Montreal UFO over the Hôtel Bonaventure Rooftop Pool

In 1990, the International Hilton Bonaventure sat on top of Place Bonaventure in downtown Montreal, with a rooftop pool on the 17th floor. Wednesday, November 7. Thick snow clouds hung over the city.

At about 7:15 p.m., an American tourist in the pool saw something overhead. The lifeguard described "a lighted object with six lights on the perimeter of a large circle with a ray of light emitted from each one." Another witness saw "an oval shape with a yellowish colour." Hotel security called the Montreal Urban Community Police. The lifeguard phoned La Presse.

About a mile away, in Old Montreal, Bernard Guénette, a computer graphics expert and MUFON member, watched with a companion for 30 to 60 seconds. He saw "a small greenish Aurora Borealis-like phenomenon with long streamers extending out from it." Very high. Not moving.

Officer François Lippé was dispatched at 8:07 p.m. and arrived minutes later. He saw "three yellowish lights," each sending out a single beam, and wrote that the object "did not appear to move." He had the superintendent of a 45-storey building under construction across the street switch off its construction lights. Nothing changed. The RCMP was called at 8:44 p.m. At one point the object grew brighter, and security called the police a second time.

At about 9:10 p.m., La Presse reporter Marcel Laroche steadied his camera on a bench for a 30-second exposure. He took two photographs. An Air Canada pilot on the roof put the object at 8,000 to 10,000 feet. RCMP investigator Luc Morin arrived around 9:30 p.m. By about 10:00 p.m., according to Dorval airport data, it was seen to "slowly fade out and finally disappear completely."

Dorval tower had received other calls but saw nothing on radar. National Defence told the RCMP that no military operations were under way in the area. No official body issued a conclusion. In 1992, Guénette and Dr. Richard F. Haines, a former NASA research scientist, published a report built on the witnesses' estimates. They concluded the object was large and silent, no less than 1,783 ft across if it hung at 3,500 ft.

The CBC raised the aurora borealis in 1994. The research site CAELESTIA rejected that and proposed something closer to the witnesses. The pool's own six upward spotlights, reflected by ice crystals at a cloud base that dropped from 4,500 ft to 3,500 ft that evening. An artificial light pillar. It would explain the stillness, the empty radar screens and the fading as the clouds changed.

Not everyone agreed. Don Ledger, a pilot and diver, argued that sealed pool lights cannot send focused beams to a cloud base: "The underside of the water acts like a mirror." Haines argued that cloud droplets would produce "a diffuse area of illumination not separate bright sources." He still stands by the 1992 report.

La Presse covered the sighting the next day, and some witnesses said they believed they had been visited by aliens. Television returned to the case in 2016 with L'Enquêteur du paranormal on Historia. In 2021 the Royal Canadian Mint issued a glow-in-the-dark $20 silver coin, "Canada's Unexplained Phenomena: The Montréal Incident." Today the case stands beside Shag Harbour and Falcon Lake among Canada's best-known sightings.