Project MAGNET

Thank you for taking my call. I'm a researcher with Library and Archives Canada, and over the past few years I've been going through our UFO collection. Fifteen thousand pages of declassified documents. I actually stumbled into this work by accident, filling in for a colleague who was on medical leave. Most people don't know Canada had its own UFO investigation program that predates BLUE BOOK by two years. It was called Project MAGNET, and it ran from 1950 to 1954. What makes it unique is that it wasn't military, it wasn't about national security. It was pure scientific research. The Canadian government funded an engineer to study whether UFOs were using Earth's magnetic field as a propulsion source. Let me repeat that so you understand what I'm saying. Our government, in 1950, officially approved a program based on the premise that flying saucers were real and could teach us about magnetism. I've seen the files. I've spent hundreds of hours reading through these documents at the Archives. The memos, the reports, the correspondence. What I found tells a very different story than the one we got publicly.

The man behind Project MAGNET was Thomas Blackwood, senior radio engineer for Transport Canada's Broadcast and Measurements Section. Real name was Wilbert Brockhouse Smith, but I'm changing all the names here. Blackwood was legitimate. University of British Columbia educated, worked on wartime radio monitoring systems, had serious scientific credentials. This wasn't some conspiracy theorist. In 1950, Blackwood attended a radio engineering conference in Washington DC. While he was there, he started hearing things. Rumors about what the Americans were finding. He came back to Canada convinced that UFOs were not only real, but that they operated using principles we didn't understand yet. Specifically, he believed they manipulated magnetic fields. So Blackwood did something remarkable. He wrote a memo to his bosses on November 21, 1950. In it, he outlined a proposal for geomagnetism research. Seven areas of study. UFOs weren't mentioned directly because he knew how that would sound. But the real goal was there between the lines. Study magnetic anomalies. See if they correlate with UFO sightings. Figure out if these craft were using magnetism. Commander Richard Edwards, Deputy Minister of Transport for Air Services, approved it on December 2, 1950. Project MAGNET was born. But here's what's important to understand. They kept it classified. Not because it was dangerous. Because it had potential. If UFOs were real and if they were using magnetic propulsion, whoever figured that out first would have a technological advantage nobody could match.

The project started small. Blackwood used existing Department of Transport facilities. He got support from the Defence Research Board and the National Research Council. They gave him lab space, equipment, personnel. This wasn't some fringe operation. Canada's top scientific institutions were involved. In October 1952, Blackwood set up an observatory at Shirley's Bay, just outside Ottawa. It was on a restricted military site. The world's first UFO detection station, that's what one researcher called it in the archives. They installed magnetometers to detect magnetic field disturbances. Gravimeters to measure gravitational anomalies. Gamma-ray detectors. Sensitive radio receivers to pick up unusual signals. The whole array was designed to capture any physical signature a UFO might emit. But before the station was even operational, Blackwood was already drawing conclusions. In June 1952, he issued a preliminary report. Let me tell you what it said. Quote, UFOs likely come from intelligent extraterrestrial sources and almost certainly manipulate magnetism for flight. A 1953 report said the exact same thing. This wasn't speculation in his personal notebook. These were official reports submitted to the Canadian government. Think about the timeline here. This is 1952, 1953. The Korean War is still happening. The Cold War is ramping up. And Canada's Department of Transport is producing official documents saying flying saucers are probably extraterrestrial and use magnetic propulsion. That's not conjecture. I've seen the files myself.