From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates@virtuallystrange.net>
Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2002 07:35:12 -0500
Fwd Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2002 07:35:12 -0500
Subject: UFO Sightings Up In Canada


Source: Canoe

http://www.canoe.ca/CNEWSWeirdNews0202/26_ufo-cp.html

UFO Sightings Up In Canada
By Scott Edmonds-- The Canadian Press


WINNIPEG (CP) -- From a strange funnel of fire in Alberta to a
triangle of light flying over Sydney, N.S., reports of
unidentified flying objects increased a staggering 42 per cent
last year in Canada.

"We're not sure (why)," said researcher Chris Rutkowski, one of
the authors of the annual Canadian survey of UFO reports.

"We're thinking that perhaps more people are seeing something
that's really there or perhaps more people are aware of how or
whether they should report things."

The trend started well before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11
in the U.S., so that has been ruled out as a factor.

For the first time, researchers also tied reports to cities and
found that Vancouver and Ottawa topped the list with 17 and 15
reports respectively.

Once again, British Columbia was the best place to be in Canada
to spot a UFO. The province accounted for 123 of the 374
reported sightings and has led the country consistently since
1999.

Ontario was next with 87 sightings and Alberta was third with 40
reports.

"All of the cases got some degree of investigation by
researchers in various parts of the country," said Rutkowski,
who works at the University of Manitoba.

"About 15 per cent were left unexplained. The rest either had
explanations or we didn't have enough information to make an
evaluation."

Included on the list of the unexplained was the fire funnel that
left a crater more than 30 metres wide in a field near Etzikom,
Alta.

"Some astronomers and experts in meteorites investigated and
decided that it wasn't (a meteorite)."

A number of sightings were reported in the sparsely populated
North.

"There was a cigar-shaped object that hopped as it flew, rather
than flew regularly, over Whitehorse," said Rutkowski.

It was seen at 10:30 a.m. and left a vapour trail as it moved
across the sky, disappeared behind a mountain and then returned.

"Pilots flying a supply plane in Nunavut saw a stationary light
(hovering) over the ground in an area that's uninhabited and
they couldn't explain it."

Other sightings included:

--Six orange objects spotted flying in V formation over Portage
la Prairie, Man.

--A luminous object that hung in the sky over Hull, Que., for
two consecutive nights before appearing to explode.

--Airline pilots flying over Craik, Sask., who saw what they
thought were the lights of another aircraft until they were told
by air traffic controllers that there was no other plane on
radar.

--Three dots of white light that "played tag" with each other
over Richmond, B.C.

"There were a number of odd cases," said Rutkowski

"There's a mixture of things that we're seeing from one end of
the country to another."

There were 15 so-called close encounters with UFOs or their
alleged occupants reported in 2001, but none of them made the
short list of the best unexplained cases.

They range from a close encounter of the first kind, which is a
sighting within 200 metres, to close encounters of the fourth
kind, which involve actual contact with or abduction by aliens.

"For a case to make the list of the best cases, it's not just
the unusual quality of the report but also how well investigated
it was and how reliable the source was," said Rutkowski.