and counsel them, for lack of a better word. The most common question I get is: 'Can you help me understand what I've seen? I'm looking for someone who will listen to me and not laugh at me.' To think I'm one of the few people who will do that is quite remarkable."

This isn't to say Rutkowski's book endorses those who think the sky above Earth has become a congested freeway for an invading interstellar armada.

In his book's introduction, Rutkowski lays out a fantastical scenario through which an alien spacecraft might reveal itself to us mere earthlings. It factors in physics, technological advances, velocity, transportation modes, the condensing of time itself.

It ends with a pithy: "Or not."

The passage, he says, sums up his ambivalence about the existence of alien spacecraft, for which he has seen "no incontrovertible evidence."

"The book is about what people are observing, or have observed in Canadian history going back several hundred years. Whether one believes or disbelieves, these are the facts," he says.

"Believers tend to view me as a skeptic, whereas debunkers have attacked me for being too much in the believer camp.

"In our book we don't talk about little green men in pickle jars and 'The Grays' coming to take our resources and women. The subject can be studied very scientifically, from an academic and scholarly viewpoint."

By day, Rutkowski is a 47-year-old media spokesman for a Winnipeg university whose interest in UFOs was sparked 30 years ago, when a strange red light known as "Charlie Redstar" bobbed intermittently over the hillsides of Carman, Man., for 16 months. He would go on to earn degrees in astronomy and science education, publish several books on UFO lore, and listen to thousands of Canadians' accounts of UFO sightings and alien abductions.

His home province also yielded what he calls the most remarkable Canadian UFO case of the last century.

It involved Stefan Michalak, an amateur prospector who claimed to be severely burned by the exhaust of a disc-shaped craft he saw land in the bush by Falcon Lake in 1967. Until the day he died in 1999, Michalak believed the object was a secret American military vehicle that blasted the scalding air and quickly ascended when he yelled at it: "OK, Yankee boys, having trouble? Come on out and we'll see what we can do about it."

Canada's centennial year also had a spectacular alleged UFO crash in the ocean near Shag Harbour, Nova Scotia, and saw the Alberta town of St. Paul build its iconic UFO landing pad "as a goodwill gesture to our extraterrestrial neighbours," as Rutkowski writes in his book.

The St. Paul landmark was officially opened by then Defence Minister Paul Hellyer, who made UFO-related news of a different sort late last year.

Hellyer, by then a long-retired 82-year-old, said he believed U.S. scientists re-engineered alien wreckage from a 1947 UFO crash in Roswell, New Mexico, to create modern technological marvels.

Dispassionate as the prose in his book, Rutkowski says he is not impressed by Hellyer's connection to St. Paul, because Hellyer has yet to reveal "hard evidence" of a government coverup. He remains more moved by a visit to St. Paul in 1982 by the terrestrial healer Mother Teresa, who visited the UFO pad and said: "If there is sickness in outer space we would go there, too."

"When Mother Teresa comes to St. Paul and says that, it shows me that the UFO phenomenon is so firmly rooted in our culture and manifesting itself in so many ways," Rutkowski says.

"It's this grand, grand phenomenon that Canada plays such a prominent role in."

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE WEIRD KIND

In chronological order, the 10 strangest Canadian cases of the past century, according to The Canadian UFO Report: The Best Cases Revealed, by Chris Rutkowski and Geoff Dittman:

- February 1915, Ottawa, Ont.: A "phantom invasion" of unusual aerial objects so panicked Ottawa that Parliament Hill lights were extinguished to prevent attacks by the "enemy."

- February 1951, Gander, N.L.: A U.S. Navy transport flying between Iceland and Newfoundland reportedly nearly collides with a giant circular orange object.

- August 1954, Shirley's Bay, Ont.: A government engineer's instruments record a large magnetic disturbance which the worker believes to be an alien craft.

- August 1956, Fort Macleod, Alta.: RCAF pilots observe and photograph a bright oval object near their plane at 36,000 feet.

- May 1967, Falcon Lake, Man.: Amateur prospector Stefan Michalak is allegedly burned by a saucer-shaped craft that lands near him in the bush.

- October 1967, Shag Harbour, N.S.: Many witnesses observe a bright object crash into the ocean. Later, a patch of luminous foam is found on the water's surface.

- September 1974, Langenburg, Sask.: A farmer comes upon several bowl-shaped objects spinning rapidly in a hayfield, leaving behind circular impressions that predate England's later "crop circles."

- May 1975, Carman, Man.: Hundreds observe a bobbing, bright red light that appears intermittently over the next 16 months. It's affectionately dubbed "Charlie Redstar."

- January 1977, Montreal, Que.: A woman says a saucer-shaped object lands on a nearby roof. Two spindly creatures in tight-fitting suits appear.

- November 1980, Duncan, B.C.: A UFO-obsessed teenager announces to his friends he is about to be snatched by aliens. He is never seen again.