Which province reportedly had the most UFO sightings in 2022

Hundreds of Canadians who cast their eye to the sky reported UFO sightings last year, according to a new survey by Ufology Research.

The organization headed up by ufologist and researcher Chris Rutkowski found there were 768 UFO sightings recorded in Canada in 2022. That figure was a slight increase of six per cent from the 2021 survey, but is the fourth-lowest number from the past 20 years.

“That’s still two a day somewhere in Canada, so if you see a UFO, you’re in good company,” Rutkowski said in an interview with CTV Morning Live Winnipeg on Thursday.

An unidentified flying object, otherwise known as a UFO, was defined for the study as ‘an object seen in the sky which its observer cannot identify.’

According to the 2022 numbers, Quebec led all provinces with about 29 per cent of all Canadian UFO reports, narrowly edging out Ontario’s 28 per cent.

Meantime, Manitoba’s reported sightings were down last year, with Winnipeg ranking lowest among metropolitan areas with eight incidents.

“We usually hold our own with the rest of Canada, depending on population,” Rutkowski said.

“There were a smaller number in Manitoba, but it's usually with population with B.C., Toronto. More people around, more UFOs to be seen.”

Other key takeaways - about 8.2 per cent of all UFO reports were classified as unexplained. The typical sighting lasted about 13 minutes.

The majority of the sightings, about 52 per cent, were simple lights in the sky. Witnesses also reported UFOs shaped like triangles, spheres and boomerangs.

Some standouts - a pilot in Toronto reported in June seeing ‘a person in a wingsuit’ flying at an altitude of 13,000 feet. The study said that the incident was filed with Transport Canada.

Witnesses in Vancouver also reported a large, disc-shaped object with a mirror-like finish on its underside hovering over their sailboat on the Fraser River in September.

Many witnesses were pilots, police and ‘other individuals with reasonably good observing capabilities and good judgment,’ the study said.

The survey was compiled from receipts of reports directly from witnesses and through data mining of known websites devoted to UFO reports. The goal of the annual study is to help researchers understand the controversial phenomenon of UFOs.

“From a scientific curiosity, if things like this aren't supposed to exist, and yet people report them and see them all the time - what's going on? And if pilots are seeing things at close range, and they don't know what's going on, and they're familiar with what's in the sky, I want to know what's being seen,” Ratkowski said.

The findings from the report can be read on Ufology Research’s website.

- With files from CTV’s Rachel Lagacé