Somewhere in the Skies - Canada's UFOs Declassified with Chris Rutkowski

Episode Date: June 13, 2022

On episode 269 of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, we welcome author and UFO researcher, Chris Rutkowski. Recently, the former Canadian Defence Minister, Harjit Sajjan, received a briefing on UFOs, ahead of the 2021 UAP Task Force Report in the Unites States. Rutkowski was personally selected to contribute greatly to that briefing, being the preeminent UFO researcher in all of Canada. Throughout the years, Rutkowski has led efforts to document more than 23,000 UFO sightings since through the annual Canadian UFO Survey. His latest work found him authoring the book, Canada's UFOs: Declassified, in which he brings forward hundreds of documents pertaining to UFO sightings and encounters investigated by the RCMP, Transport Canada, and various Canadian governmental bodies. He shares some of the most intriguing of these documents and cases also shares his thoughts on where we may be heading with the UFO conversation not only in North America, but across the entire world. Order Canada's UFOs Declassified by CLICKING HERE Follow Chris Rutkowski on Twitter: @ufologyresearch Help the people of Ukraine: https://bit.ly/37ELIRS Ryan is now on Cameo! Book your video today at: https://bit.ly/3kwz3DO Patreon: www.patreon.com/somewhereskies Website: www.somewhereintheskies.com YouTube Channel: CLICK HERE Official Store: CLICK HERE Somewhere in the Skies Coffee: CLICK HERE  Order Ryan’s book in paperback, ebook, or audiobook: https://amzn.to/3PmydYC Twitter: @SomewhereSkies Instagram: @SomewhereSkiesPod Read Ryan’s Articles by CLICKING HERE Watch Mysteries Decoded for free at: https://bit.ly/3rJpbd7 Opening Theme Song, "Ephemeral Reign" by Per Kiilstofte Copyright © 2022 Ryan Sprague. All rights reserved. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/somewhere-in-the-skies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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This is Somewhere in the Skies with Ryan Sprague. Hey guys, Ryan Sprague here from Somewhere in the Skies. And I am really excited about this interview. It has been a long time coming. And he should have been on the show so many times by now. But we have a very good reason tonight. He just came out with a brand new book that we're going to talk about. And that's Canada's UFOs Declassified.

And we have the author and preeminent Canadian UFO researcher. Chris Rikowski is with us today. So let's not waste any more time. We're going to talk about the book. We're going to talk about a very interesting story out of Canada with the defense minister and Chris's connection to that as well. So without further ado, Chris, welcome to somewhere in the skies. Thanks, glad to be here. It's my pleasure, man. Like I said, this has been a long time coming. Well, hey, let's not really, you know, waste any time. This big story I want to talk to you about. out of Canada. You have the Canadian defense minister who actually was briefed on UFOs.

And correct me if I'm wrong, this was prior to the U.S. Intel report that came out as well. But you were kind of at the forefront of this. You were a big part of this story. Would you mind telling our audience a little about what this story was and your involvement with it? Well, sure. As many of your listeners may not know, but I've been involved in euphology for an number of years now. Back, I started in the 70s, so yes, I'm really, really old. And along the way, I became involved with getting material from the various government departments in Canada that were receiving and responsible for looking into UFOs. And back in 2021, I had been contacted by the Canadian Department of National Defense for information regarding what types of materials

should the Minister of National Defense be told about regarding the history of UFOs in Canada and what's currently being done. And since I've been doing this for a while and I've actually been in correspondence with the military and other aviation people in Canada for quite a number of years now, they look to me for assistance. And, you know, doing it. my civic duty, of course, I came up with a series of things to provide to the Minister of National Defense. So to put this in perspective, just imagine if the Secretary of Defense in the United States was going to be briefed on the subject of UAP. That's the equivalent up here in Canada for what happened. So I provided the information, and that was actually the last I heard of it. I wasn't

part of the actual briefing. I wasn't told when it was going to occur, simply that I provided information. And then this year, some diligent doc discoverers here in Canada have been filing various access to information requests. In Canada, they're not freedom of information requests. They're accessed information request. A little bit different. They have some different connotations, but the same idea. Yes, the government, give me everything you have. And one person came up with, they had heard that there was a briefing somehow. And, he asked for the briefing. And what happened was that the government didn't release the briefing itself,

but released some slides, some PowerPoint, that were part of the briefing, and a little bit of information when it occurred and so forth. And in these slides, the Canadian government and defense described what was going on in Canada over the years, sort of the history, going back into the 50s, up to the 60s, 70s, 80s, and to modern times, and noting that a fellow named Chris Rikowsky was in fact receiving UFO reports from the Ministry of National Defense

and Transport Canada, the equivalent of the FAA, and that, you know, that was the current status at that time. And what's interesting is that my photo is actually on one of these slides. So the military, including the Minister of National Defense, knows what I look like. which is kind of interesting. But there was a, there was a, the briefing itself and some discussion that ensued after it,

that we don't have any information exactly what occurred. But I can imagine people are trying to track that down as well. Really interesting. Again, kind of putting it into perspective, like you said, I'm trying to imagine, like, what would happen if I got like an email that day being like, yeah, we need you to brief, you know, whoever the current defense minister or director is here in the United States. So, I mean, what does that look like? Like, did it, was it just like a random email you got from a government issued email address?

