The very first documented sighting of an Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) in this area came from the journals of 18th century explorers David Thompson and Andrew Davies.
Thompson’s journal states that in the autumn of 1792 they were camped at Landing Lake, near Thicket Portage, when they saw a brilliant “meteor of globular form larger than the moon.” The object seemed to come directly towards them, lowering as it travelled, and “when within 300 yards of us, it struck the river ice, with a sound like a mass of jelly, was dashed in innumerable luminous pieces and instantly expired.”
The next morning when they went to see the hole it should have made in the ice, they were surprised to find no markings whatsoever.
David Thompson goes on in his journals to describe a second such meteor, and this one again “passed close by me striking the trees with the sound of a mass of jelly.” He thought the height was no more than eight feet above the ground, although dimensions can be quite deceiving at night, and this estimate could be incorrect. Nevertheless, we are left with an interesting historical account of a strange event in the woods just 30 to 50 kilometres from what is now Thompson.
A more disturbing UFO account comes from 1967. A woman (the family name has been deleted from the case files) was walking through her house around 6 p.m. in Thompson, when she heard an odd beeping sound. It was repeated at regular intervals of about one second, and she wondered what was causing it. She looked out her kitchen window, and saw dirt and loose pieces of paper flying in a large circle around her house. Outside, she found her husband, who had just come home, and five children staring up into the sky. A young boy was holding her eight-year old daughter down on the ground. Up in the sky a rectangular object hung in the air, slowly rotating counter-clockwise and showing alternating silver and black sides. It was black on its lower surface, and made no noise.
The object began moving off on an angle, stopped and hovered, then continued towards the southwest. Until this time the circle of dirt and dust and papers had persisted, but it now died down. The whirlwind was confined to the area immediately around their house and did not affect any other house on the street. When the object moved away, the dirt feel to the ground. Going to the children, the woman found they were calming down except her daughter, who seemed dazed. The boy explained that the five of them had been playing in the yard when the object first appeared overhead.
As they watched, her daughter had been levitated into the air, apparently caused by the UFO in the sky. By the time the other children came to her aid she was about one metre off the ground and her clothes had edged up her body. Her daughter said she did not remember anything from the time she felt the wind until the time she recovered after being dragged back to the ground.
The most famous UFO sighting in Manitoba history also took place in 1967. Known as the Falcon Lake Incident, it occurred on May 20, 1967, when Stefan Michalak claimed that he encountered a unidentified flying object (UFO) near Falcon Lake, while taking a short vacation in Whiteshell Provincial Park, not far west of the Ontario provincial boundary.
Michalak claimed to have been burned by the craft’s exhaust vent, which was covered by an ovular grid, he said.
Michalak, an industrial mechanic born in Poland was a resident of Winnipeg, but had taken a short vacation in the Falcon Lake area, where he had prospected as an amateur geologist before, to search for veins of quartz he had been told could be near the lake.
Shortly after noon, Michalak said he was disturbed by a noise similar to geese grunts. When he looked up, he spotted two cigar-shaped objects, which were red and brilliant as fire. They were descending at 45 degrees, he said, adding the more they approached the more oval they became.
One of the objects stopped in the air, he said, while the other landed on a big rock 160 feet away from him.
After some moments, the object floating above Michalak changed its color to grey, and then flew directly west, disappearing through the clouds. The landed object also changed to grey, and then to a color similar to incandescent stainless steel.
From the interior opening of the object, some violet light rays were emitted, he said, but as Michalak was already using special glasses to examine the quartz, the rays didn’t affect him, he claimed. The object was said to have a sulfurous smell and made a humming noise.
Half an hour passed, and Michalak still was observing the spaceship. Suddenly, a door opened, he said, and he could see that the interior of the UFO was very illuminated. He approached closer and heard some voices coming from inside the ship.
Believing that the object was an experimental American flying object, he tried to make a contact in English. As no answers were given, he tried other languages in vain. Nervous, he walked to the open door, and saw a panel and some lights inside the ship.
He did not see anybody, he said, so he waited. Suddenly, the door closed. Despite the surprise, he discovered a colourful glass around the UFO. It was very well conserved, with no cracks. He attempted to touch it, but his glove simply melted, the heat hurting his hand through the glove’s protection.
A metallic box full of holes came off the UFO in what seemed to be a grid-like exhaust vent. A steamy explosion occurred, he said, and some kind of gas was expelled in his direction. Immediately, his clothes started to burn, Michalak said. As the object flew after the other one, Michalak was left behind desperately trying to extinguish the fire.
Once the fire was extinguished, Michalak said he felt pain and sickness and noticed a metallic odour from the inside of his body, like the smell of something electric that is burning. He initially claimed the burns were caused by airplane exhaust. The RCMP later confirmed that Michalak had been drinking beer the night before the sighting he reported.
The Department of National Defence still identifies the Falcon Lake case as unsolved. Michalak died in 1999 at the age of 83.
A Feb. 23, 1971 UFO sighting at 232 Deerwood Dr. by Gisella and Louis Kovacs is on file in the National Archives of Canada and National Research Council of Canada. From about 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. the Kovacs reported to Thompson RCMP that they saw a “plate shaped object about the size of a full moon. This object was flashing from red to green to yellow to blue also a red flash from the north side of the object was sighted.”
Four federal government departments – the Department of Transport, Department of National Defence, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP)and the National Research Council – all dealt with reports, sightings and investigations of UFOs across Canada between 1947 and 1970 and were involved with collecting data and conducting investigations on unidentified flying objects (UFOs). The Defence Research Board, chaired by Winnipeg-born Dr. Omond McKillop Solandt, through an inter-departmental committee, beginning in April 1952 co-ordinated “Project Second Story,” which had as its main purpose collecting, cataloging and correlating data from UFO sighting reports. The committee created a questionnaire and interrogator’s instruction guide. The reporting method used a system intended to minimize the “personal equation.” In other words, a weighting factor was created to measure the probability of truth in each report. The committee’s minutes were declassified on July 3, 1968.
Since 1970, the task of investigating UFO reports has fallen largely to the Mounties.
RCMP officers G.H. Donovan and E.C. Wesley who investigated the 1971 Kovacs sighting report at 232 Deerwood Dr. in Thompson noted in their official report “the Kovacs were sober and did not appear to have been drinking when the statements were obtained.”
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