RECOVERED OLD FILE
Posted Sep 03.2000
(Original headline: Canada's Fox Mulder keeps UFO files )
Five years after Canada's X-files were dropped by the National Research Council, UFOs are under close inspection again.
But don't expect to find the reports locked away in a top-secret, high-tech government office.
They're sitting in Chris Rutkowski's house in Winnipeg.
It seems he's one of the few people who care enough to collect national UFO reports these days.
Mr. Rutkowski keeps tabs on reports of unusual and unexplained celestial happenings and publishes the Canadian UFO Survey every year. He also founded Ufology Research of Manitoba and recently authored a book about mysterious Canadian UFO sightings.
"That's right," he sighed jokingly. "I'm the Canadian Fox Mulder."
Mr. Rutkowski, a public relations officer with the University of Manitoba, has a master's degree in astronomy and has followed developments in UFO research since he was a young boy.
"I share my belief with most other astronomers that there probably is life out there somewhere," Mr. Rutkowski. But he wants cases to be investigated using rigorous scientific methods.
"We thought there still was public interest in this. People were still reporting things in the same amount of numbers. It was just that there was no central collection agency."
The National Research Council stopped keeping track of UFO sightings more than five years ago when budget cuts forced them to axe several geophysics programs. Jacques Vallee *, a physicist with the council's Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics, said UFO research was no longer relevant to the institute's research program.
"We got out of it because there was nothing scientific that came out of the research."
At the time, the council published a statement that said: "The National Research Council of Canada's Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics has no factual knowledge about Extraterrestrial Unidentified Flying Objects nor any evidence that life has existed on other planets."
The National Archives have several collections dealing with UFO reports from various government agencies such as the RCMP, the Department of Defence and the National Research Council. The Civil Aviation Operations Centre of Transport Canada, which historically passed on UFO reports to the Armed Forces, continues to receive reports, although fewer and fewer each year.
Myron Hunsicker, superintendent of operations, was one of the people who used to take care of UFO reports.
About three years ago, Mr. Hunsicker said, his office and Defence Department officials realized that neither department was interested in the reports.
"We used to send everything into them, and they used to send them back to us. Each one was thinking that the other wanted the reports," he said. But as it turns out, neither department "really cared anymore."
Now his office simply acts as a post office, Mr. Hunsicker said. They forward reports to Mr. Rutkowski, who keeps track of sightings on a volunteer basis.
More than 2,000 cases now fill his file cabinets.
He said witnesses reported 250 UFO sightings in Canada in 1999, with only three pre cent to 10 per cent remaining unexplained.
"There still is a handful of cases every year that are puzzling," he said.
The Annapolis County community of Upper Granville made it into the survey in March when the Greenwood airbase received a report from an anonymous caller of a strange glowing object on the western horizon.
Mr. Rutkowski said the UFO was likely a planet reflecting coloured light when it reaches a point in its orbit that makes it visible on the Earth's horizon.
The Maritime provinces have had a remarkable number of cases over the years, he said, including the mysterious Shag Harbour sighting of 1967.
On Oct. 4 of that year, several witnesses in the Shelburne County village said they saw a glowing object plunge into the harbour, leaving a coloured foam on the water.
Note: I can confirm that the Jacques Vallee* mentioned in the above article is not the celebrated astronomer, computer programmer and UFO researcher we all know about, but a Canadian Astrophysicist with a long and distinguished career. FS¬