Or were these individuals that you've been in contact with throughout the years? Because I know a lot of the files on UFOs throughout the decades have gone directly to you. You are the go-to guy in your entire country, which still astounds me. Yeah. So what does that look like? Yeah, as a matter of fact, it was one of the people who, in one of the, the, military offices who had contacted me. And somebody was actually posted with the minister's office himself.

And, you know, very often I am getting requests from military. Do I have this information or they're sending me a case or something like that? But once in a while they'll send me something like, you know, we have a request asking about this particular case and it mentions you in the official document, do you mind if we release your name. I said, no, that's, you know, that's fine. So I haven't been in contact with this person who had contacted me, and I didn't have a problem with it because, you know, I've been doing this. And again, it's the type of thing that I said civic duty, federal duty, I suppose. But the idea is that, you know, I think this is important information. And the reason that I've

been actually presenting some of these cases, and it's, it's, you know, I would get a case, typically from the Department of a National Defense about a pilot who had seen something. I review it, I take a look at it. And very often I've been posting this on my blog or on Facebook or presenting it at some

conferences or seminars or workshops. So it's not the type of thing that is completely classified. There's a few things as in my book that do get declassified eventually from a higher level. And I can talk about those.

But by and large, these are things that are generally unclassified. And what's curious is that Transport Canada, which is the Canadian equivalent of the FAA, routinely makes available to the public, anyone who wants, information about UFOs that pilots are seeing. And in Canada, they're still actually called UFOs. The abbreviation UAP is not used by Canada, at least in Transport Canada. And over the past 20 years or so, a number of people have filed these requests and I've been getting these requests directly, but there's something like 500 cases where Transport Canada has received sightings from pilots and air traffic controllers and so forth directly to their office. And we know all about them. And we have details.

And in some cases, there are additional documents to support some of them. So, you know, in Canada, you know, we might be considered a little more transparent than the United States. I often say that, you know, ever since Blue Book ended back in 1969 and early 1970, you know, we really haven't had any information about what the United States government has been doing with regard to UFOs or now UAP, up until when we found out about this project that ran from 2007 to 2012. But that gap is still there that we don't know a lot about, although people like Paul Dean and Jan Aldrich and others have been working very diligently to fill in some of that. Whereas in Canada, the Canadian government has a record of investigating and studying the UFO reports and interviewing witnesses right from the 40s up until the present. And we have many of those cases. I have literally hundreds and hundreds of these cases.

that we've looked at, and I've been publishing details of some of them in my annual Canadian UFO survey. So, you know, we do have a little more going in that sense, and yet it's in response to the UAP task force and the attention that's going on with regard to congressional hearings and so forth and testimony now as a result of the Nimitz Tic Tacs and things like that, that the Canadian politicians are getting a little more interested. It seemed that the politicians themselves in Canada were a little hands off until recently, and now they're really starting to get more involved. Right. And again, that's what excites me most,

no matter what everyone thinks about, if progress is being made with the overall UFO conversation, in terms of, you know, here in America with the Pentagon and the hearings and everything. You know, you could argue that for sure that this actually might hinder the transparency that could occur. But I do think it's good that now Canada is sort of following suit. And also Brazil is going to be having their own congressional hearings later this month, where I know people like Robert Salas, a gentleman involved with. with a nuclear UFO case here in the States, UFO seen over a nuclear installation that he witnessed,

will be testifying at the Brazilian congressional hearing along with Luis Elizondo and other individuals as well. So, yeah, it can't hurt. I guess that's the best way I can put it. We'll see. Only time we'll tell what we'll actually get out of all of this when it comes to government in UFOs. But it's pretty interesting, pretty interesting in my opinion. Yeah, and I actually am giving a presentation at the Resilion UFO conference that's coming up in a few weeks too. Really? I did not know that. Wow. Yeah. And so there's a lot of involvement and a lot of interest in the subject. And even though the Canadian politicians may have been a little slow to act in response to what's going on in the States. I mean, Canadian politicians have been presented with information and

have requested information. UFOs have been mentioned in the Canadian Parliament dozens of times. I don't know how many times UFOs have been mentioned in Congress itself on the floor, but in Canada, it's happened quite a bit. And there actually has been a previous briefing to the Canadian Senate, and I've been contacted by some of the politicians sitting members of parliament and a member of the Canadian Senate because, you know, this is something that is worth studying. And I make the case not necessarily with regard to aliens, but in regard to safety and defense. And, you know, that's the approach from the United States as well. Absolutely. Right. And, you know, I think that kind of brings us up to current day with this book that you just release.

again Canada's UFOs declassified. So I'd love to start Chris with the origin story of the book. Now, I'd love to know how did you obtain all of these? Again, I know that people have reached out to you and you have reached out to individuals within the government. And your book is just jam-packed with declassified files from all different organizations and institutions and whatnot. And the one I think that really caught my attention, and maybe it's because I'm an American and I'm very familiar with Project Blue Book. We had here in the state something known as the Robertson panel, which was a very controversial thing during the Blue Book days. And now I'm learning that there was something in Canada called the Robertson briefing,

which really confused the heck out of me. I'm like, are these things connected? What's going on here? Until I read your book and finally realized exactly what this was, how I guess grand it really was. and how important it was in shaping kind of a large portion of your book. So, yeah, would you mind giving us the origin story of how the book came to be? And what this Robertson briefing is.

