Dark Object - Don Ledger and Chris Styles-pages

Page 54 of 82

Page 54 of 82
Dark Object - Don Ledger and Chris Styles-pages

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It's like pulling teeth to get information and documents out of the government, despite the fact that all of this information is gathered, investigated, complied, and filed at taxpayers' expense. But the difficulty factor seems to escalate sharply when it comes to UFO material. Since searches of the ocean floor seemed to have come up empty, we were curious about whether the Dark Object was moving under its own power on the water while the witnesses watched that evening. There was some confusion on this point, even though everyone agreed it was moving out to sea. Chris at first had assumed that it was just drifting along with the ever-present current in that area. Two things that might affect its motion, besides the current and its own capabilities, were the tide and the weather. We contacted the Federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans and asked if they had records of the tides back that far. "No problem," the technician told us, but it would cost to run a computer program to dig out that information if we wanted a hard copy. We told him that just knowing the answer would be enough for now, and within minutes we had an answer. The tides in that area had been ebbing for about forty-five minutes. An ebbing tide and the usual four-knot current outflow meant that the UFO must have been motoring along under some sort of propulsion because the current was too weak to propel it c 1 forward. But according to the witnesses, although it seemed to be moving seaward, it was moving very slowly, not at the fairly good clip of six knots. So some other factor must have been affecting its speed. We wondered if there had been an onshore wind that might have been retarding the object's progress 1 seaward. So we called Environment Canada, the federal agency responsible for tracking and disseminating weather data, to ask about the detailed weather for that evening. We already knew from several sources, the RCMP documents and the newspaper stories, that it had been a cool, clear night with no moon, but we knew little else. The gentleman whom we contacted by telephone told us that there was no problem, they had weather information going back to the late 1700s. The data was kept in large journals for each month. He went looking for it and came back several minutes later and informed me in a very puzzled tone that the journal for the month of October of 1967 was missing! "Well, this is strange. When these journals are removed from the stacks, they are signed out as to where they are going to, and for a date that far back, I can't imagine who would want it." "I thought of that. There's only four of us here and no one seems to know anything about it. I did find the daily log, which gives just the barest of information. Did you want that?" "Sure," we answered. He informed us that the night over most of Nova Scotia for that date, the Shag Harbor area included, was cool and clear, with a temperature of forty-two degrees Fahrenheit, and low 1 au humidity. "What do you mean, missing?" we asked. "How about somebody in your immediate office, perhaps they have it out for some reason?" "What about the winds?" "That would be in the detailed journal."