Manitoba had its share of UFO sightings reported last year: survey

Manitoba had its share of sightings of UFO or Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP) last year, as unidentified flying objects continue to be reported in Canada at a significant rate.

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According to the results of the 2023 Canadian UFO Survey released Monday, 570 UFO reports were officially filed in Canada with official government agencies, participating private organizations, media, and social media last year.

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Ontario had 23.3% of last year’s sightings and BC had 11.9%, but Quebec seemed to have more than its share by population, at 33.3%. According to the survey, Alberta was greatly underrepresented with only 6.3%, and Nova Scotia was greatly overrepresented with even more than BC, at 12.1%. Manitoba accounted for 3% of the reports which is down from our usual 5-7%, said Chris Rutkowski of Manitoba-based Ufology Research which produces the annual report with the cooperation of investigators and researchers across the country.

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There were 768 sightings recorded in Canada in 2022, a slight increase of about 6% from 2021.

“Usually there’s more reports in B.C., Ontario and Quebec but for some reason in 2023 B.C. and Ontario are much lower than Quebec and the Maritimes are higher than they have been in previous years in general,” said Rutkowski. “I would say the distribution (of the sightings) is a little unusual.”

This irregular distribution is explained to a large degree as because Quebec and Nova Scotia both have civilian UFO groups with very active public awareness campaigns and thus receive substantial media and social media attention.

“There’s no question that one of the main factors is media this year,” said Rutkowski. “In Quebec, there are some very active UFO groups that are on social media and in mainstream media, TV and radio actively promoting themselves and actually trying to get people to report UFOs to them. (It’s) Same thing with the Maritimes with a lot of social media activity. In fact, there’s two separate UFO conferences in Nova Scotia this coming fall and basically not much else happening anywhere else in Canada. I would say there’s a greater public awareness of the subject out east.”

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But social media has proven to be a double-edged sword.

“We originally looked at social media as a really big boon for getting UFO data because it made the reporting very simple, starting with email and later with social media such as Facebook and Messenger and so forth,” said Rutkowski. “In theory that makes UFO reporting much, much easier. But what’s happening is more people are talking about UFOs and UAP and exchanging information and in many cases misinformation about UFOs rather than reporting things they’ve actually seen.

“It’s both a blessing and a curse.”

In 2023, there were two noticeable monthly peaks in reported UAP activity: February and August. The former is likely a reaction of the worldwide interest in the several Chinese “spy” balloons observed and intercepted by American missiles about that time. The August peak has been noted in previous years and there has not been a satisfactory explanation proposed for this.

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“Because of the intense media interest and public interest in what was happening throughout North American including objects that were shot down by the United States Air Force over Canada that I think people were looking into the sky at little uneasily and reporting anything and everything that they had seen.”

Since the annual Canadian UFO Survey was initiated in 1989, more than 24,000 Canadian UFO reports have been catalogued during the past 34 years. This is much more than the files of the United States Air Force’s infamous Project Blue Book, which investigated and recorded 12,618 UFO reports from around the world between 1952 and 1969. And, while Blue Book listed 701 cases as Unexplained, there are currently about 2,612 Unexplained cases in the Canadian UFO Survey database.

gdawkins@postmedia.com

X: @SunGlenDawkins

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