This really intrigues me. Well, sure. The background is that, you know, the Canadian government has been involved in investigating and research of UFOs for many decades. In the 40s and into the 50s, it was the rest of, responsibility of the Roan Canadian Air Force in about the mid-1960s. Because largely because of Blue Book and Grudge and some of the American comments that were going on, the military in Canada also wanted to get out of the UFO business.

They didn't think it was a defense problem. You hear that comment all the time. They wanted it to be passed off somewhere, but they still wanted to have sort of an arm's-length association with it. So what happened was that the National Research Council of Canada, which I guess the closest equivalent would be the Smithsonian, was given responsibility to receive and investigate UFO reports in Canada. And the problem was that they're based in Ottawa, in the government center. So they needed a way of getting reports from all across the entire country. And what they had was a very ready-made system.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police has detachments and offices right across the country and many, many major and smaller cities and towns. And so they enlisted the police to investigate UFO reports from the public and from pilots and military personnel and send them into the National Research Council who would then take part in some investigations. So that took place starting in about the 1960s. That remained in place until about the mid-1990s. And after that, we started getting into Transport Canada

and some of my involvement a little more directly in getting cases from national defense. But during that time when the National Research Council was investigating, they compiled many, many hundreds of documents. In fact, at one count, there was something like nine or ten thousand separate documents about UFO. And in a little after year 2000, maybe about 2003, 2005 into the 2008, the records for the National Research Council of Canada, every year were transferred to the National Archives of Canada. So UFO reports for all of 1972, for example, went to the archives and then they got ready for 1973.

and the archives is open to the public. Canadian citizen can walk into the archives and do research. And I like many other people, wind of the archives and visited. I just have to get your official card. And, you know, the past allowed you to gain access to a lot of the files. And so I got access to a lot of the paper copies of the UFO files.

And then because there was so much interest in the subject, in the mid-2000s, libraries and archives, Canada digitized nine or ten thousand separate documents from various agencies, the Air Force and National Defense and Transport and so forth, and made them available online. So a lot of people in Canada grabbed them and downloaded them. I think the archives for UFOs in Scandinavia as a copy, Isaac Coy as a copy. and I think a lot of other people have copies, but there's so much material in there,

it's hard to sort out. So based on my files, but then also based largely on the National Research Council files, I delved into what was there, and I went through each document, trying to find some of the more interesting cases and some evidence of what really was going on in the Canadian government.

Now, I have to say that there's a PhD thesis by a fellow named Matthew Hayes, which just came out a few months ago in Canada, looking at what the Canadian government really thought about UFOs. And it wasn't very positive, but it's an incredible detailed doctoral thesis. And, you know, it's one of those things that a good euphologist might get, you know, as a backup. But in terms of the actual cases, because he was looking at the letters to and from various agencies,

he didn't look too much into the cases themselves, I wanted to know are there any interesting cases in there that should have been looked into a little bit more and what happened through some of the investigations. So I went through every document and I found some real gems in there and one of them was this thing called the Robertson Briefing. And what it was in 1967 when the Minister of National Defense was leaving his office and a new one was coming in. The one that was leaving, by the way, was Paul Hellier, who was of UFO types will know, live by name. The new one was called Leo Cadew. And he needed to be brief. Now, this echo is directly what was going on just last year, of course. And what's curious is we don't have the slides from this, from that briefing from 1967, but we have the briefing

itself. And it's amazing. It's 28 pages long. And it lays out the policy. of national defense and what to do about UFOs. It describes what's going on in the states. It describes some of the procedures and the analyses. And there has a section in which they list six cases that can't be explained. In fact, there's actually a statement in this briefing where the National Defense and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police both say that some of these cases cannot be explained. And these were the top six cases out of many hundreds that had been received.

And it's such a very important document that in the book, I insisted that the publisher actually reproduce all 28 pages of this document so that you can see for yourself which are the most interesting cases and the ones that the Canadian government itself couldn't explain. You're great at protecting your data, but lots of places could still expose you to identity theft. thought it was safe. If that happens, LifeLock gives you a U.S.-based restoration agent who will stick by your side from start to finish. Phone calls, filing documentation, preparing insurance

claims, your agent handles it all. In fact, we're so confident restoration is guaranteed, pour your money back. Isn't it nice to have someone like that on your side? Save up to 40% your first year at LifeLock.com slash Spotify. Terms apply. Very interesting. Yeah, it's like sort of to me echoing either Project Blue Book with some 700 cases that remained unexplained or even more currently, you know, these 144 cases that the U.S. Pentagon and defense agency looked at, 144, and they were able to explain one. You know, so it's very telling. And six, hey, that's a lot. When it comes to national defense, that's a lot of cases that remain unsolved and could be a potential threat in some way, shape, or form.

Although I'll quibble with the 144 in that if you actually read what's in the task force, it doesn't say that those ones couldn't be explained. What it says, if you really look at the paragraph a little bit below there, it says these are the ones that for the most part didn't have enough information in order to explain them. In other words, they had an idea, perhaps, that they were a balloon or a plane or something, but couldn't identify exactly which plane or balloon or whatever, except for the one that was a deflating balloon. And that's different because in the Robertson briefing in Canada,

they actually talk about how many cases had actually been received and which ones fell into the interesting and don't seem to have an explanation, but we don't have enough information to say for sure. And so that's the equivalent there. So there certainly were many more cases in Canada noted in the Robertson briefing that were of the quality of what was noted. in the UAP task force, but there were only those six that they said, we really don't know which ones those are.

