Project Magnet, 1950–1954: Canada's Government UFO Study
A senior Department of Transport radio engineer, Wilbert B. Smith, persuaded his department to study flying saucers and their possible magnetic propulsion. He built an observatory at Shirley's Bay near Ottawa. Official funding ended in 1954; the records are now with Library and Archives Canada.
Sources Department of Transport and Defence Research Board records, Library and Archives Canada ('Canada's UFOs: The search for the unknown'); Wikipedia, 'Project Magnet (Canada)' and 'Wilbert Brockhouse Smith'
In 1950 Wilbert B. Smith, a senior radio engineer in Canada’s Department of Transport, asked permission to use departmental facilities to study flying saucers. He thought their reported behaviour hinted at a way to use the Earth’s magnetic field for propulsion. On 2 December 1950 the project, called Magnet, was approved as a small, low-cost effort with help from the Defence Research Board and the National Research Council.
Shirley’s Bay
In 1952 Smith wrote an interim report concluding that saucers were probably real, probably extraterrestrial, and probably used magnetism. That October he set up a station at Shirley’s Bay, west of Ottawa, with a magnetometer, a gravimeter and radio receivers.
What remains
The department withdrew official support in 1954, and Smith carried on privately until his death in 1962, increasingly convinced he was in touch with “space brothers.” His reports and correspondence are among the roughly 9,500 federal UFO documents now at Library and Archives Canada.
Ledger status
Marked cited: the project existed and its records are public. Its conclusions were Smith’s own. Map position is Shirley’s Bay area.
Sources
- Library and Archives Canada, “Canada’s UFOs: The search for the unknown” — canada.ca
- Wikipedia, “Project Magnet (Canada)” — en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, “Wilbert Brockhouse Smith” — en.wikipedia.org
Part of the World Ledger, batch 1. Original text; no images are used.
Evidence ledger
Each claim in this file, the source it rests on, and how well it holds up: 4 corroborated. What the labels mean.
| Claim | Source | Type · date | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Transport Canada approved Project Magnet on 2 Dec 1950 under Wilbert B. Smith. | Wikipedia; LAC records | official · 1950 | corroborated |
| Smith's 1952 interim report concluded UFOs were probably extraterrestrial and used magnetism.This was Smith's conclusion, not the government's. | Project Magnet report, LAC | primary record · 1952 | corroborated |
| A detection station operated at Shirley's Bay outside Ottawa from 1952. | Wikipedia; LAC | official · 1952 | corroborated |
| Government funding ended in 1954. | Wikipedia | secondary · 1954 | corroborated |
Discussion
Discussions activating. Per-case threads will embed here once the Giscus GitHub App is installed on the public satellite repo.
Meanwhile, join the conversation on GitHub Discussions: https://github.com/dclewis21/anomaly-ledger-community/discussions
CoS / D.C.: see Community guidelines and
SETUP.mdin the site repo for the one-click Giscus install.