Around the world
Canadian cases, from Shag Harbour to Falcon Lake. 30 events, newest first.
Select any year above to see what happened that year.
GovernmentJun 2025
The Office of the Chief Science Advisor of Canada published its Sky Canada Project report on how public UAP reports are handled. It recommended naming a lead federal agency, creating a service to collect and publish analyses, and encouraging pilots to report without stigma.
Photo: Phillip Jeffrey, CC BY-SA 2.0
Government11 Feb 2023
Canadian Defence Minister Anita Anand said NORAD aircraft, on the prime minister's order, downed a small cylindrical object flying near 40,000 feet over central Yukon. She said recovery was under way with the military and RCMP and that its origin and purpose were unknown.
Photo: Tech. Sgt. Jack Sanders via U.S. Secretary of Defense, Public domain
Government2023
The Office of Canada's Chief Science Advisor began a review of how the federal government handles public UAP reports, its first such look in decades. Its 2025 report recommended naming a federal body to collect, investigate and publish UAP data.
Photo: Phillip Jeffrey, CC BY-SA 2.0
Media13 May 2019
Stanton Friedman, a nuclear physicist who lectured on UFOs for five decades and whom a colleague called the original civilian investigator of the Roswell crash, died at 84 at Toronto Pearson airport while returning home to Fredericton. He said he never saw a UFO himself.
Photo: SMG2019, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings12 Oct 2017
A drone struck a Skyjet Beechcraft King Air with eight passengers inbound to Quebec City's Jean Lesage airport, causing minor damage. Transport Minister Marc Garneau called it the first drone collision with a commercial aircraft in Canada; the operator was not identified.
Photo: Harfang, CC BY 3.0
Sightings2012
Winnipeg-based Ufology Research's annual Canadian UFO Survey counted 1,981 UFO reports in Canada for 2012, about double 2011 and above the prior 2008 record. It judged about 7.5 percent of the 2012 reports unexplained, down from 11 percent the year before.
Sightings14 Jan 2011
Over the mid-Atlantic, the first officer on an Air Canada Boeing 767 first took Venus for an aircraft, then misjudged real oncoming traffic and pushed the nose down. Canada's Transportation Safety Board found 14 passengers and 2 flight attendants were injured.
Photo: Jean-Philippe Boulet, CC BY 3.0
Sightings25 Sep 2009
Seven all-sky cameras of Western University's Southern Ontario Meteor Network recorded a fireball about 100 times brighter than the full Moon at 9:03 pm. Analysis pointed to the Niagara Peninsula, and a 46 g fragment was found on the hood of an SUV with a cracked windshield in Grimsby.
Sightings20 Nov 2008
A fireball seen by thousands from Edmonton to Saskatchewan was caught on widely shared video. A University of Calgary team traced it to a field near Lloydminster and recovered more than 100 meteorites, a record-setting Canadian fall.
Photo: Dale Nosko, CC0
GovernmentSep 2005
Paul Hellyer, a former Canadian defence minister, became a public UFO advocate when he spoke at a Toronto symposium in September 2005. He later urged governments to disclose alleged alien technology; an astronomer quoted in the press said there was little evidence of visits.
Photo: Government of Canada, Public domain
GovernmentAug 2005
Library and Archives Canada launched 'Canada's UFOs: The Search for the Unknown', an online collection of digitized UFO files from the Departments of Transport and National Defence, the RCMP and the National Research Council, covering reports from 1947 to the early 1980s.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons user (own work), CC BY-SA 3.0
Sightings18 Jan 2000
A morning fireball brighter than daylight was seen across the Yukon and northern British Columbia. U.S. defense satellites recorded a 2-3 kiloton explosion, and a local guide found carbonaceous meteorites on the ice of Tagish Lake a week later.
Photo: Mike Zolensky, NASA JSC, Public domain
Close encountersSep 1999
University of Waterloo psychologists J. Allan Cheyne, Steve Rueffer and Ian Newby-Clark published research on hallucinations during sleep paralysis. They described an 'Intruder' pattern of sensed presence, fear and visions, which researchers have weighed as one source of night-visitor accounts.
Photo: JFVoll, CC BY-SA 4.0
Close encountersNov 1993
Psychologist Nicholas Spanos and colleagues at Carleton University reported in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology that UFO reporters scored no higher on psychopathology tests than comparison groups, but that intense experiences were more often sleep-related.
Sightings7 Nov 1990
Guests, staff, police officers and La Presse reporters watched a cluster of lights above the Hotel Bonaventure for nearly three hours. A 1992 study by Bernard Guenette and Richard Haines argued for a large object; the case has no official explanation.
Photo: Jeangagnon, CC BY-SA 3.0
Sightings1989
The civilian group Ufology Research began its annual Canadian UFO Survey with a tally of UFO reports from 1989. The series has continued every year since, giving Canada a running national count of reports.
Sightings26 Oct 1978
RCMP Constable James Blackwood and about a dozen residents reported a lit object hovering over the water between Clarenville and Random Island for about two hours before it rose and vanished. Blackwood said it mirrored his cruiser's lights. The Royal Canadian Mint marked the case on a 2020 coin.
Photo: Rioux Photography Edmonton, AB, Public domain
Sightings24 Jan 1978
The Soviet reactor-powered satellite Cosmos 954 reentered over western Canada and scattered radioactive debris across the Northwest Territories. Residents of Yellowknife and Hay River described a burning object trailing pieces; a joint U.S.-Canadian search followed. An identified sky event.
Photo: Federal Government of the United States, Public domain
Sightings1975
Through spring and summer 1975 residents around Carman, Manitoba reported a recurring red light that locals nicknamed 'Charlie Redstar'. Some reports went to the RCMP and federal agencies; researcher Chris Rutkowski, who studied the wave, says most were distant lights in the night sky.
Photo: Winnipeg Photo. Co., Public domain
Sightings1974
Farmer Edwin Fuhr said he saw five saucer-shaped objects hovering by a slough while swathing near Langenburg, then watched them leave at speed. An RCMP report recorded five circles of flattened crop where he said they had been. No explanation was established.
Photo: Madgelake at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0
Government12 Mar 1968
Atmospheric physicist James McDonald told a Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute symposium that UFOs were a serious scientific problem, criticized Project Blue Book as inadequate, and called for well-funded international research.
Photo: United States Government, Public domain
Government1968
Canada's National Research Council began collecting UFO sighting reports in 1968, taking the job from the Department of National Defence, which handed over reports dating from 1965. The NRC kept collecting until August 1995; the records are now at Library and Archives Canada.
Photo: Hayden Soloviev, CC BY 4.0
Sightings4 Oct 1967
Fishermen, RCMP officers and others reported a lit object descending into the sea off Shag Harbour, Nova Scotia; boats found only yellow foam and a navy dive team found nothing. RCMP and military messages referred to an unidentified flying object, and no official explanation was ever given.
Photo: SnowyBadger, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings20 May 1967
Amateur prospector Stefan Michalak said a landed craft near Falcon Lake, Manitoba, vented hot gas that set his shirt alight and left grid-shaped burns. The RCMP and RCAF investigated, a University of Colorado team studied it for the Air Force, and no definitive explanation was reached.
Photo: Jd.101, CC BY-SA 3.0
SightingsJun 1954
The captain and copilot of a BOAC Stratocruiser flying from New York to London reported one large dark object and six smaller ones pacing the airliner toward Goose Bay. The Condon study judged a mirage of distant terrain the likely cause, though one aspect stayed unexplained.
Photo: RuthAS, CC BY 3.0
