By Chuck
Tobin
Among the 26 people who attended a local UFO
conference last Saturday night was a Wolf Creek resident who also
saw two large orange balls floating over the area in February
2005.
A report of the sighting over the Mary Lake subdivision
next door to Wolf Creek was filed with UFOBC by a couple who watched
the unidentified flying objects together with the husband’s
parents.
It was later learned that others also witnessed the UFO
event. They included a couple of building contractors who were in
the subdivision looking at a house project with some children in
their company.
It’s reported the group actually took refuge under
the house because the objects appeared so close there was a fear
they would actually land on the roof.
The conference host was
Martin Jasek, a former Yukon resident who helped found the Yukon UFO
chapter in the 1990s. He said the Wolf Creek resident shared his
story last weekend about seeing the orange objects the same
night.
The numbers attending the conference were down from the 60
who showed up at the 2002 gathering and just a faction of the
300-plus for the inaugural millennium event in 2000.
Jasek,
however, remains insistent that openly discussing and questioning
the unexplained remains as important as ever.
“I would like to
see it accepted by the mainstream,” Jasek reiterated in an interview
Monday. “I think it is all of our responsibility . . . to ask
officials questions.
“So the next time there is an election, and
somebody is knocking on your door asking for your support, ask them
what they think about the UFO issue,” he said,
matter-of-factly.
Jasek, a professional engineer who studies
river flows in B.C., came to Whitehorse specifically to host the
conference, which was to mark the 10th anniversary of what Jasek
refers to as the giant UFO sighting. The event was witnessed by at
least 31 Yukoners, from motorists travelling the highway near Fox
Lake, to residents of Carmacks, Pelly Crossing and Mayo.
He said
it was unfortunate the giant UFO anniversary of Dec. 11, 1996
doesn’t fit well with the approaching holiday season and the ongoing
office Christmas parties, which he suspects are part of the reason
for the lower numbers.
Jasek and conference co-ordinator Cher
Davidson of Whitehorse travelled to Pelly Crossing last Sunday for a
meeting sponsored by the Selkirk First Nation and organized by Jean
Van Bibber.
Van Bibber, a candidate in October’s territorial
election, was witness to the 1996 sighting, and was one of three
attending the meeting.
Still, Jasek and Davidson are not
deterred, and plan to host another conference in 2008 at a different
time.
“I have always been interested in weird stuff but I really
did not get involved until the millennium conference,” said
Davidson, who has witnessed more than one inexplicable event.
One
of the events involved a golden, V-shaped object in the sky over the
area at the south end of Lake Laberge, she said.
Like Jasek,
Davidson believes there is a need to maintain open discussions about
UFOs, to advance the subject as something that needs to be talked
about openly.
“I think the ridicule factor is slowly diminishing,
but there is still a lot of it out there,” she said. “But we will
take your calls seriously, and we will listen to them and offer such
support that we are able to.”
Jasek: “The more people talk about
it, the more people will take it seriously.”