Summary
Around 11:20 p.m. on 4 October 1967, Laurie Wickens, 17, and four friends, driving on Highway 3 through Shag Harbour, Nova Scotia, watched a row of four lights descend toward the water and called the RCMP in Barrington Passage to report a plane crash. Constable Ron O’Brien, on the shore, saw a light about half a mile offshore, drifting with the tide, gone before a boat could reach it. Local fishing boats and Coast Guard lifeboat 101 from Clark’s Harbour found a wide patch of yellow bubbling foam and no bodies, survivors, or wreckage. The Rescue Coordination Centre in Halifax checked the flight lists, found every aircraft accounted for, and the next morning labeled its telex a UFO report. Navy divers from HMCS Granby searched the bottom and came up with nothing.
Background
Shag Harbour is a fishing village on the Atlantic side of Shelburne County, at the southwest end of Nova Scotia. The water in front of it is the sound opening on the Gulf of Maine. St. Margaret’s Bay is a different inlet, on the other side of the province, near Halifax.
Wickens was driving friends home from a dance. He later said the detachment asked if he had been drinking. Other people on shore saw the same low row of lights. Some described a whistling sound and a bang as the lights went down. The count usually given is about eleven witnesses of the descent. O’Brien’s statement to the press was plain: after the call, he saw a light on the water about half a mile out, the tide was taking it to sea, and it was gone before they could put a boat on it.
Within the hour, about eight fishing boats were on the spot, and Coast Guard lifeboat 101 came from Clark’s Harbour. Captain Bradford Shand, of Shag Harbour, said the foam was yellowish and at least 80 feet across, and that he had never seen the like on his daily fishing pass through that water. Some of the men on the boats later described a sulfur smell. Nobody brought up a body or a piece of an airplane. The skipper of the lifeboat passed on a message from the Rescue Coordination Centre: commercial and military aircraft along that coast were accounted for, and no private plane was missing or overdue.
The next morning, 5 October, RCC Halifax sent a priority telex to the air desk at Canadian Forces Headquarters. The subject line was “UFO Report.” The text said a dark object had gone into the water at Shag Harbour, and that aircraft, flares, and the other ordinary explanations had been set aside. That label is the desk’s name for a report that survived those checks. It is not a finding that a craft of unknown make had been recovered. Squadron Leader Bain, on that desk, asked Maritime Command for an underwater search. A memo the next day from Colonel W. W. Turner, director of operations, says the Rescue Coordination Centre had already discounted an aircraft, a flare, a float, or any other known object.
Divers from HMCS Granby, the Fleet Diving Unit Atlantic, started on Friday, 6 October. The water was about 30 to 65 feet, the bottom was flat sand, and visibility was good. The papers of 7 October said a four-man team was already down and three more divers were on the way. They found no metal, no wreck, and no body. Maritime Command called the search off after those days with a nil result. A Department of National Defence letter of 25 October 1967 confirms that the investigation included an underwater search and that the search produced nothing that identified the object.
The nearby NORAD radar at Baccaro had no missing aircraft that night. It was not a dive team. No sample of the foam was kept in a way that later labs could retest. What remains on paper is the lights, the light on the water, the foam, the empty flight list, and an empty bottom.