CFB North Bay "Suspicious Object (UFO)" sighting

CFB North Bay sits in North Bay, Ontario, home of 22 Wing. In 2007 it housed 21 Aerospace Control and Warning Squadron, which watched "the eastern half of Canada from the Atlantic Ocean to the Manitoba border." Daniel Otis of VICE World News would later call it "the same air force unit that is notified when civilian pilots spot UFOs in Canadian airspace." Less than a year earlier, air defence work had moved out of the underground complex and into the new Sgt. David L. Pitcher Building. Personnel had reported sightings here in 1952 and in 1967.

September 14, 2007. Well before sunrise, a military policeman on patrol observed "an intense light over the base." He called an officer with 21 Squadron, who sent several staff outside. They saw it too. Four minutes later, another corporal called in the same light.

He later described a white "orb of light" in a dark, starless sky that "appeared to be large and solid." It made no sound and "appeared to move very slowly upwards," drifting up and to the west. "It was bright and as it slowly ascended, it began to change to a grey-black colour," he told VICE. About 15 military personnel watched, including U.S. Air Force members posted to the base as part of NORAD. More than an hour later, the light "faded with the rising sun."

The report says the light "didn't show up on any of their scopes" and that "the phenomenon has been recorded by video and digital camera." The former military policeman says he also filmed it on his cell phone, and that all footage was "logged into evidence as per protocol." One officer "declined to classify the occurrence." Another "could not explain it either." The seven-page report gave the event a dry three-paragraph description under one heading: SUSPICIOUS OBJECT (UFO).

The document surfaced through access to information after Tom Cardoso of The Globe and Mail obtained it in a request for military UFO reports since 1990 and told the story in December 2020. In June 2021, Daniel Otis went further and found the former military policeman who wrote the report. The man spoke without giving his name. "I was teased and given a hard time for reporting it," he said. "Military culture can be unforgiving."

He said NORAD in Colorado looked into the case and "concluded that it was a 'celestial event'" without ever interviewing him. The Department of National Defence replied that "following a thorough and complete search… no records could be located."

"A week before" the sighting, Sky & Telescope had noted that Venus would be particularly bright and low in the early morning sky. Rutkowski thinks the military "saw something a bit more familiar than a UFO… likely a garden-variety planet or star." Venus reached its greatest brilliancy nine days later, at magnitude -4.6. A bright, silent point that climbs before dawn and fades as the sky brightens fits a planet. So does the empty radar.

The debate is not closed. The Venus idea does not directly address the reported drift up and to the west. Nor does it explain why trained observers described something large and solid that turned grey-black as it rose.

The video and photographs have never been released. No witness has been publicly named. The case survives in the documents, in Otis's reporting and in a podcast interview. At a base built to watch Canada's skies, its own staff saw something they would not classify. Then the recordings could not be found.