Archives release last UFO reports

JIM BRONSKILL
Southam Newspapers
OTTAWA

The space aliens were less than five feet tall, with pointed ears and almond-shaped eyes.

Although the creatures had only three fingers on each hand, they wore five-fingered medical gloves as they conducted tests on the Ottawa boy aboard their grey spaceship.

"They communicated to him without moving their lips, ensuring that he would be all right."

The far-fetched script of a Canadian sci-fi program?

No, an official report from the National Defence Operations Centre. It's just one story from the latest batch of UFO sightings filed with the federal government.

The vivid account of an eight-year-old boy's abduction is the closest encounter of the alien kind among the 54 reports made public this week - with names deleted - by the National Archives.

For years, the Defence and Transport departments, as well as the RCMP, have received reports of glowing objects in the sky from across the country. They have duly forwarded the reports to the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics at the National Research Council. In turn, the NRC bundled a stack of the reports off to the Archives each year.

As a result, the reports - dubbed Non-Meteoritic Sightings by the Archives - have effectively become Canada's version of the X-Files, the stories chronicled in the popular TV show about otherworldly phenomena.

The newest selection of reports, which cover late 1994 through August 1995, may be the last the Archives release: the NRC, stung by budget cuts, has stopped collecting them.

The Ottawa abduction account was telephoned by the boy's mother to National Defence in March 1995, no doubt making it a memorable shift for the master corporal who typed the report to the NRC.

The creatures, six in all, wore necklaces with stars, according to pictures drawn by the boy. "He was placed on a table located on the front of the ship. He believes his head and chest were examined."

The duty officer suggested the boy see a doctor and advised the woman to contact police.

An Alberta woman who told the RCMP of a fluorescent orange ball in the January night sky got a visit two days later at her Cold Lake home from a constable who interviewed her at length and looked at sketches she made.

The round, glowing object emitted a light that had a strange effect on the woman.

"It sounds stupid, I know," she told the Mountie. "But when you looked into the path you got a funny feeling like something was watching you, or something is touching you."

A Saskatchewan farmer was driving with his family one afternoon when he saw an object with red, blue and white lights flashing irregularly in the sky. It made a sudden turn - much too sharp for a helicopter.

"The object was flying over my uncle's cattle," he told RCMP from the nearby Rosetown detachment. "I figure we got to within one mile away from it before it took off in the opposite direction."