Driving a logging truck in the mountains of British Columbia requires skill and nerve. With approximately 100 tons of logs and trailer riding behind him and a precipitous winding road ahead, a driver must be meticulous in ensuring his equipment is in top shape, with special emphasis on brakes.

So it was with Albert Kershaw on a bright, wintery day in March, 1966. Working in the Shawnigan forest district on Vancouver Island, he had picked up his load on the mountainside being logged and was descending carefully to discharge it at tidewater in Cowichan Bay far below. On either side was thick timber still to be logged, and beyond him the snow-covered road twisted steeply out of sight.

Recently Kershaw drove us up that road to the top of a sharp incline called Crescent Hill. There he stopped, turned his pick-up around and told us what happened that day. About 200 yards ahead to our right there was a projection of trees, at roughly our level, that stopped well short of the road. On our left, slightly closer and higher up, there was a similar clump of trees, also well clear of the road. The view between these two points of forest, about half a mile apart, was unobstructed.

“I had stopped here to check the water coolant in my brakes,” Kershaw explained. “If your brakes overheat going down this hill, you’re plain out of luck. So I was crouched down beside the wheels on the right-hand side when something shiny by those trees over there caught the corner of my eye.”

He pointed to the stand of fir trees on our right. They ranged up to 200 feet in height.

“I stood up and looked at it and at first thought it was a plane trying to make a crash landing. It was so low it was below the tops of those trees.”

But as the object moved closer to the road, Kershaw realized he was looking at something utterly strange. Whatever sort of craft it was, it had no wings or tail.

“It was shaped like a large pontoon, about 100 feet long and about five feet thick in the   middle, and it tapered a bit toward each end. The ends, front and back, were an orangey color I have never seen before. They looked as if they were glowing from heat or something. This color went back about 15 feet from each end, and the rest of the object shone like polished metal. I have never seen such polish. It was like shining a light on a TV screen. Just behind the color at the front end there were two little square markings, one smaller than the other, that looked as if they might have been panels.”

For a minute or so Kershaw stared in amazement as the object moved slowly across the road in full view before him and headed for the far side of the second clump of trees. At this point the craft performed two singular manoeuvres. As it approached the higher ridge of ground, two puffs of black dust “like carbon dust” sprayed from beneath its front end and seemed to give it the bit of extra altitude it needed.

Then, as it started to move behind the trees to the left of the road, it rolled over on its side.

“When it did that I could see it was much wider than I had thought,” Kershaw said. “It might even have been circular. It was hard to tell through the gaps in the trees. But one thing I did see was something flat sticking out underneath, like a landing pad.”

Several days later he returned to the scene and, struggling through the snow on foot, tried to examine the area where the object had disappeared. He could not get far and there were no clues to help him but he was struck by the narrowness of the gap along which the craft must have travelled, since it did not reappear above the trees. He realized then that the enormous craft had simply flipped on its side to travel between the trees like an airborne wheel!

At the time of sighting, however, Kershaw’s first impulse was to get help in tracking the object. He thought of using the radio in his truck but, not knowing what reaction his transmission might set off in this strange encounter, he decided against it. Instead he completed his run as quickly as possible and then phoned the local flying club, hoping he could follow the object by air.

“But I was out of luck,” he said ruefully. “There wasn’t a pilot around who could take me up. Even if we didn’t see the thing again, I thought we could take a run over a lake nearby where I figure it might have been parked on the ice before it flew across the road. If so, it would have left some tracks. But after a few days it was too late even for that. The ice had melted.”

That was one part of his experience that Kershaw regretted. Another was that, for fear of missing something, he did not take time to climb back into his truck to turn off the idling motor. Thus he could not tell if the object made any sound.

Thirdly was the reaction of authorities.

“I phoned the police that night,” he said, “to report what I had seen and to find out if they could tell me what it really was. But they treated it more like a joke. They seemed to be more interested in knowing about me than what I was telling them.”

Then Kershaw, an articulate man not given to over-excitement, added a remark that left no doubt about his conviction he had seen something beyond material explanation.

“Right after that I took flying lessons and got my pilot’s license,” he said. “If anything like that is seen around here again, I won’t have to wait around for some one else to take me up.”

By chance, Kershaw was to be checked out for his solo on floats the same afternoon that we interviewed him. So later on we watched from the shore of Quamichan Lake as he made his circuits and landings. Beside us were his pleasant wife and two children, obviously proud of what Dad was doing.