Project Second Storey, Canada's Interdepartmental UFO Committee

Ottawa, 1952. Reports of "flying saucers" passing over Canadian territory had reached the Defence Research Board, the military science agency of the Department of National Defence. On April 22, 1952, the board formed a committee. Project Second Storey. It was also known as Project Second Story, Project Flying Saucers or Project Theta. Its brief was to collect, catalogue and correlate data from UFO sighting reports. And to establish an official governmental position on unidentified flying objects.

April 12, 1952. About 8:30 p.m. Warrant Officer E. H. Rossell and Flight Sergeant Reginald McRae were driving on RCAF Station North Bay, Ontario. A bright amber disc arrived from the southwest and moved across the airfield. Then it stopped. One account says it reversed direction at a 30 degree angle and left at "terrific speed."

The Ottawa Journal and the Globe and Mail carried the story on April 16. The case later entered Brad Sparks' catalogue of Project Blue Book unknowns. Ten days after the sighting, Second Storey was formed. One online account says the disc prompted it. That link rests on a forum post, not on a government document.

The chair was Dr. Peter M. Millman, an astronomer and meteor specialist at the Dominion Observatory. The other members came from Canadian military intelligence and other government agencies. Among them was Wilbert Brockhouse Smith, a senior radio engineer at the Department of Transport. He already ran his own study, Project Magnet.

The two men stood far apart. According to his biography, Millman did not believe UFOs were of extraterrestrial origin and considered the project a waste of resources. Smith's preliminary report of June 1952 concluded that UFOs were probably extraterrestrial and manipulated magnetism. He reported some of Magnet's findings to Second Storey. The Condon Committee later noted that his report did not represent the official opinion of the Second Storey Committee.

Second Storey did not investigate sightings itself. It developed interview techniques and filing procedures. It also created a standardized form so that government departments could report UFOs the same way. One count gives it six meetings from 1952 to 1954.

Its verdict was cool. The situation "did not warrant a large-scale official investigation of unidentified aerial phenomena." A 2025 government review put it plainly. UFOs "neither posed a security threat, nor were of scientific interest." Sightings were treated as misidentified natural phenomena, such as meteorites. The Condon Committee said the group went inactive after 1953. Other sources say it was dissolved in 1954.

Smith pressed on. In November 1953 the Ottawa Journal put his detection station at Shirley's Bay on its front page. The Department of Transport ended Project Magnet in 1954. Smith carried on privately until his death in 1962. Reports kept flowing to the RCMP, Transport and National Defence. In 1967 or 1968, depending on the source, the National Research Council took over. Millman ran the files there, under "Non-Meteoric Sightings." In 1995 the papers went to Library and Archives Canada. About 9,500 pages are now digitised.

Project Second Storey belongs beside the Robertson Panel and Britain's Flying Saucer Working Party, early official efforts to manage the saucer question. Matthew Hayes traces this history in Search for the Unknown. The Sky Canada Project revisited it in 2025. The committee left no photographs and no wreckage. It left a form, a filing system and a question Canada never quite closed.