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🇨🇦Canada· 1950-1954Historical

Project Magnet and Canadian UFO records

Department of Transport / Library and Archives Canada

Project Magnet was a small Department of Transport study (1950-54) led by senior radio engineer Wilbert B. Smith — Canada's official, government-funded UFO research program. The full Magnet correspondence and the broader DND/RCMP UFO holdings are now available through Library and Archives Canada.

Library and Archives Canada — Canada's UFOs collection

About the program

Project Magnet was authorized in late 1950 inside the Department of Transport's broadcast and measurements section. Wilbert Smith — a senior engineer with a substantial professional reputation — argued that magnetic-field anomalies might be the propulsion mechanism behind the post-war UFO wave and convinced the department to fund a small experimental observatory at Shirley's Bay, Ontario.

Project Magnet ran officially from 1950 to August 1954, when the Department of Transport withdrew funding. Smith's interim report, his contemporaneous correspondence with the U.S. Research and Development Board, and the now-famous 1950 'Top Secret' memorandum referencing crashed-disc material are all part of the declassified record held by Library and Archives Canada.

Beyond Magnet, the Canadian UFO archive includes the parallel Project Second Storey (Defence Research Board, 1952-54) and decades of RCMP and DND incident reports. LAC has digitized large portions of this material under its 'Canada's UFOs: The Search for the Unknown' collection page.

Landmark documents

Direct primary-source links. Where a backup mirror exists for a known link-rot risk, we name the host.

  • Case collection · Online collection launched mid-2000s

    Canada's UFOs — Library and Archives Canada online collection

    LAC's curated online portal to Project Magnet, Project Second Storey, RCMP files, and DND incident reports. Includes scanned originals and finding aids.

    Primary source
  • Investigation report · Project Magnet operations 1950-54

    Wilbert B. Smith — Project Magnet report (Shirley's Bay, 1952)

    Scanned PDF of the original Project Magnet report from Shirley's Bay, Ontario, where Smith operated his observatory. Hosted directly by Library and Archives Canada.

    Primary source
  • Investigation report · 22 April 1952

    Project Magnet meeting minutes (22 April 1952)

    Original minutes from the Project Magnet steering meeting. Scanned PDF held by LAC alongside the rest of the Magnet correspondence.

    Primary source

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