As a fan of the X-Files I have always believed that there is someone else out there in the skies. However, sometimes I thought my late father was nuts when he insisted I join him in a spaceship watch outside on his driveway. In the late 60’s he claimed to have seen something up in those starry skies on Miltimore Road hovering over the Brome Pond area– which I blamed it on too much exhaust coming out of his Ford Pinto. In 1974 it happened again and this time he made me sit for what seemed like hours to see what he claimed was another UFO. Of course I never saw anything unusual and usually handed him a glass of wine and told him to go watch The Rockford Files.
Today, going through the news archives I found out that there were indeed many UFO sightings in the Eastern Townships in that time frame and my father, Arthur Knight, might not have been so crazy after all. In the late 60’s many sightings in the Sherbrooke area have been documented and Michael Phelps sent a letter to the Sudbury Star in 1990in response to a request by the newspaper for personal encounters.
The letter discussed a 1968 incident at an Ayer’s Cliff cottage on the shores of Lake Massawippi that his family was renting. Walking home one evening the whole sky was lit up like giant spotlights being turned on. He looked across the lake and saw 3 or 4 balls descend and after a few seconds they were gone. His sister had seen the same thing, but later they found out that it had not been a visit from beyond, rather it had been nothing but what they call ‘earthquake lights’. These lights in the sky are caused by electrical properties of certain rocks in specific settings. When nature stresses certain rocks, electric charges are activated, as if you switched on a battery in the Earth’s crust.
On the 15th of July in 1974, a UFO wave swept the Sudbury, Ontario and once again the Eastern Townships area. Among these were some UFOs that had a bell shape and that was what my father had insisted he had seen in his second encounter. In October of the same year a bell-shaped UFO was also seen between Deauville and Rock Forest, and in this case, the object was orange in colour.
So today I sit here, over 30 years later, and wonder what my father actually saw. Did he see spaceships, or was it natural mineral gas lights coming off nearby Gale Pond? For those that have no idea what I am talking about– Gale Pond, which is now called Lac Gale, sits on top of Gale Mountain in Bromont.
As a kid we used to climb the rough trail up the mountain where a former volcanic crater sat at the top, disguised as a natural lake. There we would mingle with the campers of Gale Camp that Reverend Peacock of the Anglican church in Cowansville had begun in 1944. Kids would swim off the dam on the south end of Gale Pond and the water warmed up faster than any other lake after a good rainstorm. But did we ever see any spaceships coming out of the water, or was there anything else that would have been labeled odd? Not that I remember! The only thing that would have had something similar to wild lights and burning speed would have been the Farr boy’s toboggan zipping down that trail coming from the top of Gale Mountain.
So what did my Dad see? Personally, I believe there are just two possibilities– either we are alone in this universe, or we are not. I guess we will never know– but after doing research for this story, more of my childhood came back in a flood of memories. It’s just so hard to forget an area that gave me so much to remember– even on the subject of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
During 1994, many residents from the region west of Ottawa reported bright lights in the sky that they are sure are neither planes from nearby Carp Airport nor falling meteors. At least one U.S. investigator believes he knows what’s going on. The area is “saturated” with UFO activity, says Bob Oechsler, of Maryland. “There does appear to be some form of (alien) activity in that area, and there has been for some time.”
Lee Cole, an accountant who lives in Carp, was the most recent to report something inexplicable. On Dec. 1, 1994 Cole and her seven-year-old son, Jason, were driving home along McGee Side Road when they saw a large, bright light in the middle of the road. They followed the light for a while, Cole says, when it dipped behind the tree line and disappeared. “I thought, ‘If that was an airplane, it just landed on the 417.”
At that point, Cole had passed her house, so she pulled into a driveway to turn the car around. As she backed out, the same kind of light appeared in front of her. Cole started driving slowly up the road. The light stayed in front of her car. “It was so intense flood lights, like a stadium.” She began to flash her high beams to see if the light could be a helicopter or airplane, although there was no noise, she says. “At that point, it came down and at us. I started to get scared.” She turned into her driveway, and rolled down the window. The light had come around to her left side. “I was absolutely struck by the silence. There was no noise.”
Cole drove into her garage, closed the door, and called her husband. By the time he got outside, there was nothing to see. A few days later, Cole got in touch with Oechsler, a former NASA employee who for the past three years has been investigating UFO sightings full-time. Oechsler has visited West Carleton eight times to investigate alleged UFO sightings. In May, 1992, he first came to the area after he received an anonymous tape of an alleged UFO landing near Almonte in 1991. The tape was shown on an episode of the U.S. television show Unsolved Mysteries last February.
During the next few days, he says, he had about 50 to 75 “good quality” reports of sightings in the same area. In Canada, the National Research Council is the keeper of sighting reports, gathering them from police and military. NRC scientist Ron Burrows says the council gets “about 100” reports annually from across Canada. None of the reports is investigated.
The NRC gets about three calls a month directly from people who want to report a sighting, said Denise Cardinal, a computer programmer who takes the reports. Roland Armitage, mayor of West Carleton, says UFO sightings are nothing new. “I’ve been reading about them for as long as I can remember.”
Lee Cole witnessed intense bright lights one night last month. “I’ve lived in this area all my life,” says Armitage, 68. Frank Condelli and his daughter were driving into Carp the same night as Cole when they saw a light in the sky. “There have been enough sightings around here . . . that leads one to believe there’s something extraordinary going on,” Condelli says.
The Carp-Guardian case of Eastern Ontario, is the most controversial in Canadian UFO history. The story involves A UFO crash retrieval, aliens, Canadian and American investigators, the RCMP, TV show producers and a handful of witnesses
Expansion of UFO photos bell-shaped taken during the wave 1974 in the Eastern Townships
Yesterday I wrote a story about an incident that took place in 1915. It was a tale of shenanigans by a group of kids that led the citizens of the Ottawa Valley to believe the Germans had landed. Years later paranormal studies attempted to debunk history and insist it was a cluster of UFO’s.
As a fan of the X-Files I really believe that there is someone else out there. However, I have always thought my late father was nuts when he insisted I join him in a spaceship watch. In the late 60’s he claimed to have seen something up in those starry skies hovering over the Brome Pond/Lac Bromont area– which I blamed it on too much exhaust coming out of his Ford Pinto. In 1974 it happened again and this time he made me sit for what seemed like hours to see what he claimed was another UFO. Of course I never saw anything unusual and handed him a glass of wine and told him to go watch The Rockford Files.
Today going through the news archives I found out that that there were indeed many UFO sightings in the Eastern Townships and Arthur Knight might not have been so crazy after all. In the late 60’s many sightings in the Sherbrooke area have been documented and Michael Phelps sent a letter to the Sudbury Star in 1990 in response to a request by the newspaper for personal encounters.
The letter discussed a 1968 incident at an Ayer’s Cliff cottage on the shores of Lake Massawippi that his family was renting . He spoke of walking home one evening when the whole sky lit up like giant spotlights being turned on. He looked across the lake and saw 3 or 4 balls descend and after a few seconds they were gone. His sister had seen the same thing, but later they found out that it had not been a visit from beyond, rather it had been nothing but earthquake lights.
Rare flashes of light are not caused by birds, or planes, or UFOs. Instead, the lights are caused by electrical properties of certain rocks in specific settings. When nature stresses certain rocks, electric charges are activated, as if you switched on a battery in the Earth’s crust. On the 12th of November 1988, a bright purple-pink globe of light was recorded moving through the sky along the St. Lawrence River near the city of Quebec, 11 days before a powerful quake in the Saguenay.
On the 15th of July in 1974, a UFO wave swept the Sudbury, Ontario and the Eastern Townships area. Among these were some UFOs that had a bell shape and that was what my father had insisted he had seen in his second encounter. In October of the same year a bell-shaped UFO was also seen between Deauville and Rock Forest, and in this case, the object was orange in colour.
Lac Gale or as we all knew it as kids— Gale Pond–The Balnea Spa transferred 320 acres of conservation terrain to Nature Conservancy Canada-Photo from Adventurial
So today I sit here, over 30 years later, and wonder what my father actually saw. Did he see spaceships, or was it it natural mineral gas lights coming off nearby Gale Pond? For those that have no idea what I am talking about– Gale Pond, which is now called Lac Gale, sits on top of Gale Mountain in Bromont. As a kid we used to climb the rough trail up the mountain where a former volcanic crater sat at the top, disguised as a natural lake. There we would mingle with the campers of Gale Camp that Reverend Peacock of the Anglican church in Cowansville had begun in 1944.
So what did my Dad see? There are two possibilities– either we are alone in this universe or we are not. I guess we will never know– but after doing research for this story, more of my childhood came back in a flood of memories. It’s just so hard to forget an area that gave me so much to remember– even on the subject of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
“It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call– The Twilight Zone.
Rupert H Dobbin— Gale Mountain and Gale Pond. Named after Sir Samuel Gale who had the land grant for a huge area around there. There is a monument to him and one to his wife close to the old one room school house (now a house) on the Sweetsburg to West Shefford road that runs along the west base of Mont Gay (Gale). Before it became a home the old school house was used as a polling station for elections. Used to climb up and swim off the damn on the south end of Gale Pond. The water in that lake warmed up faster than any other lake after a heavy rain.The west flank of Gale Mountain became a small ski centre for awhile but closed. The land became a ‘rural’ subdivision.
The Farr boys had a bobsled they used to ride down the ‘Gale Pond Road’ to the Brome Pond road which formed a ‘T’ junction. That’s a steep descent and on ice the brakes were useless which resulted in a major wreck with Farr’s scattered all over the snow bank. Only minor injuries but I don’t remember the bobsled being used much on that route again.
Georgina Cote-King— Reverend Peacock’s camp was Gail Camp and the pond was the same name, my brother Donald King was a councillor and Jean his wife helped Mrs. Peacock with the food.
Maureen Forster Page-– My husband Bob bought it from Reverend Peacock. Bob and his brothers went to camp there their whole childhood. That was their summer. His mom and dad worked and stayed there too. Kids came from all over. Doug Harvey, the hockey player donated money and brought kids from Montreal along with his kids.
We sold it to the town of Bromont after we owned it for 3 or 4 years. It was never supposed to be anything but a natural park. That was the deal at the time. The road is still a small dirt road. They changed it so it didn’t go through the barnyard, but still only goes as far as the camp was. There’s a walking path around the pond and a couple of large chalets. My kids went there on school trips and stayed in one of the buildings. They had swinging ropes and bridges etc. They also taught mountain climbing with ropes and how to shoot bow and arrow etc. and the swimming is still excellent.
Linda Bromby— After Gale Pond it was known as the “Base de Plein Air Davignon “. I think it was subsidized by the Quebec government. It is now home to the Balnea spa.
Murray Dover-– At 15 yrs I was the kitchen goffer, 2 yrs, all for the big 100$ free room and board,, for 5 weeks,,Don,& Jeannie, Bill & Cynthia Clinton, Mrs. Westover was the summer nurse and asked us the daily question we all dreaded– if we had been regular that morning.
Mary Ellen Lickfold— Gale Pond…the dusty roads in the back of the pickup, long trudge up the hill, cool off in that lovely after a long day of throwing bales, zoom back down the hill, climb back into the box of the truck and get dusted out all the way back home!! Sounds rather dumb now but it was a highlight!!
lindaseccaspina 