The Ottawa UFO Crash

According to the newspaper account that appeared in The Welland Tribune, dozens of people in and around Ottawa saw something flash across the sky and smash into the river. They heard an explosion that was described as thunderous.

Witnesses said that the object appeared to change course a number of times and that there were lights on it rather than it glowing. Some thought it might have been a small aircraft in trouble and because of that, emergency search and rescue crews began to probe the river with sonar and underwater cameras.

A doctor, Dirk Keenan, who was out sailing with friends said that the object was a very bright light in the east, close to Quebec. He thought it was like the headlight of a car that was descending rapidly, leveled off, and then disappeared.

On the next afternoon, about 1:30 p.m. the police and rescue workers located an object about thirty feet below the river’s surface. The current prevented divers from entering the water. A police spokesman told reporters that the size and shape suggested it had not come from an aircraft and that it could be a rock or logs stuck together and that no one had come forward with any sort of photograph or video of it though there might be a reason for that. Some claim that the video footage had been confiscated bu authorities.

To this point it isn’ know if the object found under water is the same as that people reported or something that has been there for a long time. No aircraft were reported missing and it doesn’t seem that this was a piece of terrestrially launched space debris. In other words, this is the classic unknown.

But it turns out that one of the newspaper stories mentioned Chris Rutkowski, a UFO researcher in Canada, that I know. So I asked him what he knew about the case. He wrote that, "I can tell you what I know about the Ottawa ‘crash,’ although I’m not convinced anything really crashed!"

He said that he had called the MUFON representative in the area, but she hadn’t interviewed any of the witnesses. He said that some people who had seen the police searching the area stop the search after the mass was located, and some of them thought a cover-up was now in place because there was no new information. There was speculation that the US, here meaning the CIA I suppose, was now somehow involved, though Rutkowski didn’t subscribe to those ideas.

He wrote to me, "From piecing together what info I have, here’s what I think happened: Lights were seen in the sky and loud booms were heard along the Ottawa River. I spoke with a reporter, and he said that it was his impression that the lights were seen ‘towards’ the other side of the river from where the witnesses were located. (It’s a very wide river at that point.) I do not think anyone saw anything ‘crash’ or (more likely) ‘splash’ into the water. It was assumed that falling lights must have been on a falling object and that since the rive was in that direction, whatever was falling must have fallen into the river."

Rutkowski did learn that some people had been setting off fireworks that might well account for the booming because sound carries well over water. He didn’t know what the object that had been detected was, writing, "Who knows? A car? Jimmy Hoffa? The Ottawa River is like the one that flows through my city, and they’re always pulling things out of it."

Rutkowski said that the key would be to find the two witnesses who might have seen the lights smashing into the water. "Until then, we have no convincing evidence that a UFO crashed in Ottawa on July 27th."