Dark Object - Don Ledger and Chris Styles-pages

Page 69 of 82

Page 69 of 82
Dark Object - Don Ledger and Chris Styles-pages

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of our search spread across Canada. The divers and film crew, who were also staying at the same motel, had heard an interview the previous day on the same program with former Chronicle Herald reporter Ray MacLeod, who had written the Shag Harbor stories of October 1967. News of our intentions had leaked out even before our arrival. MacKenzie's Motel is a small facility of perhaps twenty rooms and six cabins. Although the motel has a swimming pool, it lacks a dining room, so meals were had elsewhere, usually at one of Shelburne Town's local restaurants. Consequently word about our presence got around fast. The town was still in the grip of Hollywood fever following two motion pictures that had been made in the area. The Scarlet Letter had utilized about one third of the town, adding props and making over the old colonial-style houses along the waterfront. And if it wasn't enough to have Demi Moore in town, she was followed by Sandra Bullock, who was working in a film called Two If By Sea nearby. But the town wasn't too jaded to be interested in the Sightings episode. The taping of our survey expedition was a little more complicated than the original segment done with director Tod Mesirow. Director Alec Griffith had a number of specific ideas about just how things w-----T AL Ale would be done. After the first day of working out bugs and laying down a few survey lines with the sonar, it was clear that Alec's concern was solely for a good take and sound bites. He did his job and he did it well, but it was obvious to us that we would have to be the ones to insure that some real survey work was done. We decided that we had two main goals. One was to completely survey the sound by sonar. By the sound we mean the body of water that lies between the shores of Shag Harbor and Outer Island. It was in this area where we might find evidence of the Dark Object's impact site. These were the position and the limits of the former official search. While provisions were being loaded, Alec had the film crew shoot an interview with Laurie Wickens and Lawrence Smith at dockside on the Government Wharf on Prospect Point Road. Laurie, you may remember, had been the first to call in his sighting to the RCMP as a possible airplane crash, while Lawrence Smith had skippered the first boat out of this same wharf some twenty-eight years earlier. Laurie Wickens recounted his experience on the night of October 4, 1967, and then it was Lawrence's turn to relate his role in the civilian search on that memorable night. That was followed by shots of the 1 , mow 4 11. AN A AE 1 see We were fortunate to have Lawrence Smith along on this day. His personal knowledge and recollections were an added source of information about the sequence of events on that night in 1967. Though we always have concerns about people's memories in cases where considerable time has elapsed, his presence helped assure us that we were searching for something real. We also wanted to be sure to check the Navicula's "May not be boulders" target on the sea floor of the Shag Harbor Rip at the southern end of Outer Island. Any remaining work time would be allocated to checking sonar hits by video drops or a dive. boat setup. Finally, by 11:00 A.M., we were ready to cast off. By the time we pulled away from the dock just before noon on September 18, it had been decided that