Jingszo !

The truth is in Ottawa. Maybe.

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.

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.

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.

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.