13-07-2025
Laprade and Phillips: What happened to Ottawa's first UFO research station?
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During the summer, we'll carry occasional excerpts from Ottawa Made, a recently published compendium of stories about curious inventions, people and places in the national capital. Today: the search for flying saucers.
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The truth is in Ottawa. Maybe.
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Fans of the television show X-Files — where the expression 'the truth is out there' first entered popular culture and lexicon — may be surprised to learn that the world's first UFO research facility was not in the United States, nor anywhere near Area 51.
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It was on Carling Avenue.
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The facility opened in 1952, a joint research project of the National Research Council (NRC), the Defence Research Board (DRB), and the Department of Transportation (DOT). The scientist leading the project worked for DOT: Wilbert Smith, senior radio engineer for the department's Broadcast and Measurements Section.
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Smith had begun researching UFOs two years earlier, as the lead scientist on Project Magnet, a DOT research study trying to determine not only if alien spaceships existed, but if so, what powered them? One theory was that UFOs used the Earth's magnetic field as a source of propulsion.
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Smith's geo-magnetic studies seemed promising and in 1952 Project Magnet moved to Shirleys Bay, approximately 15 km west of Ottawa, on what was then a seldom used stretch of Carling Avenue.
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Smith unpacked his gamma-ray counter, magnetometer, radio receiver and recording gravimeter and set them up in a small building DOT built by the banks of the Ottawa River. This building became the world's first government sanctioned UFO research facility (that we know about. The truth is … well, you know).
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After two years of radio silence, at 3:01 p.m. on August 8, 1954, something finally happened. The gravimeter at the Shirley's Bay installation 'went wild,' to use Smith's own words. He rushed outside to see what was causing the anomaly but there was nothing in the sky. The clouds were too thick.
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Two days later, the federal government abruptly shut down the research facility. People have speculated for years about possible reasons for the sudden closure, the most popular being … you can probably guess: Smith had detected an alien aircraft and other people — senior and secretive people — would finish the research project. (Interestingly, the CIA was a partner in Project Magnet. The agency was told about the unusual gravimeter reading the day it happened.)
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Smith continued to work at Shirley's Bay (though no longer conducting UFO research) and in 1959 claimed to have developed a breakthrough anti-gravity device. In his research notes, he said:
