This article was published in the daily newspaper The Winnipeg Sun, Canada, on November 13, 2004.
By BOB HOLLIDAY, STAFF REPORTER
Terry McDonald thought his eyes were playing tricks last week when he saw a bright light following his truck. "The light was behind me. It was so bright, I thought my dome light was shorting out," said McDonald from his home in Crane River, about 320 km northwest of Winnipeg.
LOST POWER
McDonald did start to worry when his truck intermittently lost power over the course of about a kilometre.
McDonald's sighting wasn't a rare occurrence, said Manitoba's leading UFO researcher, Chris Rutkowski.
"It was fairly quiet and now all of a sudden a whole bunch of things are happening," said Rutkowski. "I've had a number of reports in the past two weeks."
Among the sightings was "a whole bunch of disc-like lights hovering on top of a Greyhound bus travelling on Highway 6 between Ericksdale and Ashern last Tuesday," said Rutkowski.
As well, he's received reports of lights west of Kenora, Ont. A Kenora resident, who wished to remain anonymous, claimed he saw a saucer-like object on Monday. The man said the object was hovering about 18 metres (60 feet) above the ground about 10 km west of Keewatin. He observed the saucer for nearly an hour before it moved fairly slowly across the tree tops.
The most reported light show is the convergence of the planets Jupiter and Venus, said Rutkowski.
"They are very close together and look like an airplane coming into land but not going anywhere," he added.
A landing plane wasn't what was witnessed in Crane River, said McDonald's daughter, Tracey McDonald, who saw something odd in the sky about 1:30 a.m. on Thursday.
"It was many green, red and white flashing lights that were really low. Then there was a big white flash, as big as a house," she said.
McDonald said neighbours have reported seeing small, disk-like lights darting between trees in nearby forests.
Reports of UFOs in Canada have skyrocketed.
"The fact we have 700 sightings (in Canada) this year is interesting," Rutkowski said. "We didn't even have 700 total last year."
