Wilbert Smith

Wilbert Brockhouse Smith (1910–1962) is an important figure in the early history of government UFO investigation, particularly because his work was not initially conducted as a private ufological activity. He was a Canadian electrical engineer and senior radio engineer in the Canadian Department of Transport. In 1950, he persuaded his department to permit him to investigate whether reported flying saucers might be associated with unusual electromagnetic or geomagnetic phenomena. This became Project Magnet, one of the earliest government-sponsored UFO investigations outside the United States. The University of Toronto's Institute for Aerospace Studies describes Smith as the person who headed Canada's official UFO investigation beginning in 1950.

Smith was directly responsible for Project Magnet. The Canadian government granted him permission in December 1950 to conduct the work on a part-time basis. His original scientific interest was quite specific: he hypothesized that UFOs might exploit the Earth's magnetic field for propulsion. The project therefore fitted reasonably well within Smith's professional work on radio, electromagnetic phenomena and geomagnetism. Canada's 2025 Sky Canada report confirms that the Department of Transport authorized Smith to investigate whether UFOs could use the Earth's magnetic field as a source of propulsion.

The famous 1950 Smith memorandum

Smith is particularly well known in ufology because of a memorandum dated 21 November 1950. According to Smith's own account, he had made inquiries through Canadian diplomatic personnel in Washington concerning American UFO investigations. He reported that he had been told that the UFO subject was considered extraordinarily highly classified in the United States, that flying saucers existed, and that a small group headed by Vannevar Bush was investigating them.

This memorandum subsequently became one of the most frequently cited pieces of alleged evidence for a U.S. government UFO cover-up. There is, however, an important evidentiary qualification. The document establishes that Smith wrote this memorandum and reported what he believed he had learned; it does not independently establish that the information given to him was true. In other words, it is primary evidence for Smith's belief and for what he was told, but not necessarily primary evidence for the existence of the alleged American programme. The memo was originally classified and was later downgraded; archival material relating to Smith and Project Magnet survives in Canadian collections.

The identity of the American scientist supposedly behind some of this information is usually given as Robert Sarbacher, who allegedly told Smith that the U.S. government was deeply concerned about flying saucers. This became the basis of the later "Sarbacher testimony" controversy. Note that while Project Magnet is historically well documented, the more dramatic claims about what Smith was supposedly told by American sources are much less securely established.

Smith's evolution from engineer to contactee

Smith's views gradually moved beyond conventional scientific investigation. He became convinced that UFOs were extraterrestrial spacecraft and eventually claimed to have received communications from what he called the "people from elsewhere." He believed that some of these communications occurred telepathically.

Consequently, Smith occupies an unusual position in UFO history. He began as a technically trained government engineer investigating an unusual physical phenomenon and eventually became involved in a much broader extraterrestrial-contact worldview. His later writings dealt with subjects such as extraterrestrial civilizations, consciousness, telepathy and advanced propulsion. His writings were eventually collected posthumously in The Boys from Topside.

That transition is important when assessing his testimony. The early Smith and the later Smith should not necessarily be treated as one homogeneous source. The existence of Project Magnet and Smith's official position are matters of documentary history. His conclusions about extraterrestrial origin, advanced propulsion and personal telepathic contact are interpretations and claims made by Smith himself.

Project Second Storey

Smith was also involved in another Canadian government UFO initiative that is sometimes confused with Project Magnet: Project Second Storey. Established in 1952, it was a committee involving Canadian government and defence personnel that considered UFO reports and possible government responses. Smith reported some of Project Magnet's findings to this group. The University of Ottawa archival catalogue contains separate Project Second Storey records, including Defence Research Board meeting minutes and witness-interview material.

Smith wasn't simply a civilian ufologist who happened to work for the government. He was a government engineer who succeeded in getting UFO investigation incorporated into Canadian governmental research structures.

His significance for ufology

I would place Smith among the important first-generation government-linked UFO investigators. His significance rests less on whether his extraterrestrial conclusions were correct and more on the unusual documentary position he occupies. In 1950 Canada actually authorized a government engineer to investigate UFOs, and that investigation produced technical reports, an observation station and an archival record. The University of Toronto consequently describes Smith's work as the beginning of Canada's official investigation of the UFO phenomenon.

Smith illustrates a transition that occurs repeatedly in UFO history: the movement from anomalous observation, to scientific hypothesis, to government investigation, and finally to an extraterrestrial interpretation and alleged contact. Project Magnet itself belongs firmly to the first three stages; Smith's later writings belong largely to the fourth.

Project Magnet was not created because the Canadian government had already accepted that UFOs were extraterrestrial. Smith effectively created an institutional opening for UFO research by presenting it as a legitimate problem in geomagnetism and engineering. Recent historical research on Canada's UFO investigation explicitly argues that this framing was what allowed Smith to get the project established within the Department of Transport.

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[Parts of this entry were written by an AI research agent].