Shapes in the Sky

Reports of unexplained bright lights and floating objects date back thousands of years. In ancient times around the world, comets, meteors, and even certain rare cloud phenomena have been interpreted as signs from the gods or accepted as religious omens.

The bulk of modern UFO sightings have occurred in the decades since the Second World War. During the war, unknown flying craft — dubbed foo fighters by the US military — were often attributed to secret Nazi weapons. 

Highly publicized sightings, incidents, and photographs fuelled voracious speculation about whether or not we really are being visited by extraterrestrials.

Three videos that were leaked in 2017 and 2018 showing American fighter pilots interacting with UFOs were declassified and officially released to the public last week by the US Navy.

In the two videos with audio — titled GIMBAL and GOFAST — pilots excitedly wonder what it is they are seeing on the screens. In GIMBAL (pictured below) a saucer-shaped craft appears to be traveling about the clouds and slowly rotate towards the end of the clip.

111 years ago, the people of Toronto were craning their heads skywards asking themselves the very same questions.

Residents of Bathurst St. near Robinson St. spotted an unknown “airship maneuvering to the westward of the street last night,” the paper reported on its front page.

It hung in the air until it was lost to view in the setting sun.

The first powered flights by the Wright Brothers had taken place just a few years earlier at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina and daredevil balloonists were taking to the skies using hot air or lighter-than-air gas.

In 1907, an amateur airship pilot attempted to circle Toronto’s City Hall in a balloon with a simple rudder system, but became snared on the cupola of the Crawford Street school, destroying his craft.

At the time of the UFO sighting on Bathurst Street, balloons were still a rarity in Canada, though they were becoming increasingly common in Europe. Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin broke distance and altitude records with his eponymous airship that summer in Germany and France. Enthusiastic amateur aviators and governments were rushing to design and build their own craft.

However, what people claimed to see in September 1909 day didn’t fit the conventional description of an airship.

Eyewitnesses said the flying object fluttered and dipped like a kite, despite there being little wind. People looking through binoculars saw wings on the “huge bird.” The airship repeatedly circled but always positioned itself facing west.

In Mimico, on the secluded rural estate of Frederick B. Fetherstonhaugh (pronounced “fan-shaw”), a small team was developing a flying machine that was beginning to attract the attention of the locals.

“There have been several rumours lately of strange objects floating through the air in the vicinity of the western gap, Sunnyside, and further west,” reported the Star. “According to those who thought they saw them, there were two men aboard, and they seemed to have perfect control of the machine.”

Fetherstonhaugh was a patent lawyer who was well known in Toronto. He was a passionate adopter of emerging technology and was famous in the 1890s for being one of the city’s first car commuters, traveling in an electric “horseless carriage” he charged from the streetcar wires.

The car was the work of inventor William Joseph Still, who Fetherstonhaugh had assisted in securing several Canadian patents.

Hungry for information about the flying machine, the press called the Fetherstonhaugh house, but were swiftly rebuffed. A call to Fetherstonhaugh’s office unfolded in a similar fashion. “[The office] would not say whether this latest flyer was of monoplane, aerodrome, aeroplane, or balloon construction, neither would [they] admit that it had ever sailed in the air”.

Witnesses saw what the media believed was the same mystery aircraft performing remarkable aerobatic feats along the waterfront.

A Mr. E. Housey was one of the eyewitnesses whose story was printed by newspapers:

“He said it was nearly 8 o’clock, and just getting dusky. He was just going down Bathurst Street towards the wharf with his wife at the time. By mere chance he noticed it. It was such a swift object in the dusk that it might have easily passed one hundred feet above people’s heads without attracting attention from below.”

“Mr. Housey said he called the attention of a constable and a night watchman to the ship and they all four watched it maneuvering around in the atmosphere above the Western Gap.”

The flying machine they described had two propellers at the rear and was held aloft by a ball-shaped balloon, below which two men traveled within an extensive framework.

He had become involved with the flying efforts of Alexander Graham Bell and pilots Casey Baldwin and J. A. McCurdy. News eventually leaked that it was St. Catharines inventor, aviator, and Ridley College master J. R. d’Almeida experimenting at Fetherstonhaugh’s estate.

In 1904, d’Almeida made headlines by attempting to cross Lake Ontario in a pedal-powered flying machine with wings that flapped up and down and a tail that wagged side-to-side for steering and additional thrust.

His latest machine was a monoplane — an airplane with one pair of wings. However, he said, it was not the one seen flying over Toronto because his aircraft was not yet capable of taking flight. “The woods along the shores of Lake Ontario west of Toronto are apparently full of airships,” reported the Star, referring to the rash of sightings.

The Star ran a front-page story revealing the man behind the mystery craft was a “well-known engineer, who would be about the last man to be suspected of experimenting with anything as chimerical as flying machines.”

The breathless account told how the vessel ran on “powder” and was capable of vertical take-off, like a helicopter. The story told little else for fear of jeopardizing a promising milestone in the development of flying craft. However, nothing was written about it again.

Despite early promise and public excitement, none of the amateur balloons and aircraft that struggled into Toronto’s skies in 1909 had a significant impact on aviation history. Small airplanes and large dirigible balloons like the R100 and the Hindenberg became the dominant types of aerial transportation until the Second World War.

Following a few graceless dunks in Lake Ontario, Fetherstonhaugh and d’Almeida’s plane likewise faded from history.