by Charles Lear, author of “The Flying Saucer Investigators.”
In October of this year, the Royal Canadian Mint announced that it was putting out a coin celebrating a 1970 UFO case from the city of Duncan on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. This is the sixth in a series of the Mint’s Unexplained Phenomena series of 1 oz. $20 face value silver coins depicting famous Canadian UFO cases. The
Duncan incident, involving a sighting by a nurse working in the Cowichan District Hospital, occurred in the midst of a flap in the area. It was investigated by John Magor, editor and publisher of the Canadian UFO Report, and he provided a report to the Victoria Times. The Victoria Times published an article on the case on page 1 of the January 5, 1970 edition (page 10 of the pdf), and Magor published his version in the Volume 1, Number 7, summer issue of the Canadian UFO Report. News of the coin celebrating the incident prompted two men, who were both attending a party in the area at the time, to separately come forward, each with his own individual explanation of what was actually seen. We wrote about this incident in a blog headlined “A UFO and Occupants in British Columbia, Canada,” posted on the Podcast UFO website on July 16, 2022, which is where the description of the incident comes from.
News indicating there was an ongoing flap in the area turns up in the December 22, 1969 edition (page 8 of pdf) of the Victorian Times under the headline “Look Up Islanders, The UFOs Are Watching You.” A sighting by four witnesses in the Ladysmith area is described. Two of the witnesses, Graham Toole, 21, and Albert Birkeland, 22, reported they were driving when they saw an object with three lights, white on top and red on the bottom. Mr. and Mrs. Ray Knight reported seeing what the reporter for the times wrote “must be the same object.” According to the article, they agreed with Toole and Birkeland that it “moved about a mile a second.” Mr. Knight said that he had seen an object in September where “you could see the cabin lights clearly.” The article also describes a “greyish saucer-shaped object with a transparent center” seen by five people over an elementary school in Duncan.
The occupant report came from a nurse, Doreen Kendall, who worked the night shift at Cowichan District Hospital in Duncan. According to Magor’s article (page 4 of pdf) “UFO Occupants Seen Near Hospital” in the Canadian UFO Report, Kendall was checking on an elderly patient in the extended care ward around 5:00 a.m. on January 1, 1970. She turned on a light and went to part the drapes of a nearby window to let in some fresh air. She said that as she pulled the drapes open, “a brilliant light hit me in the eyes.” She said that 60 feet away, there was a large, bright object and that she could see it clearly.
Kendall was on the second floor and said the object, which she described as circular, was just above the children’s ward, which was on the third floor. She said it had a silver, bowl-shaped bottom, a domed top made of some sort of clear glass or plastic that was lit up from the inside allowing her to see into it, and lights around it “like a necklace.”
She said she saw two figures inside that were male-like, one behind the other. She described them this way: “They looked like fine, tall, well-built men. They were dressed in tight-fitting suits of the same (dark) material that covered their heads, but their hands were bare and I noticed how human they looked. Their flesh seemed just like ours.”
She said she never felt so peaceful in her life and wished she could talk to them. She noticed she was seeing more and more of the interior and realized that the craft was tilting.
According to Kendall, the creature in front was looking with intensity at a large instrument panel as if it was dealing with something important. This gave her the impression that they might have been having mechanical problems. She thought they might have landed on the roof of the children’s ward and were having trouble taking off.
According to Magor, Kendall came from a family of racecar enthusiasts, and she thought this might have been why the instrument panel was of particular interest to her. She said there were what looked like instruments of different sizes inset into the chrome-like metal of the panel.
Kendall then remembered her patient, Freida Wilson, whom she had come to check on. She said that, at this point, “I guess I hesitated. I felt I mustn’t make a noise or do anything that would break the trend of what was happening.”
Magor tells the reader that the creature in the back turned and faced her “almost as if her thoughts were being read.” She said she couldn’t see its face because it was covered with “a darkish material that looked softer than the rest of his suit.” She was sure the creature saw her because it turned and touched the back of the creature in the front. The creature in front then grabbed a lever and pushed it “back and forth.” The craft started to circle counter-clockwise and Kendall called to Wilson to come and look.
Magor spoke to Wilson, and she said she came over and saw a bright light about the size of a car. She didn’t see a top or bottom or any of the details described by Kendall. She said the object circled slowly and then moved off. She described it as being too bright to be a plastic bag with candles as some people had reportedly suggested. According to her, “it would take a million candles to make it as bright as that.”
Two other nurses, intrigued by the comments being made by Kendall and Wilson, went and looked out another window. They saw a “bright light” moving off in the distance, and two more nurses who went to look were too late to see anything.
Magor tells the reader that the nurses didn’t go public with their story and that he was alerted to it by a nurse at the hospital who was a friend of his.
After the announcement by the Royal Canadian Mint that they were releasing a coin celebrating the incident, two longtime Duncan residents, 81-year-old Dan Hughes, and 79-year-old Jan White, came forward in the press and claimed they were at the same New Year’s party when a homemade hot-air balloon was released near the hospital.
Hughes’s story appears in the article by Darron Kloster headlined, “Duncan UFO Sighting Depicted on New Coin Was a ‘Party Trick,’” posted on the Vancouver Sun website on November 9, 2023. He is quoted describing the cause of Kendall’s sighting as “a playful party trick that got out of hand and created a kind of hysteria.” According to him, the “party trick” was a creation of friends and fellow musicians, Les and Renee Palmer, made out of a wooden cross with lit candles on the ends under a plastic dry-cleaning bag held on by string. He said the Palmers lived next to the hospital, and with friends around, they inflated the bag with a portable hair dryer and let it go. He explained that dry-cleaning bags at that time had patterns and images that could be mistaken for aliens when seen from a distance.
Hughes said he was hesitant to come forward due to the fact that the sighting had been written about in numerous books and had become a part of Vancouver Island folklore. However, in spite of his professed belief that the whole incident was a hoax, he admitted he ordered a coin for himself the day before. He said, “You never know – they might stop making them when they hear the story now.”
White’s story is presented in the article, also by Darron Kloster, headlined “‘I don’t think they’ll arrest me now:’ Island barber helped make ‘UFO’ that became legendary in Duncan” posted on the Squamish Chief website on November 12, 2023. According to Kloster, White said he knew that Les Palmer had been launching balloons like the one described by Hughes in the previous article, but he explained that the one seen by Kendall was bigger and more elaborate and was actually constructed by himself and a friend, George Halkyard.
Hughes said they took plastic sheets used to separate wood at lumberyards, and he ironed them into a balloon shape while Halkyard built a frame out of aluminum rods to hold a pie plate that they filled with Sterno. According to him, they made eight balloons, some of which they launched from Mount Tolmie, and took one of them to the Palmers’ New Year’s party.
Hughes explained that it was windy and that they set up in the hospital parking lot to use the hospital as a shield. He said that two people held up the plastic while the Sterno was lit and that the plastic “just sort of quivered and it cast shadows all around the balloon.” He said, “It was a pretty spectacular thing because the Sterno really gave it an incandescent glow.” According to Kloster, Hughes “could see why someone from a distance would consider it a very odd sight with shadowy effects.”
Hughes said he and the others thought they should keep quiet so they didn’t get into trouble, but that he was old enough at that point that he didn’t care what people thought. According to him, “More than half a century later and with this coin from the Canadian Mint coming out, it was time for the truth to come out.” There is no mention of White buying a coin.
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