Canadian UFO Files: LAC Records and Project Magnet

Quick answer

Library and Archives Canada preserves UFO material from National Defence, Transport, the National Research Council and the RCMP. Its historical search collection is different from the Sky Canada Project’s 2025 review of reporting practices. Project Magnet is part of that earlier history, not evidence of a working exotic propulsion system.

What the collection contains

LAC describes records spanning 1947 to the early 1980s, including correspondence, reports, memoranda and procedures. The four contributing agencies had different reasons to retain material. Treat an RCMP communication as that communication, not as an automatic NRC scientific finding. An archival collection assembles surviving records; its scope is not a census of all Canadian sightings.

Sources: Canada’s UFOs: the search for the unknown

A search that another reader can repeat

Start with the place in English and add the province in its separate field; a city name such as Kingston can match more than one province. The sighting-date text may be incomplete or inconsistent, whereas the document date has a standardized field. Try each date independently. Save title, agency, reference and scan page before drawing a timeline from the results.

Sources: Canada’s UFOs: the search for the unknown

Project Magnet in its recorded setting

Sky Canada’s historical review says Transport permitted engineer Wilbert Smith to pursue part-time research in 1950 into the possibility of using Earth’s magnetic field for UFO propulsion. The department ended the project in 1954, after which Smith continued privately. This records a hypothesis and administrative history. It does not demonstrate that a craft drew usable power from the field or that an extraterrestrial vehicle was examined.

Sources: Management of Public Reporting of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in Canada (2025), sections B–F

Read records across changing responsibilities

Sky Canada describes the later NRC reporting role and the transfer of historical material to LAC. Use that administrative sequence to identify a likely custodian, not to assume one continuous investigation existed. When two departments repeat the same witness letter, record one underlying account with two archival copies. That prevents institutional duplication from masquerading as independent corroboration.

Sources: Management of Public Reporting of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in Canada (2025), sections B–F · Canada’s UFOs: the search for the unknown