Gotcha. Thank you for clearing that up. That actually makes a lot more sense now that I think about it. Well, you know, in that comparison, Chris, those six cases, what for you were some of the most intriguing or telling cases that really made you think that this, yeah, this is one that really needs to get out there and we should probably find the answers to you. Any really stick out in your mind? Well, there's two that might be familiar to some of your viewers. One is the Falcon Lake case, which happened in 1967, and Shag Harbor, which also happened in 1967. Very briefly,

Falcon Lake was where a fellow is a bit of a rock hound. He's described as an amateur prospector, was in this area in Manitoba, very rocky, very rugged. He was chipping way at a rock stop for lunch in the middle of the day, and he saw what can only be described as Hollywood-style flying saucers. The sand, one landed on a rock, flat rock outcropping 150 feet away or so. It was domed, disc-shaped, lights coming from it, had a little door that opened on one side from which more light came out. And then there was sort of an exhaust vent,

like a grill or something off to one side. And he at first didn't think it was anything from outer space. He thought it was some sort of American secret landing vehicle. In fact, this was just about the time when the Apollo program was starting up. The tragic Apollo 1 had just occurred. And there was this possibility. of landing on the moon. So he thought maybe this was something

from the Americans that, you know, went astray or are they flying it over Canada and it broke down? So because he thought it was an American device, he walked up to this after a while because he had heard some voices coming from inside, from through this doorway, thinking he was an American ship. And he called out, hey, you know, Yankee boys,

I'll give you a hand fixing your broken down flying machine. And the voices stopped and he thought, oh, it's not American, it's Russian. So he called out, because it happened to be a bit of a polyglot, he had been in the military as well, in a couple of other languages, nothing. But by this time he was standing in front of it, he touched the side of it when he bent to look in this little doorway. His gloved hand, which was covered in a rubberized glove, it melted. This door shut, the entire thing rotated so there is this exhaust vent right in front of him. out comes a blast of hot gas, setting his clothes on fire,

setting fire to the leaves and pine needles around him. The thing took off. And he, you know, rips his shirt off, tries to stamp out the little fire that's smoldering. And he manages to get back to civilization. And he went to emergency at the hospital where he was treated for burns. And the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Royal Canadian Air Force both investigated, and they found the site where something had been, you know, there that were burned pine needles and leaves in a circle. Also, there was radioactive material found

at the site as well. And all of this is documented in these files. And there's the interrogation of the witness, his family, the people who ran the hotel where he had stayed overnight, the bartender, like in everybody, people followed his kids home from school. They talked to his place of work. There was an analysis of the radioactive material found at the site. And then, in addition, a year later, he went back to the site and dug a little bit further into the rock through some cracks, and he found radioactive metal that appeared to have been melted and melted into these cracks. And that material was also tested not only by Canadian laboratories, but also, I think the University of Illinois took a crack at it. I think it was sent down to APRO with the Lorenzans had

some analysis done. You know, we have the actual metallurgical analysis of this. The fact it was radioactive. Plus we have the medical records. He went to the Mayo Clinic. We have the Mayo Clinic records. This is probably one of the best documented cases in all of uphology. The only problem with it is a single witness case, and yet we have so much physical evidence.

Throw that out the window. And the government says it doesn't know what happened. It cannot explain it. That's just one of the cases of the six that they thought was pretty profound. And it gives you an idea of the quality of some of the cases that are in these files. Right. Yeah. Again, quality over quantity, I think, is the key thing here. And we should mention that book right behind you, you co-wrote with, was it his son? The Witness? Is that Yeah, yeah. When they appeared. Wonderful. I highly suggest people check it out.

Yeah, just a handful of years ago, I co-wrote the book with this Witnesses' son, when they appeared. The title is nothing to do with aliens, but it has to do with the fact that military people showed up on the family's doorstep, spent many days and nights interrogating him, and it was quite an ordeal for the family. It's an in-depth study of what happens to a witness of a UFO. Yep. And again, that's what we're all about here at somewhere in the skies, is kind of that human, humanistic lens in which to look at these phenomena and how it impacts people's lives, but not just the witness, their family. You know, like you said, the children were very traumatized by all the attention the father got about this and, you know, all these government people hounding them and news reporters, skeptics, believers, everything in between.

It does take a toll on people's lives, even if they weren't directly involved. So, yeah, again, that's what I love about that case. And it was really cool to know that some of these declassified documents were pertaining to the Falcon Lake Insleeves. which I in the United States feel doesn't get the recognition it truly deserves. It should be more well known than a lot of American UFO cases, but such is the way the media works. As a matter of fact, the site is accessible, and it's not quite at the level of Roswell, but the town actually sells T-shirts and mugs and all that sort of stuff, and they're working on a marker and that type of thing.

And it's curious also that it's in an isolated area. I mean, it's hard to get to. In fact, I'm going out there next week with a tour group. And the only way in that's really practical is doing by horseback. And it's a 45-minute horseback ride in and a 45-minute horseback ride out over some pretty rugged terrain. This isn't ponies following one another. This is horses climbing rock cliffs and things like that. So it's quite a challenge.

