The Place Bonaventure UFO, Montreal (1990)

Place Bonaventure is a vast building in downtown Montreal. On its roof sits the Hôtel Bonaventure, which was then the Hilton International Bonaventure. Up there are a heated open-air pool and 2.5 acres of gardens.

Wednesday, 7 November 1990. About 7:15 p.m. An American tourist was doing the backstroke in the rooftop pool. Directly overhead, she saw "an oval shape with a yellowish colour."

The lifeguard confirmed it and called hotel security. She described "a lighted object with six lights on the perimeter of a large circle with a ray of light emitted from each one." There was no sound.

About a mile away, in Old Montreal, Bernard Guénette, a MUFON member, was watching on his own. He saw "a small greenish Aurora Borealis-like phenomenon with long streamers extending out from it." It was not moving.

At 8:07 p.m. officer François Lippé of the Montreal Urban Community Police was sent to the hotel. To him, "the object itself was luminous and round and did not appear to move." At 8:20 p.m. Sergeant Robert Masson called for backup. At 8:44 p.m. the RCMP was contacted. Its investigator, Luc Morin, arrived at 9:30 p.m.

Around 9:00 p.m. La Presse journalists Jules Béliveau and R. Mailloux reached the roof with photographer Marcel Laroche. Béliveau later told CBC that a police officer had joked in the elevator about using his gun. "But when we arrived together on the roof, he looked into the sky and said 'sacrament.' He was astonished like I was." Laroche took two photographs. They are the only known images of the event.

Masson watched a cargo plane pass beneath the object. From that, he judged it to be "around five full football fields" in size, at 8,000 to 10,000 ft. Police had the downtown spotlights switched off. Nothing changed. Then, after 10 p.m., thickening cloud covered it. No one saw it leave.

The Dorval control tower confirmed that nothing showed on radar. National Defence reported no military operations in the area. An RCMP report is cited for an object about 450 m across. In 1992 Guénette and former NASA scientist Richard F. Haines published a private report. It included six witness sketches and a computer analysis of Laroche's photographs. Their verdict: "the evidence for the existence of a highly unusual, hovering, silent large object is indisputable."

Skeptics see something else. Their leading explanation is light pillars, formed when city lights reflect off ice crystals overhead. Claude Lafleur, writing in Le Québec sceptique, noted that police reports placed the sightings only around Place Bonaventure. An object some 500 m wide should have been seen all across downtown. Others have pointed to the pool's underwater spotlights or the Five Roses flour-mill sign. Searchlights reflecting off low cloud were suggested in 1990, and Haines and Guénette rejected that idea. No evidence of a hoax has ever been found.

In 2005, on Canadian television, Masson said: "I am convinced that I saw something that wasn't made by any inhabitants of this planet." In 2021 the Royal Canadian Mint issued a glow-in-the-dark silver coin called The Montréal Incident. Chris Rutkowski, quoted by the Mint, called it "one of Canada's most curious UFO cases." One documentary series, Northern Mysteries, paired it with Shag Harbour.