[{"year":"1947","title":"Project Sign era begins","body":"The first modern sighting wave reaches Canada. Wartime security apparatus in both Canada and the United States is already watching the sky."},{"year":"1950","title":"Project Magnet starts","body":"The Department of Transport lets engineer Wilbert Smith research, part time, whether UFOs could ride Earth's magnetic field. Smith later sets up a UFO observatory outside Ottawa and launches a balloon over the city to watch for reports. The project is terminated in 1954."},{"year":"1952","title":"Project Second Storey","body":"The Defence Research Board forms a committee to look at flying saucers crossing Canadian territory as reported by the armed services. It is chaired by the NRC astronomer Dr. Peter Millman."},{"year":"1954","title":"A standing reporting instruction","body":"Joint Chiefs of Staff issue communication instructions for reporting vital intelligence sightings from airborne and waterborne sources - the ancestor of the mandatory pilot reports that run for decades. Secondary sources date this instruction to 1954; the designation usually given for it, JANAP 146(C), could not be confirmed against a primary document here."},{"year":"1957","title":"The federal file opens","body":"One of the earliest documents in the National Defence UFO file is dated to the mid-1950s; a commonly cited date is 24 November 1957, which this project could not confirm against a primary document. The Library and Archives Canada collection runs from 1947 to the early 1980s, about 9,500 digitized documents."},{"year":"1967","title":"Two cases that stuck","body":"20 May, Falcon Lake, Manitoba: Stefan Michalak is burned by a disc. 4 October, Shag Harbour, Nova Scotia: an object goes into the water and is never found. Defence still identifies the Falcon Lake case as unsolved, and has never said the same about Shag Harbour."},{"year":"1967","title":"The NRC takes over","body":"On the recommendation of the Minister of National Defence, responsibility for UFO reports transfers to the National Research Council, which runs the file into the 1990s."},{"year":"1970","title":"Maritime reports accumulate","body":"An RCMP report on a Halifax County sighting of 9 December 1970 lands in the NRC's Herzberg Institute file - one of many Atlantic records that were filed and then forgotten."},{"year":"1974","title":"Gander","body":"Two nights of airborne encounters over Newfoundland, with a Cessna at 5,000 ft and a Capital Airlines DC-8 both reporting an object; the file is copied to the NRC's Upper Atmosphere Research Section in Ottawa."},{"year":"1978","title":"The Labrador run","body":"Reports move up the Labrador coast through late 1978 - Clarenville, Gander, St. Anthony - with police and radar involved in at least one of them."},{"year":"1990s","title":"The file closes","body":"NRC collection ends. For decades there is no federal body collecting public UAP reports at all, and pilots still file mandatory occurrence reports into CADORS with no analysis."},{"year":"2010-2019","title":"CIRVIS","body":"Vital-information sighting reports continue to be filed by pilots, air traffic controllers and crews, and are released as a ten-year compilation in 2021 through an access-to-information request."},{"year":"2019","title":"Library and Archives Canada publishes the podcast","body":"The LAC Discover podcast runs a two-part episode on the Falcon Lake case with Stan Michalak, Chris Rutkowski and Palmiro Campagna, drawing directly on the archived files."},{"year":"2023-02-11","title":"Yukon","body":"NORAD downs an object at 40,000 feet over central Yukon after Canadian and US aircraft are scrambled. A third interception in a week; the RCMP recovers debris."},{"year":"2024-11-28","title":"Question 3227","body":"MP Larry Maguire tables a written question asking how many unidentified objects have been tracked since January 2023, referring to the Yukon intercept as \"UAP 23\"."},{"year":"2025-06","title":"Sky Canada Project","body":"The Office of the Chief Science Advisor publishes Management of Public Reporting of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in Canada - 59 pages, 14 recommendations, and a recommendation that a federal department be named to hold the file."},{"year":"2026","title":"The question goes unanswered","body":"Written Question 3227, on the Yukon intercept, sat unanswered until the 44th Parliament dissolved. The Library of Parliament now marks it as historical information the government is no longer required to answer."},{"year":"2026-07","title":"Sixty years, still a visitor centre","body":"The Shag Harbour UFO Incident Society keeps the interpretive centre on Highway 3 open, and the case still draws an annual gathering. The first caller, Laurie Wickens, died in 2026 at 76."},{"year":"2026","title":"The United States releases, Canada does not","body":"The US Department of War releases declassified UAP records in tranches under PURSUE, starting 8 May 2026; the sixth tranche followed on 18 September 2026. No Canadian equivalent has followed, and the Sky Canada Project's first recommendation - name a department to hold the file - is still unimplemented.","now":true}]