I love that. Boots on the ground, if I've ever heard it. I love it. Chris. Hey, guys, Ryan here. The Summer in the Sky's podcast is a labor of love every week. And with that comes many different costs to keep the show running. That's where our Patreon campaign comes in. You give what you think the show is worth. There's different rewards available all the time, including shoutouts on the show, early editions of main episodes, bonus episodes and content, and very, soon, monthly patron hangouts, where we sit back and chat all things UFOs. So I hope you'll consider becoming a Patreon subscriber today. To learn more and to join, visit patreon.com slash somewhere skies. Thank you for your support and keep looking up. Well, I mean, Falcon Lake, that's one thing. But another case that caught my attention in the book was something that happened at Clan Lake, not an area I'm familiar with. And we're talking, again, physical evidence, trace evidence left behind by these UFO events

and were documented in some way, shape, or form by official investigators and documents were created. So, yeah, would you mind maybe briefly running us through the Klan Lake incident and why you thought it was integral to including in the book? Sure. Clan Lake is in the northwest territories of Canada. So it's quite a bit far north. Again, and in particularly a very, very isolated area, fly-in only. And as a matter of fact, this was 1960.

So you're going back a few years, but bear with me here, that a hunter had been dropped off by a float plane, and they were going to leave him there for a week or two and then come back and get them. So he had his provisions. The plane had just left. And as he is working on his camp, he hears a loud rumbling noise and he thought another float plane is coming by. He looks up, can't see anything, turns his back to the lake because he's working on his camp.

And he hears something whistling coming down behind him. He turns just in time to see something metallic with spikes, spinning and spinning and spinning, descending onto the lake. and as it hits the lake, it splashes and throws water in all directions and slowly spins slower and slower and goes below the surface of the lake. So he boats over to where he saw this, and you can see that the reeds in the marshy area at the side of the lake had been torn out and there seems to be a big muddy gouge under the water. and he took one of his paddles and was poking the bottom to see if he could touch anything, but couldn't touch anything. And there was nothing else he could do. So he kind of went back to hunting.

And when he was picked up and got back to civilization, he went to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Office, explained what had happened, and the Mounties thought, well, maybe a plane went down or a chunk of a plane or something. So they flew back with him. and they probed with some long poles. Again, they couldn't find anything, but they informed the National Research Council about this as well. And the National Research Council thought maybe it was a meteorite that, you know, very bright and had fallen,

and maybe it was spinning when it came in. But there was some discussion about what to do. By this time, it was starting to be fall, and the lake was going to freeze. They left it to the spring. in the spring they were trying to get a scientist out with a magnetic field detector to see if they could spot it. And this went on actually for many, many months. Eventually they said, you know what, let's just leave it.

Let's just forget all about it. Which I thought was kind of curious because, number one, if it's a meteor or a meteorite that large, you'd think that science would be all over this thing. You'd think that this would be invaluable. Okay, maybe it was a satellite, a chunk of a satellite. Well, if it wasn't our satellite, it was their satellite, and you'd think that you'd want to retrieve that too. And yet there was no attempt after, you know, 18 months or so, and the whole thing was forgotten and only found through an examination of some of these documents. So you wonder what was really going on, what was found, what, you know, was anything going to be found?

what was this? Because there actually is kind of a sequel to this in that in the 1980s a Russian satellite crashed in the Northwest territories not all that

far away from the spot. It was Cosmos 954 and it was a fairly large Russian satellite that had a nuclear power source on board. And when it crashed into a, you know, thankfully relatively unpopulated area, it, you know, crashed and split apart into many, many pieces.

But many of the pieces were radioactive. So the United States and Canada both went into a joint retrieval operation. They gathered as many pieces as they could. The largest piece was the size of a refrigerator. The smallest was the head of a pin. The operation took many, many weeks. There were actually some settlements, some people were living in the area. They had to be tested and examined.

There's some concern about environmental effects. I think there was like a very rare heron or something that was its nesting grounds that was affected, things like that. And it caused quite a concern. It was a huge investigation. As a matter of fact, Russia was handed a bill for several hundred thousand dollars. which it never paid, but it was quite an operation, and it was fully documented, and this document is available as well. And that's from a satellite, and they retrieve things as small as the head of a pin. And yet, whatever happened in 1960 at Clan Lake, they gave up on, why? I don't know.

That is very interesting. I didn't know about the follow-up. So yeah, it does truly make you wonder what happened decades before that. Wow. That's really cool, really cool. And again, we have the documents to back this up, which is why I love the book so much. Well, physical effects, Chris, that's something I want to talk to you about too. We just had a story come out here in the States recently that the Pentagon did look into physical effects on witnesses when it comes to seeing UFOs or claimed close encounters, whether it's, you know, some say they were paralyzed by UFOs or there was brain damage or stuff like that that happened to them after seeing a UFO. I'm curious, did you come across any cases like that within these files or just cases in general that you know of

where people were physically and sometimes dramatically affected by these UFOs they were seeing? Anything in the files like that? Actually, there's quite a lot in the files like that. Apart from the one that I just mentioned, Falcon Lake, where the fellow was physically burned, and he also had some chemical burns on his abdomen. I think the thing to note about some of these claimed effects, a lot of them came from, I think John Schusler's Pau-Pourri, where it was sort of a collection of stories that he had heard, and none of them were actually documented, and it was included as kind of a note in an appendix, and that made it into a report about UAP.

