Project Magnet: Canada’s 1950s Flying Saucer Study

Wilbert Brockhouse Smith was a radio engineer with the Department of Transport, which at the time was responsible for radio and broadcasting regulation in Canada. He was involved in technical work on radio propagation and the ionosphere, and he had a strong interest in geomagnetism.

Smith became convinced that the flying saucer reports of the late 1940s might point to a new kind of physics, in which craft could draw on the Earth’s magnetic field. He sought permission to use departmental resources to study both the reports and the underlying science. He died in 1962, and is regarded by ufologists as an early serious government figure in the field.

In late 1950 Smith wrote a memorandum to his superiors proposing a study. In it he reported that, through contacts in the United States, he had been told that the American government treated the subject of flying saucers as extremely highly classified. That memorandum later became famous among researchers, but it records what Smith said he had been told, not official confirmation from the United States.

The Department of Transport approved a small project, with Smith using existing staff and equipment on a limited basis. It was given the name Project Magnet. Its aims were to collect and analyse sighting reports and to investigate the magnetic ideas Smith believed could explain them.

In 1952 the Defence Research Board set up a separate committee, known as Project Second Storey, to consider the problem of sightings from a defence and scientific perspective. It brought together representatives of several agencies, and the astronomer Peter Millman is generally reported to have chaired it. Smith took part.

The committee worked on how reports should be gathered and assessed, and considered a standard reporting form. It concluded that the reports did not contain enough reliable, measurable information to justify a large investigation. It stopped meeting after a relatively short time.

The best known part of Project Magnet was a small observation station set up in 1953 at Shirley’s Bay, near Ottawa. It was equipped with instruments intended to detect disturbances that a passing craft might cause, including a magnetometer and gravity and radio equipment.

In August 1954 the instruments reportedly registered a disturbance. Smith and others went outside but, according to the accounts, saw nothing because of cloud or poor visibility. The event was never tied to anything specific, and it could not be distinguished from an instrument fault or a natural or man-made interference.

Smith produced a report in which he argued that it was likely that some flying saucers were real vehicles, and that they might be of extraterrestrial origin. This was his personal conclusion, and it was not adopted as the position of the Department of Transport or the Canadian government.

In 1954, following publicity about the Shirley’s Bay station, the department ended its official involvement. Smith was allowed to continue his research privately, and he did so for the rest of his life, increasingly drawing on unconventional ideas and contactee literature that took him further from mainstream science.

Project Magnet is often cited as evidence that the Canadian government secretly believed in flying saucers. The record supports a more modest reading: a senior engineer with a sincere theory was given limited support, reached conclusions his department did not endorse, and the project was closed after a few years. Its documents, now at Library and Archives Canada, remain an important source on the early history of official UFO study.