WINNIPEG —Aliens and spaceships are a bit passe these days, but 736 reported UFO sightings across Canada last year shows an “underlying, real phenomenon” going on, says one of the country’s top UFO researchers.

“It’s true, we don’t have as many aliens on TV as we used to—they used to be on commercials selling us everything from Pepsi to decongestants,” said Chris Rutkowski, director of the Winnipeg-based Ufology Research institute.

“And yet the phenomenon persists, which to me says there is a basic underlying, real phenomenon that extends beyond media and pop culture.”

Rutkowski’s annual Canadian UFO Survey last year recorded the third-largest number of sightings in its 17-year history—down from a record of 882 sightings in 2004.

British Columbia and Ontario had the highest number of recorded cases, but Saskatchewan posted an all-time record of 98 sightings.

The tiny community of Maidstone, just east of the Alberta boundary, accounted for more than half of the reports from Saskatchewan.

Barb Campbell, who now lives farther down the Yellowhead highway in Paynton, Sask., said she saw a dark triangle larger than a helicopter hovering in the sky above Maidstone last year.

“It was just above the glare of the street light, so you couldn’t quite make out the whole thing, but it had a very unusual, strobing, eerie kind of light in the middle,” she noted.

“It made absolutely no sound whatsoever—it was just really mind-boggling.”

Campbell doesn’t believe there’s anything particularly alluring for extraterrestrials in Maidstone and says there’s likely far more UFO sightings right across Canada each year that don’t get reported.

Rutkowski, who wrote a book last year on Canadian UFO sightings, is quick to point out no incontrovertible proof exists that any of the UFO cases involve aliens.

Most of the sightings are of strange lights in the night sky, with close encounters and reports of “classic” flying saucer shapes being relatively rare.

“It would be difficult to conceive of how aliens could travel here from out there.”

Still, he said earthlings are a “relatively young civilization” surrounded by stars and planets that are older and potentially have civilizations that are much further evolved than us.

“Perhaps if we hang around another hundred, thousand, or 10,000 years, we might come up with a way to travel between the stars,” he remarked.

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