So, you know, there are cases like that, although this particular, report that was referenced isn't the best source for that, but we do have documents in Canada, at least, that testify to this. In addition to the Falcon Lake case, there were a case in Rivers, Manitoba, actually armed forces personnel were involved. There were eight or nine military personnel who all reported a loud rumbling noise and a bright light descended. There was actually a soldier who was driving with his girlfriend. He was off duty or off hours. And he's driving in the car with his girlfriend.

And this object came over his car. There was a bright, intense light and this heat that enveloped the entire car. When he got back to the base, the car was impounded by the motor pool. The auto body officer said that there was some dust on the car. had never been seen anything like it before. There was some bubbling of the paint that was on the on this particular car. And, you know, there are quite a few interesting cases like that. A lot of tidbits where people seem to have been affected and felt some effects from the case.

There was a case in, I believe it was Nova Scotia where there was a train, a trainman, actually on the caboose, I believe, who an object swooped over the train as it was traveling and he felt some intense heat. There's even a case that I documented in the book of a veterinary effect where a woman was at her corral and just inside the barn. And a UFO was seen in the sky. It shone a beam like a solid beam of light, like a pencil into the barn. and her horses were so agitated that one actually sort of knocked its hoof right through a wall and was injured, and there seemed to be something wrong with one of its, on the side of its neck. So there was a veterinary effect that was reported from a UFO as well.

So there are cases where there are physical effects seen by and experienced by witnesses, but it's interesting to actually look at some of the documentation where this is actually laid out in some detail. Right. Again, yeah, you know, that's, if it's down on paper, it doesn't necessarily make it true, but it shows that it was worth investigating. And I think that's what's most important. Well, you know, we don't want to give away a lot of the good stories, Chris, because obviously I want people to read the book like I did. But the last thing I really want to touch on with you in terms of some of the documents that you did uncover and put in the book were something we don't talk about that much anymore in the UFO world. And that's crop circles.

You know, this was a big thing back in the 80s, the 90s, especially over in Europe and whatnot. But we have them all over here in the Midwest, in the U.S., and all over Canada as well. And you actually came across some documents pertaining to crop circles in the book. book. Would you mind sharing with us a little bit about that? Sure. And as you mentioned, you know, this was 80s and 90s, although I think I saw a post just the other day that there's some formations that have been found this year already in England. Oh, interesting. But we always associate, you know, the real crop circles with England. Right. And yet, in the documentation of some of the files that were declassified, there was a case of a crop circle in place called

Duhamel, Alberta. It's a good cattle and farming country. And a farmer came across some rings in his field. And so he notified the authorities. Actually, it was a roundabout way. He actually, somebody from the local school saw it. And this guy happened to be a UFO fan. So he ended up notifying some authorities. Anyways, the military went out and it was investigated by the Royal Canadian Air Force. Now, that by itself may not seem all that interesting, although, well, Royal Canadian Air Force investigating a crop circle, that's rather unique, except that this occurred in 1967, long before anything was even thought about in England. And there's actually photographs of these rings that were fairly large documented. The Royal Canadian Air Force investigated. In fact, a report on the Air Force investigation is contained in these documents, in the files.

And it's noted as rings and markings in a field associated with UFOs. Even though the farmer never said that anybody had seen a UFO and nobody came forward to say they had seen a UFO, it was associated with UFOs according to the Royal Canadian Air Force. and they investigated, they took soil samples, they measured, they, you know, did, you know, examined in three ways from Tuesday. It was, you know, they did a fairly detailed analysis of this, and they produced a report, an actual study. You know, we think of the UAP studies and all the position papers and whatever that

were found down there. I forget how many 86 or something. Well, this is one from Canada about crop circles or, rings found in a field because of associated, thought to be UFOs from 1967, a very interesting scientific report. And in addition, there was one document that said that a ministerial inquiry was ordered to look into this particular case. So the Minister of National Defense, who at that time was actually Paul Hellyer, ordered

an inquiry into the crop circle that was found in Canada in 166. You never heard Paul talk about this, by the way, in any of his recent stuff, none of his books. And yet, this was something that he himself wanted to know more about, and we have the documentation that something occurred. Again, imagine if the Secretary of Defense ordered an investigation into UFOs or crop circles in the United States, tremendously important. And yet this was going on in Canada

just maybe 50 to 75 miles north of the American border. Something quite interesting was going on. And so Canada has had involvement in uphology all along. United States had Blue Book. Canada actually had two

projects, Project Magnet and Project Second Story. They also were looking into UFOs in national defense and transport. And to this day, transport Canada invites or asks or demands pilots report UFOs to them. And cases are continually being reported to them and also through national defense. So, you know, in many ways, Canada might be, I don't know, ahead of the curve, ahead of what the United States is going through. Maybe they should be taking the Navy and the United States Air Force should be taking tips from what Canada is doing,

rather than what seems to be going on. That's such a good point. I was going to say, you know, America thinks it's always at the forefront of everything and we influence other places. But yeah, I think you guys were ahead of us in terms of how important it is to actually report these things and to destigmatize the nature of reporting. Maybe we would be a lot further than we are now here in the U.S. where I think our government has been backed into a corner and has to now admit things that they denied or lied about. whereas Canada seems to be like, yeah, just nobody ever asked. But here, there you go. Here you go.

