The Duhamel Landing Rings: Schielke Farm, Alberta, 1967

Duhamel is a hamlet in Camrose County, Alberta, about 20 km southwest of Camrose and about 100 km southeast of Edmonton. The case is often filed under the bigger town's name. Camrose. According to Wikipedia, the discovery was preceded by reports of UFO sightings around the town. None of the surviving sources describe them.

Saturday, 5 August 1967. Heavy rain had fallen through the night. On the Schielke farm, the cows did not come home from the pasture. That rarely happened. Mr. Schielke went to fetch them, into a field he had not visited for weeks. There, in the grass, were the rings.

Most accounts count four, found over two days. Each was about 30 feet across, with bands five to seven inches wide. The smallest measured "31 ft., 9 in." Three were essentially circular. The largest was slightly elliptical, "varying from 34 ft., 5 in. to 36 ft., 3 in." Some were incomplete, rough horseshoe shapes.

The grass was "pressed down in a definite direction," as if something had turned. One ring lay on sloping ground. Another smashed across a willow fence. There were no scorch marks, no exhaust blasts, no disturbed loose soil outside the rings. Inside, "thumbnail-sized pieces of vegetation" seemed to be missing. Schielke said his farm equipment could not have made the marks. He did not believe in UFOs.

The Camrose Canadian ran the story on 9 August. An Edmonton UFO club was notified, visitors tramped through the pasture, and national media followed. On 11 August, staff from the Defence Research Establishment Suffield arrived, acting under instructions from Defence Research Board headquarters. Their report, "Onsite inspection of reputed UFO landing marks at Duhamel, Alberta," is held today by Library and Archives Canada.

Secondary sources say it found the marks were not a hoax. A "tremendous weight" would have been needed, "at least three times that of a normal truck tire," consistent with a "large aircraft or, presumably, small spacecraft." The scientist admitted the marks looked as if made by a hovering aircraft. A soil sample was inconclusive. In the end, the scientist could not conclude one way or another. That November, Wing Commander D.F. Robertson included the case in a briefing for Canada's new Minister of National Defence, alongside Falcon Lake and Shag Harbour. The files went to the National Research Council as unsolved.

The Condon Committee studied photographs of the Camrose rings. It judged they did not look very different from tracks left by farm vehicle wheels. Its broader point was simple. Marks on the ground do not prove a strange vehicle made them.

The investigators on site had ruled out farm vehicles. So had the farmer. Still, gaps remain. Tire-like tread marks appeared on small portions of the circles. Visitors had trampled the field before the inspection. No hoaxer was ever named.

The record is tangled. Sources count three, four, six or seven rings. Old Crop Circles, which published photos credited to James H. Baker, says the correct figure is four. In 2018, Chris Rutkowski found the Robertson briefing at Library and Archives Canada and shared it. Today Duhamel is often called Canada's first documented crop circle. Perhaps the world's. Nobody ever saw what made it.