Library and Archives Canada’s “Canada’s UFOs: The Search for the Unknown” database held 9,830 sighting reports spanning 1947 to 1995, sourced from RCMP officers, military personnel, Transport Canada officials, and civilian witnesses across the country. The database at collectionscanada.gc.ca/databases/ufo/ is now fully offline. What it documented, however, remains: Canada ran the world’s first government-funded UAP research program, and its lead scientist produced a classified memo in 1950 stating the investigation was ranked above the hydrogen bomb in secrecy.
Project Magnet: The World’s First Government UAP Program
In 1950, Wilbert B. Smith — a senior radio engineer at Canada’s Department of Transport — was authorised to establish Project Magnet, a formal government-funded investigation into UFO phenomena. He operated a research station at Shirley’s Bay, near Ottawa, equipped with instruments designed to detect electromagnetic anomalies associated with reported sightings.
Smith ran Project Magnet from 1950 to 1954. Its official findings, published in the Project Magnet Report of 1952, concluded that flying saucers were real, that they likely operated on principles of geomagnetics, and that they represented technology beyond current human capability.
The Geo-Magnetics Memo: November 21, 1950
Before Project Magnet was established, Smith wrote an internal classified memo titled “Geo-Magnetics” on November 21, 1950, addressed to the Controller of Telecommunications. It is one of the most significant government documents in UAP history. Smith reported that, based on discreet inquiries made in Washington DC, he had established the following:
- The matter of flying saucers was classified higher than the H-bomb in the United States
- Flying saucers existed and their modus operandi was unknown
- A small group of scientists — presumably within the US government — was actively studying the problem
- The phenomenon was considered of the utmost significance
Smith’s Washington contacts were later identified as having included Robert Sarbacher, a US Defence Department consultant, who confirmed in writing in 1983 that UFOs were real, that the subject was classified beyond top secret, and that recovered materials had extremely high tensile strength.
August 8, 1954: The Shirley’s Bay Detection
On August 8, 1954, the instruments at Project Magnet’s Shirley’s Bay station recorded a strong electromagnetic disturbance in a cloudless sky. Smith and his team were present. The readings were consistent with the type of anomalous field he had been tasked to detect. Visibility was clear. No conventional aircraft was identified as the source.
The incident was the most significant instrumental detection in Project Magnet’s four-year history. It was also among the final events before the project was officially wound down later that year.
Project Second Storey: 1952–1954
Running concurrently with Project Magnet, the Canadian government established Project Second Storey — a formal advisory committee drawn from the Defence Research Board, the RCAF, the National Research Council, and other agencies. Its mandate was to collect, collate and study UFO reports from across the country. Project Second Storey produced the institutional infrastructure that fed directly into the LAC database that later held 9,830 reports.
The Database: What It Held
The “Canada’s UFOs: The Search for the Unknown” database, when it was live, contained:
- 9,830 sighting reports from 1947 to 1995
- Reports sourced from RCMP officers, military personnel, Transport Canada officials, and civilians
- The complete Project Magnet files including the Geo-Magnetics memo
- Project Second Storey committee records and assessments
- Defence Research Board correspondence
- Reports from every Canadian province and territory
The database was accessible at collectionscanada.gc.ca/databases/ufo/ and was one of the most comprehensive civilian-accessible government UAP archives anywhere in the world. It is now offline. Library and Archives Canada’s current website (bac-lac.gc.ca) returns server errors or redirects on all former UFO database URLs. The content is not accessible via the Wayback Machine in its database-query format.
The Oracle Assessment
The Wilbert Smith network is one of the least-documented threads in UAP history and one of the most significant. Smith was not a fringe researcher — he was a government engineer with departmental authorisation, producing classified memos, running funded research stations, and making contacts in the US defence establishment who confirmed on the record that the subject was classified above the hydrogen bomb.
The fact that Canada’s UAP database is now completely offline — with no public explanation, no replacement, and no accessible archive — is itself a data point. Canada was ahead of the US in formalising UAP research. The record of that program has been progressively made less accessible over the last decade.
The MP Larry Maguire letter of 2023, demanding a classified briefing on Defence Research and Development Canada’s involvement in UAP retrieval programs, exists in this same institutional lineage. The DRDC is the direct successor to the Defence Research Board that ran Project Second Storey. The thread runs from 1950 to the present day.
Sources: Library and Archives Canada, collectionscanada.gc.ca/databases/ufo/ (archived). Wilbert Smith, Geo-Magnetics memo, November 21, 1950. Project Magnet Report, 1952. Robert Sarbacher correspondence, 1983. MP Larry Maguire letter to Minister Anita Anand, March 22, 2023.