We're up here. Yeah. So I love that. I love that idea. Well, I want to know, Chris, in writing this book and coming across these cases and in doing the work you've done throughout all the years, what surprised you most in researching for this book? Anything really stand out as being like, huh, you know, I went in wanting to write about

one thing and I came out on the other side. learning something myself, which I think any author should do when writing a book. What was that journey like for you? And any big revelations by the end of all this? Well, sure. I have to say that this is kind of the first part. I don't want to say the first book in a series, but this only goes up until about 1971 or something like that,

or into the early 1970s and not quite into the 80s. There were many, many more files, many of which had not been digitized, but we've been able to find many of them ourselves, plus everything that's occurred since then. So this is actually just a snapshot of what had been occurring. And whereas the United States' viewpoint was that UFOs and flying saucers might have represented some sort of security threat, some matter for defense, because in Canada, the responsibility for UFOs was given to the National Research Council, a science. scientific body, that the view was looked at more of a scientific issue, more of a Condon issue, if you want to use that analogy, even though Condon, of course, was sponsored by the United States Air Force. So there was this dynamic going back and forth and some tug-of-war. But in Canada, because of the scientific viewpoint, many of the scientists involved did not really

get all that worked up about UFOs. They were sure that people were making stuff up or misidentifying things. In many cases, they did turn out to be such. And one thing I do in my book is I do show that many cases were explained and do have viable explanations. But there were some that didn't seem to have such easy explanations. But because the government had this attitude that it was a scientific problem and it was just a matter of people learning a little bit more about UFOs and what's in the sky and everything

would be hunky dory after that. That I thought that perhaps they really weren't doing their job. They really were not investigating as much as they could. As a matter of fact, recently there's been some discussion on UFO Twitter, places like that that say the Canadian government hasn't been doing anything at all with regard to UFOs and they better get their act together because look what the United States is doing. Whereas the documentation shows the reverse that Canadian government took UFOs very seriously on a number of levels, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Royal Canadian Air Force,

and certain individuals within the National Research Council did in-depth studies of a lot of cases, not just Falcon Lake, but certainly a number of others. and that amounted to dozens and dozens, in some cases, hundreds of pages of documentation and investigation. So I think the biggest problem was that the government departments themselves were not connected. I think the problem was communication, whereas the Ministry of Transport wasn't talking to national defense.

National defense wasn't talking to the scientists. They seemed to be very siloed and compartmentalized. And that was the biggest problem that I saw. And yet, there were enough really good cases in there that they should have been investigated. I mean, there were cases where objects landed on roadways, leaving behind marks in the asphalt, and nobody seemed to investigate those. There were some close encounter cases where individuals seemed to have seen entities, and those weren't followed up on.

So I think the problem was follow-up, but also because there didn't seem to be any consistent and organized investigative body. And what I'm hoping, and I think what most people are hoping from the United States example, is that there will be a consistent investigative body, not just instrumented sightings to be considered like what we seem to be hearing now

from Project Galileo and some of the other organizations that are going to be using all sky cameras and whatnot, because there is a human element here that has to be taken into consideration. I mean, for the most part, these are eyewitnesses and with associated physical effects. And whereas we know, eyewitnesses are not absolutely reliable. And there's many cases where eyewitnesses have been terribly wrong,

including pilots and other people with pretty decent observing capabilities. But eyewitness testimony is good enough to convict people in a court of law. and human observers during the early days of space flight were invaluable in assessing what was going on in space and the defense threat. When Sputnik went up, there was a lot of reliance on civilian observations of Sputnik, for example. And more recently, in aerospace and aircraft dynamics, you know, plane spotters, it's a really. it's a real thing where people, you know, observe planes flying overhead, and this is how some intelligence was acquired with regarding the development of the stealth bomber. So there is valuable information that can be gleaned from eyewitnesses in addition to the two,

you know, sightings and detections made made with technology. And I think the marriage of the two is what we're looking for, hopefully United States, and hopefully something will come of it in Canada as well. Yeah, I love that. Again, you know, mixing the witness testimony with the data, I think, is crucial. We need both sides of the coin if we're ever going to truly figure out what's going on. I mean, you look at the TikTok event and all we had it at first was the video. Everyone's like, okay, cool, but what is it?

Who saw it? Like, what's the story behind this? And then we got the story. And you can start to paint that bigger picture. of what actually happened, how many were involved, how many saw it. And I think you're right. I think there needs to be a cohesion. And that's kind of what I think this new program here in the United States is going to try

to do too, is stop doing this over here with the Defense Intelligence and the Department of Energy and this and that. And let's all come together and say what we know about UFOs and bring all that information together and try to understand what could be either a life. changing profound discovery or a huge, huge, huge threat. So who knows? Who truly knows? And look at the history of it, too, because, you know, what we've been hearing about

the Navy and just recently from the Air Force is that they're acting as if Blue Book didn't exist, which I think is a big mistake because there's a lot of good data in there, including some instrument at observe observations by military personnel. So I don't think they have to reinvent the wheel. In fact, I was concerned when the Task Force report came out and they said there really wasn't a mechanism in place for reporting UAP. And how could that possibly be? Because there are so many reports on file.

And, you know, you just have to look at history. So I'm hoping that there will be some consideration of looking not only at the historical information from the United States, but also from other countries like Canada, which has an amazing documented record of investigation and research at the government level, but also civilian research. I mean, the fact that my civilian research was considered important enough to, you know, to be given to a defense minister to be included in a briefing on the status of UFOs in our country,

shows that there is some consideration being given to the data collection itself. And, you know, I'm hoping I can be part of the, the mechanism or system going forward. In fact, when a Canadian politician, who's got some press recently, Larry McGuire, came public. He came out of the closet regarding to UFOs with a statement,

and he asked a question in a parliamentary committee about UAP, especially those around nuclear facilities in Canada. It's noted that he reached out and was given information and was briefed by Louis Alizondo and Hal Putoff and I think Robert Powell from SCU. But one of the first people who reached out to was me, and I briefed him for quite some time as well. So, you know, there are a number of sources in the United States

where UFO information is kept, but the Canadian connection is very solid. And, you know, the politicians on both sides of the border have a lot of resources to reach out to. Yeah, absolutely. And you know what? That gives me hope for the future. It really does when it comes to this topic. So I guess two last questions for you, Chris, the obvious one being, where can we find the book and all of your work? But I think the more important question for euphology overall, as someone who's been in this field for a long time like yourself, you know, and myself included, I'm no longer considered one of the younger people in this field, which is depressing in some ways, but also, very exciting. We have a lot of younger people getting involved, getting interested. Like you mentioned, UFO Twitter is a thing, which is so weird. And just, I never thought we would get to this point in this conversation. But we are, and there are younger people who are really excited about this topic.

So, yeah, where can we get the book? And let us know what you think we should be looking forward to in the years coming up with euphology. And what advice would you get people first getting involved with this topic. What can they learn from our mistakes and some of our successes, I guess? This episode is brought to you by Planet Oat Oak Milk. Some people like their coffee hot, some like it ice cold, but everyone can agree Planet Oat is made for every cup, delivering the perfect pour, rich, smooth, and delicious every time. Try several varieties like Planet Oat Barista lovers oat milk. It's great for frothing and steaming and will upgrade your at-home coffee. Whether you're team hot or team iced, discover your favorite oak milk at planeto.com.

Well, sure. I'll answer that part first. I think people who are relatively new to the field really should take a hard, cold look of what's been already done. You know, there's a lot of people new to the field who had never read a report on unidentified flying objects by Edward Ruppold, one of the classic and seminal works. read Heineck, read Keel, you know, read Jenny Randalls. There's some really good books out there. I mean, this book that we have right now from mine, Canada's UFOs Declassified, is my tenth book. And, you know, there's so much information to cover. A lot of people have been active in the field for many, many years. And there's sort of a, I think, a reluctance to look upon

the older stuff as being at all relevant. But I think that people are new to the field are really missing out on some of the stuff that's been done. I mean, one of the things that struck me in Canada was how much has already been done in the fact that Canada had crop circles in 67. We have trace cases. We had radioactive material being tested in laboratories.

There's this big thing about meta-materials being found from crashed UFOs that are, you know, the size of a dimer. or something. Well, the stuff from Falcon Lake, one of the pieces of metal is about five inches long. And, you know, much larger than some of the others. In fact, in my book, I describe a case where there's an object that was thought to be part of a UFO that is the size of a large refrigerator and tested by laboratories. So a lot of the stuff that's really hot. hot right now has precedence and has been looked at in a number of ways.

So I would say, well, look at some of the historical stuff and don't ignore it. In fact, there's a resurgence of interest in some of, you know, some old cases that have had explanations that people are now reassessing. In some cases, that's worthwhile. In some cases, it's not worth bothering about because they're hoaxes and have some explanations. So rely on some of the people who have been around a while. But in terms of my material, certainly you can go to Amazon.

I think at least a half dozen or more of my books are on Amazon, so you can find me there. I'm also on social media, Facebook. I'm on Instagram, on Twitter, and I have some YouTube channels as well. So there's a lot of ways to get in touch with me. I have a blog, which is very simple. Forum.blogspot.com is where I actually publish a lot of documents that nobody's seen before about UFOs and comment on what's going on. So, you know, there are people around. And in terms of Facebook, I'm one of the moderators of UFO updates, the classic discussion forum for UFOs

that started in the 1990s by Earl Bruce Knapp. And I was asked to be one of the moderators. of the new version on Facebook, very honored by that. We're trying to keep up as much as we can. I realize there's a lot of Facebook groups out there, but we try to just talk about some of the more interesting cases in a forum that's relatively easily accessible. Yeah, probably one of my favorite groups. They're not afraid to tell you, you know, if you're wrong

or where we should be looking, and we need that. We definitely need that in this field. Not as bad as UFO watchdog, but we're close. That's very true. I don't know if anything will ever reach that level, but hey, we got to keep ourselves humble somehow. Well, Chris, I think, again, you know, not just the book, but the work you do is invaluable to this conversation. And I don't know where we would be without the work you've done there in Canada, my northern neighbor, and where it's all heading. So I want to congratulate you on the book. I hope everyone will check it out. And I want

to thank you for the very first time for coming on Somewhere in the Skies. It's truly been an honor. Thank you. Somewhere in the Skies is produced by Third Kind Productions in association with the Entertainment One Podcast Network.